As most of you know, a couple of weeks ago we concluded our Kickstarter campaign without hitting the goal. We know how many of you wanted to see the Ember become a reality and we’re so thankful for all our backers. We’re bummed, and it’s a setback, but there was nothing like pursuing something we’re incredibly passionate about; helping people take better photos.

The good news? We’re not giving up. We’re looking at this as an opportunity to make the Ember even better. We’ll be working to make the Ember brighter, easier to operate, and more portable.

We prepared for any eventuality, and now that the campaign has ended without hitting the goal, we’re exploring more traditional routes to get the Ember into your hands. Like us on Facebook to be notified as soon as the Ember is available for pre-order.

Although hitting our Kickstarter goal is a setback, it’s hardly the end. We know you’ll love having one of your own, and we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next for the Ember!

Thank you for believing in our campaign!

Jedd and the Ember Team

Through a friend, I knew that Tom was building his own airplane, and the story seemed like the perfect match for the requirements of the contest. Little did I know that he was building not just any airplane, but a Velocity XL 5; an experimental home-built aircraft that looks nothing like your average Cessna. Growing up, I always wanted to be a pilot, so this was a really fun experience for me to geek out over aviation technology. Not only was the plane impressive, but Tom ended up being awesome to interview and film. He has a great sense of humor and I love his passion and his excitement for building his own aircraft. He was a great sport about filming and I had a blast making this video with him.

This was a really unique challenge to shoot and edit in about 24 hours, and the video barely made the submission deadline. But I had a blast within the constraints of the contest; a 2-minute time limit, use of natural recorded audio throughout, and the incorporation of a soundtrack chosen by the stillmotion team. Even the small steps in improving in our craft count. As stillmotion says, “The most important step is your next one.” Really glad they hosted this, and I hope you enjoy the short video I put together.

See all the contest submissions here.

This TED talk by visual effects supervisor Rob Legato explores that nostalgia as he talks about re-creating the Saturn 5 launch by focusing on the aspects of the launch that were part of our collective memories. Instead of focusing on archival footage and matching the launch shot-for-shot, he instead tried to re-create that generation’s memory of the launch. As he explains, it’s actually an important distinction.

Of course, I can’t post about space exploration without acknowledging the passing of one of the greatest men of the past century. Neil, we are in debt to your contributions. His footprints inspired the imaginations of generations and serve as a reminder of mankind’s ability to accomplish the impossible; his small step was the first in an ongoing journey to explore new worlds.

http://hulu.com/watch/392456

“It doesn’t matter what you make, and it doesn’t matter why; the importance is that you are making something.”

In regards to butting heads with co-host Jaimie: “All great partnerships that I know about … they’re all based on that kind of push-pull. It’s super important and it has a real integrity to it. So if someone’s challenging your ideas, it means you’re having to fight for them and to justify them, and that is an inherently robust process.”

Click to visit the Two Blind to Ride IndieGogo Page!

At the end of 2010, I was able to travel to Thailand for two months to document the work of The SOLD Project. Because I was passionate about the work they were doing, I asked for the support of my friends and family, and they really came through. Thank you so much to all of you who supported that trip! SOLD got hours and hours of footage and interviews that they have since used for several videos to spread their message. Here is the main finished project, an update about SOLD’s first student in their prevention program, and the girl they met in the first SOLD documentary.

Two years later, I’m planning another trip to not only a raise awareness about a good cause, but also to tell an incredible story. One month ago, two legally blind cyclists set out from the southernmost tip of South America, and for the next year and a half will be pedaling their way up toward the equator and beyond, all the way to the northernmost part of Alaska.

Christi is severely nearsighted, and completely blind in her other eye. The above image gives a general idea of what she sees. Tauru, on the other hand, has a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. The closest description for us with normal sight to understand it is “tunnel vision.” Like looking through a paper towel tube, he can see clearly and make out objects as well as you or I, but lacks the peripheral vision to see surrounding objects outside of the direction he is facing. (Click either image to see a larger version)

Tauru’s field of vision is getting smaller and smaller every day, and he will eventually go completely blind. Which is why these two intrepid adventurers have decided not to put off their dream of crossing the Americas on tandem bike any longer. And in case you were wondering — these two aren’t newbies when it comes to grand adventures. Despite their limitations, they have already done a tandem bicycling trip from coast to coast of the United States, and they’ve traveled around the world together, summiting peaks, hiking long trails, and even teaching English in Korea.

