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Burning Man on the bay

This is freaking pimp. The White Holly, a boat normally used for research did a bit of Burning Man style research on the high bay waters off Sausalito this past weekend. Fire art, blinky lights, a pulse jet, Dan Das Mann sculptures, fireworks, a loud ass Victory Siren and an upside down Telsa coil! From Megavolt2‘s description of the video below.

On Saturday December 13, 2008 the former navy ship White Holly, now a privately operated scientific research vessel run by Captain Vince Backen, was entered into The Sausalito Yacht Club “Parade of Lights” held in Sausalito, California in the San Francisco Bay. Boat parades will never be the same… the event was organized by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito in collaboration with Jack Schroll and Black Rock FX (El Diablo – jet engine fire effect, Chrysler air raid siren, smoke generator and methanol mines,) John Behrens and Omega Recoil, (upside down Tesla Coil,) Epiphany by Dan Das Mann, Karen Cusolito and Pyrokinetics (Danya Parkinson and Jo Bard,) Headless Point Studio, American Steel Studios, Flaming Lotus Girls (Mini Mega Junior – fire poofer,) Camron “Teiwaz” Assadi and The Crucible of Oakland California (flame cannons on the upper poop- deck,) Bonefire Bob and over 150 others! All of this so they could have a good time for approximately two minutes…

Burning Man long ago escaped the playa, so it’s no surprise to see some of the best stuff make it out the serene waters of the bay. I hope I don’t need to buy tickets next year.

You need to watch the above video in HD. Then check out this other great video of the action. Geeked.info has some more info and links to other videos and photos.

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Tickles the keys and play me a drink

I’m finally plowing through the massive amounts of footage I shot at Roboexotica in Vienna. This cocktail robot, the K&K Kavalier Klavier by students at FH Joanneum in Gratz, is a piano that allows one to “compose a drink”. You’ll notice a bunch of liquors and mixers mounted at the top. They connect to a series of tubes in the back that connect to valves controlled by a microcontroller that magically determines the right mixture of liquids based on the song you play. Here’s Astera making Red a drink with a little Bach piano concerto.


Astera plays a drink on the Kavalier Klavier from ekai on Vimeo.

Phil Bronstein interviews Sam Rockwell


Sam Rockwell: Bronstein at Large from ekai on Vimeo.

One of the coolest things about what I do for living is being able to work with a wide variety of people. Last week, my friend Eve who works at San Francisco Chronicle, asked if I could shoot a video interview with Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large at the Chron and Sam Rockwell, actor who stars in Choke. Choke is the latest film based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, famous for writing Fight Club. It opens this Friday.

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Star Simpson Interview on BBtv

After a year of legal wrangling, 19-year old Star Simpson finally tells her story to BoingBoingTV. Star was the MIT student who was arrested at Boston’s Logan airport last year for wearing LED art on a hoodie when she went to go pick her friend Tim up. She was immediately surrounded by 40 cops, shackled and charged with “possessing a hoax device.” When it became apparent to Boston’s overreactive authorities that Star was not a threat and the media frenzy was in overdrive, they persisted in charging her with a crime. A year later, the case is settled and Star gives her first interview recounting the events.

I shot the video from Star’s perspective, so I got a chance to meet her and understand her a bit. She’s a super sweet, curious and creative college student, the complete opposite of what Boston’s authorities made her out to be. Boston has a history of overreacting to things they don’t understand, which is quite unfortunate. The climate of fear that many of us live under, leads to this kind of egregious reaction. At the end of the day, Star simply wants to build cool stuff that we can all appreciate.

Remake a death scene with your cell phone

Make a death scene

We are now in the final act, Act III: Death, of the Spike Lee Nokia video project I am helping out with. I posted previously about it here. To encourage greater participation we are challenging people to remake or swede (as in Be Kind, Rewind) death scenes from their favorite movies using their cell phones.

I am one of five “assistant directors” who are working to cull through the bullshit and try to highlight some of the good stuff as well as guide people through the submission process. The stuff submitted so far has been mixed, so this is where you come in. The five ADs each get to pick someone from the pool of submissions to fly out to the movie’s premiere in LA in October. Hotels and flights all covered by Nokia, anywhere within the continental US that is. You’ll get the satisfaction of seeing your remake possibly making it into the final cut, hang out in LA and shmooze it up with Spike Lee. The catch is you need to have your sweded scene done and uploaded to the Nokia Productions site by August 20th, which is in like 10 days. Any cell phone is fair game, doesn’t have to be Nokia.

I encourage anyone to give it a shot and shoot me an email or leave a comment if you need help getting going. Also point me to your stuff when it’s up so I can take a look. I’d love to be able to give away the LA trip to a reader of this blog. More details and how to upload your content is on the Nokia Productions site, which uses Jumpcut for video hosting/remixing. Make sure to tag your submission ‘famousdeathscenes’ so it’ll be considered for the free trip.