Filming and talking to Bruce Hornsby on the 2012 Jam Cruise, he mentions to me the work he was doing with Spike Lee. Here is more on that topic for those interested.

Spike Lee is in his fifteenth year of being a professor of film at his alma mater, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he is also the artistic director. He is a third-generation Morehouse man, Class of ’79. Red Hook Summer is the latest installment in his ongoing chronicles of Brooklyn—She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), and He Got Game (1998).

Red Hook Summer

Red Hook Summer:
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.

Playfully ironic, heightened, yet grounded, Spike Lee’s bold new movie returns him to his roots, where lovable, larger-than-life characters form the tinderbox of a tight-knit community. A story about the coexistence of altruism and corruption, Red Hook Summer toys with expectations, seducing us with the promise of moral and spiritual transcendence. Spike is back in the ’hood. – C.L.

The crew at Bassnectar are passionate about their music and have the growing fan base to prove it! Check out this video and get on board! Rock on!

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

= a trip of a lifetime.

MOVE, eat, learn

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover

These films were commissioned by STA Travel Australia

Peter Jackson on the set of "The Hobbitt"

Here’s something for “Lord of the Rings” fans eagerly anticipating the upcoming movie “The Hobbit.”

In a recent post on his Facebook page, director Peter Jackson gave fans a sneak peek at some of the innovative techniques used to shoot the film in 3D. The movie is being made with 48 RED Epic digital cameras, and since it’s shot in 3D, those cameras have to be paired and positioned a specific distance apart.

Sounds easy? It isn’t. While the RED cameras are a lot smaller than regular film cameras used in Hollywood, the lenses they use make it nearly impossible to place them close to each other. The filmmakers had to engage the help of 3ality Technica, a company that makes custom camera rigs, to create specialized mounts for the cameras used in “The Hobbit.”

The mounts, which allow one camera to be pointed straight at the subject while the other shoots the image reflected off a mirror, lets camera operators change the distance between the two camera lenses–called the interocular distance–easily. This keeps the lenses at a distance similar to our own eyes and should ensure that the 3D effect looks more believable and causes less fatigue.

The movie is also shot at 5K resolution–more than six times that of 1080p–at 48 frames per second, which means “The Hobbit” could be one of the best-looking 3D films we’ll ever see. Well, until Avatar 2 comes out, at least.

Watch the video below for a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of “The Hobbit” and see more on Jackson’s Facebook page.

Watch this to see artwork in 3D towards the end.

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

= a trip of a lifetime.

move, EAT, learn

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover

These films were commissioned by STA Travel Australia

In January digital projection will take over as the most common method for displaying new releases.
The last mainstream theatres in the United States will no longer use 35mm celluloid prints by the end of 2013, and across Western Europe the change will be complete by the end of 2014, according to a report by global market research company IHS Screen Digest .

Celluloid will become a curiosity in art house cinemas determined to keep traditional film going.
David Hancock, an analyst at IHS, said: “Since 1889, 35mm has been the principal film projection technology, taking movie audiences from the slapstick of the silent age, through the great musicals of the sound era, to the epoch of the summer blockbuster.”
Only two years ago digital projection was used for just 15 per cent of the world’s cinema screens. The swiftness of the cinematic digital revolution can be traced directly to the success of a single film – “Avatar” in 2009.
James Cameron’s science fiction epic became the highest grossing movie of all time, taking $2.8 billion (£1.8 billion) at the box office. It sparked a boom in 3D films and put pressure on cinemas to upgrade to digital projection.
As a result demand for 35mm cinema film is expected to decline from 13 billion feet a year in 2008 to just four billion in 2012. Another factor in its demise is the high price of silver, which is needed to make the rolls of film.
A single celluloid print of a movie can cost more than £1,500. A big release can see millions of dollars spent on prints to distribute to cinemas.
With digital projection each copy of the film can be sent out on a hard drive costing just £150. The lower cost makes simultaneous worldwide releases more feasible, which in turn reduces the risk of piracy.
Earlier this year the two main companies making celluloid prints agreed to share out the remaining work from Hollywood.
Following a century of competition Technicolor and Deluxe said they were working together “as a result of digital image capture overtaking film capture.”
Some Hollywood directors have enthusiastically embraced the use of digital projection because it gives a “cleaner” image, but others are already remembering celluloid wistfully.
In London the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern is currently being used to showcase “Film,” a tribute to the dying art of 35mm film-making by the British artist Tacita Dean.
In an accompaniment to the exhibition the director Steven Spielberg said: “My favourite and preferred step between imagination and image is a strip of photochemistry that can be held, twisted, folded, looked at with the naked eye, or projected on to a surface for others to see. Today, its years are numbered, but I will remain loyal to this analogue art form until the last lab closes.”
According to Keanu Reeves, the actor, the biggest difference on set is that a 1,000ft roll of 35mm film lasts only around nine-and-a-half minutes before running out. A digital tape or recording card can last 90 minutes, reducing the pressure on the director to “cut” to save film.
But Reeves said: “I will miss walking on to a photochemical film set. It has a magic to me. When the director says ‘Action’ and the film is rolling it feels like something is at stake.”

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

= a trip of a lifetime.

move, eat, LEARN

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover

These films were commissioned by STA Travel Australia

Some of our user group and social media members are getting our “groove on” by doing production and post production work on this year’s Jam Cruise 10. Here is a sample of the talent and special guest on this year’s event. We depart from Florida to the islands of Jamaica and Haiti. Here is one of the artist from the event:

http://www.jamcruise.com