Anyway, you know what’s coming — we want to tell this story in a feature-length documentary, but to do so, we need your help! Our IndieGogo page is now online, but we’re still a long way from being able to purchase our equipment and travel expenses for our first three trips. The first will be to Santiago, Chile in just one month, at the end of April, and the director and cinematographer will be following their journey for two weeks. The second is still being planned, and the third will be to Panama City. These trips will be about three months apart. While we are away, Christi and Tauru will be documenting their trip on a portable camcorder.

Since there are several trips and destinations as they move North, the project has two cinematographers, and the first trip I will be shooting on is in Panama. Unfortunately it won’t be a tropical vacation — it will be a lot of hard work, keeping up with Christi and Tauru’s journey, camping wherever we can find a place to settle, and constantly finding outlets to charge batteries! But this is my passion, and I have an opportunity to tell an incredible story.

There will be enormous challenges for them along the way. This journey is bold even for an experienced adventurer with perfect sight. From flat tires to broken frames, local governments to gravel roads, the mental stresses of thousands of miles road, and the difficulty of navigating dangerous roads with limited sight, this story will undoubtedly be one that you won’t want to miss. Visit the Two Blind To Ride Facebook page to see updates from their trip in progress. We’ve got an awesome team together to make this documentary’s production possible, and we don’t want the story to go unseen!

So please consider contributing what you can to fund this project. There are some incentives that you’ll find on the sidebar of the fundraising page, and a video embedded where you can meet the director of the film and learn more about the project.

Thanks for taking the time to learn about this unique opportunity and for helping us to make it happen. I don’t often ask for the help of my friends and family to make an opportunity possible, but this is a truly unique story that’s only going to happen once.

In college I attended a screening of the Invisible Children documentary, and my heart was so powerfully moved that it played a part in planting the seed for evolving my hobby of the time into an almost full-time pursuit. I use what I’ve learned to work with causes I’m passionate about, and I’m lucky to have worked on many of the projects I have, which are doing so much good in the world. My hope is that I’ve aided these efforts through the films I’ve produced.

A few days ago, Invisible Children posted a 30-minute film about Joseph Kony, a war criminal who was unknown to most of the world’s population. When I saw it go massively viral in one day, with 2 million views, I was reminded of the incredible potential of the medium.

But just 5 days later, the video has now been viewed 72 million times, despite being 30 minutes long. When it’s embedded on a Facebook wall, any web video over 3 minutes is an eternity. But its content was so stirring that people became enthralled in the first few minutes, and most probably watched the full film. The collective time translates to 1.5 million 24-hour days, about 4,106 years, or about 50 lifetimes spent watching Kony 2012. Keep in mind this is a relatively low-budget production made by a small team, posted to the internet and marketed only by the viral miracle of social networks.

If I were to to make something that’s watched for 50 lifetimes, I’d undoubtedly start seeing every little mistake I made, every imperfectly timed edit, every choice of music, every comment that could be labelled as controversial. It’s like having your face blown up on a screen so big that everyone can see your pores (terrible analogy, sorry — best I could come up with).

Donations and purchases poured in — Invisible Children sold out of their hundreds of thousands of “Action Kits” almost immediately. In fact, their entire online store is currently sold out. The emotional reaction to the film was so strong that millions of people immediately visited the site and pulled out their credit cards. And their call to “Cover the Night” on April 20 — when Invisible Children has asked youth across the world to paste Kony’s face to every public surface they can reach, is sure to be a night of action on the scale of the Occupy movements. The trendiness, the rebelliousness, and the feeling of being able to take meaningful action was a sure-fire way to stir the hearts of young adults — fed up with the world’s multiple wars, threats of new conflicts, the recent revolutions in the Middle East, and, to top it all off, the ridiculous political theater of the current Republican Primaries. The video effectively tapped into the frustration of not having a voice by giving youth the opportunity to take some kind of action.

Then, of course, came the backlash. As with anything that has this much success, criticism began to surface less than 24 hours after the video went viral. Jezebel wrote a scathing attack that undermined the film’s claims, and, in fact, the whole organization. Not only did the organization exaggerate their facts about Kony and the LRA, the claim was even made that supporters of Invisible Children are also supporting all the things that they’re donating to prevent, via the small armies that Invisible Children has supported in Africa.

A photo surfaced of the founders holding guns, which definitely doesn’t help their case.

Their budget, too, was criticized, when public records revealed that only 32% of their expenses were toward direct action, while a large portion went toward films and awareness, not to mention salaries and travel expenses. A report from late last year by the Council on Foreign Relations was dug up and made a splash with this paragraph:

“During the past decade, U.S.-based activists concerned about the LRA have successfully, if quietly, pressured the George W. Bush and Obama administrations to take a side in the fight between the LRA and the Ugandan government. Among the most influential of advocacy groups focusing specifically on the LRA are the Enough project, the Resolve campaign, the Canadian-based group GuluWalk, and the media-oriented group Invisible Children. Older agencies, from Human Rights Watch to World Vision, have also been involved. In their campaigns, such organizations have manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil. They rarely refer to the Ugandan atrocities or those of Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army, such as attacks against civilians or looting of civilian homes and businesses, or the complicated regional politics fueling the conflict.”

The video was then labelled by many as a “scam.” This, of course, made millions of viewers feel betrayed, and the strong emotions had a polarity shift that vehemently backlashed against the video that now felt like a misleading trick. In both cases, with the initial reaction to the film and the counter-attack to undermine it, much of the commentary to gain traction has been black-and-white.

The challenges of working in Africa are immense, and in their efforts to stop the Lord’s Resistance Army, Invisible Children has had to work alongside forces in those regions that have far from perfect reputations. Their determination to stop Kony has lead them down some iffy roads. The slogan for the campaign, even, is “Stop At Nothing.” Which could have been worded better — that’s a pretty extreme policy in any situation.

Furthermore, Invisible Children focuses their time and budget just as much on awareness (marketing, if you’re cynical) as it does on intervention and direct action, which in itself brought along plenty of criticism. And the founders each make a salary of $85k, a not insubstantial chunk of the organization’s budget.

An official response to the critiques has been posted, in which they address each concern individually. Here’s one excerpt:

“Re: Ugandan government human rights record

We do not defend any of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Ugandan army (UPDF). None of the money donated through Invisible Children ever goes to the government of Uganda or any other government. Yet the only feasible and proper way to stop Kony and protect the civilians he targets is to coordinate efforts with regional governments.”

In response to the photo of them holding guns, Jason Russell, one of the founders in that photo, states that it was a joke photo for their friends and family, and that it was “a bad idea.” Yep. Big oops.

I don’t fall strongly on either side of the argument — as with anything, it’s a complex issue. The founders are neither evil nor saints, and their approach to the issue (viral marketing, rallying young adults, advocating bold action, political pressuring) is what’s enabled the campaign to have such wide-reaching impact. Because of their efforts, the child soldiers of Uganda neighboring regions have been made visible, and at least some good has come out of their campaign which they’ve tirelessly worked to promote.

The drama in the wake of the Kony video is still unfolding. But there’s already a lesson to be learned: Film is an immensely powerful medium. It can be used for good or for evil. It can express ideas and viewpoints and passions in a way that other mediums simply can’t match. And our visceral reaction can surprise even ourselves.

There’s a limited amount of professionally filmed footage — about half of the video is voice over and still images. It was done cleanly, but the production value was still relatively low given the fact that it has had more views than a Spider Man sequel on opening weekend. But that’s the thing — it was well done in the sense that they told a story and tapped into our desire to feel that we can do something in this chaotic world of ours where we so often feel so unheard. They knew how to tap into that through the way they presented their cause.

I’ll probably go through my life without making a film that gets 72 million views. But this whole debacle has served as a reminder to me of the power of film. It is a tool, mightier than the sword, that can have wide-reaching implications and make people feel passionate emotion and take bold action. Human lives will be saved, changed, and even ended because this video was produced. As filmmakers, we have a responsibility entrusted upon us to be mindful and prudent of the implications of what we produce. It is a craft that can be learned and with that must come an awareness of the fact that we often must tread lightly.

And as viewers, we have a responsibility to be aware that we are seeing only what the filmmaker wants us to see. In film, as in text and all media, the limitations of the medium ensures that we only get a sliver of the whole picture. Both the Kony video and the response articles are oversimplified, and gloss over the complexities of the situation in Central Africa, the past actions and involvement of Invisible Children, and the underlying reasons for the way these ideas were expressed.

Kony 2012 is an extreme case that serves as an example of the impact a small team of passionate individuals can have when they utilize this medium to their advantage. It’s my hope that as other filmmakers and I strive to have an impact through the films we produce, we are able to look back on this as an example of the care we must pour into our work, not just creatively, but also in a way that is as true to facts as possible and adheres to our morals, knowing that if we attempt to engross a wide audience, the effects of our message, mistakes, and ideas will grow exponentially, and can literally change the world.

.

Tony and Jordan were married last June at the parents of the bride’s gorgeous home outside Sacramento. I loved being a part of the fun, and I have to say that the bridal party were some of the most energetic I’ve seen! Also see some photos of the wedding on the website of the very talented photographer, Kim J. Martin. She worked so well with the bride and groom to get those wonderful shots in the golden fields!

Thank you Tony and Jordan for letting me capture your special day at this beautiful location!

This is the view from my home desk. Every time I look up at this young oak, I can’t help but recite, in my head, a Jane Hirshfield poem I read in a class with Paul Willis. It’s one of many poems that have stuck with me. I just wish that I could share it in Paul’s calm, effortless voice.

–

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books —

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

–

Disclaimer: I took one year of college physics and have read a handful of books on astrophysics and quantum theory. So of course I consider myself on par with Einstein, Heisenberg, and Hawking, and will unabashedly go forth into an academic field in which I have only wet my toes. Now that you know how conceited, sophomoric, and stupid I am for thinking myself anything other than a complete amateur, let’s move on to my hamfisted and flawed pseudo-scientific rant.

The physical world in which we live is far stranger than we’re normally aware of with our naked senses. Quantum theory, along with other advancements in physics of the last century, require some mental yoga to even get the gist.

Only a few days after writing down some of the initial ideas for this blog post, I heard a broadcast of To the Best of Our Knowledge on NPR, which interviewed Leonard Mlodinow, co-author of the recent Stephen Hawking book, The Grand Design. The interviewer introduces their subject matter of quantum physics by referring to it as “that famously weird, mind-bending science full of uncertainty and entanglement,” a good one-sentence summation of its bizarre implications. Near the start of the interview, Mlodinow makes the admission that “It’s basically incomprehensible. I mean, what does it mean that light is both a particle and a wave, or what does it mean that particles can influence each other from a distance. It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?”

It is indeed mind-boggling, but I want to challenge the claim of “incomprehensible.” At least, no more incomprehensible or difficult to grasp than any other major leap forward in the history of physics. Quantum physics posits that one thing can be in two places simultaneously through superpositioning, light is both a particle and a massless wave, and string theory postulates that single dimensional bands loops on themselves to manifest what we know to be matter. “Mind-boggling” is indeed a good way to refer to modern physics.

And how can this all be? Quantum theory, and other fields in physics, explain phenomena which are not only counter-intuitive, but contradict themselves and seem downright impossible. When we observe behavior at an atomic level, it’s a completely different world from the one we know. But it is impossible to argue with the universe. It’s just that we aren’t wired for this invisible plane of existence; we’re wired for the scale of objects that can be picked up, walked upon, constructed, summited. Our minds, it would seem, are incompatible with some physical laws; they are not built to come to terms with what seems like nonsense.

Because of this, quantum physics and its absurd predictions are notoriously difficult to wrap one’s mind around. Because it is so counter-intuitive, we consider it a realm of understanding only for great thinkers and tenured professors.

But are not other truths of the universe counter-intuitive as well? For centuries, even with all the brilliant men that lived throughout those centuries, it was assumed (without bothering to test) that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones. Until a quirky-minded individual named Galileo decided to perform the absurdly simple task of dropping two objects, and found that they hit the ground and precisely the same time, despite their weight difference. (Yes, the Pisa story is likely apocryphal, but it’s a good visual!)

And although we now know it to be incorrect, we can of course all sympathize with the Aristotelian belief that objects fall at a speed proportional to their mass. Drop a bowling ball and it slams onto the ground (or perhaps your toe) a moment later. Drop a paperback and it flutters to the ground where it lands with a plop. Drop a feather and, well, you get the idea. It’s what our brains naturally assume, based both on innate common sense, and experiential evidence.

This crude concept was, undoubtedly, very useful to the early human. Knowing that the boulder would not hesitate to crush you into a pancake was useful knowledge. Even observation confirmed our ancient ancestors’ assumptions: Snow elegantly floats to the ground, while heavy rain pelts into the mud.

So imagine the shift in thinking of the people of Galileo’s time. (Ignoring the fact that he was dismissed as a heathen by the faithful of his day. That is beyond the scope of this post.) Put yourself in that era, where you assumed your whole life that a shotput falls faster than a marble, and now some quack in Italy says they’ll hit the ground at the same time. And then, upon observing the phenomena, imagine having to wrap your head around the concept. It’s so contrary to how our brains are hard-wired. It’s software written in unfamiliar code. And there’s no immediately apparent reason for why these things behave the way they do.

And the list goes on. Ancient civilizations assumed the Earth to be flat (Who wouldn’t?), until it was noted, among other indicators, that the North star appears lower in the sky when traveling longitudinally. Aristotle said that the natural state of objects was to remain at rest, while Newton found that objects in motion stay in motion, unless acted upon by another force. Diseases were often attributed to evil spirits until the invisible world of microbiology was discovered, and simple hygiene measures saved countless lives. It didn’t seem possible that light could travel without some medium to allow its transit, and physicists once searched for an omnipresent “ether” in vain. And before our recent understanding of the mass energy equivalent, it was impossible to understand how the Sun could burn for so long without going dim (No such generous fuel was known to exist on Earth).

Another well-known misconception is the assumption of geocentrism (Once again we can thank our buddy Galileo, and his brotha from another motha, Copernicus). How could it be possible that the Earth spins, rather than the heavens revolving around us? After all, at high speeds, things go woooooosh! It’s completely foreign to our daily experience … the fact that things on this scale might behave differently is, again, a hard concept to understand. Today, every educated child knows, against intuition and immediate observation, that the Earth is racing through the vacuum of space. We’re cozily along for the ride, all up to speed with the planet’s enormously fast but elegantly regular rotation and direction. Of course, we don’t think about this fact through most of our daily lives, since it is not useful information to know that you’re barreling through orbit at 65,000 miles per hour while stuck in rush hour traffic.

Aristotle’s model of the universe

And speaking of the vacuum of space: the reptilian part of our minds understands space and air to be one in the same. How can there be “empty space?” If there were such a preposterous thing, what would it be? Could we even consider such a concept to even exist? But using relatively simple tools such as air pumps, men of Joseph Priestley’s time (who first isolated oxygen) laid the groundwork for our understanding of the atmosphere we inhabit, packed with gaseous matter, unlike the vast majority of the empty universe.

Similarly, the quantum concept of superpositioning is a seeming contradiction, just as empty space exists while nothing exists within it. This massless non-thing called space can be bent and contorted despite containing nothingness.

I’ve given several examples of concepts in physics which seem to not sit well with human understanding. And yet, these counter-intuitive concepts are taught every day in high school physics and third grade astronomy.

So why should the more recent theories of quantum theory and relativity, which have been considered notoriously mysterious to laymen, be reserved only for the imaginations and conversations of scientists? I very confidently believe that these more recent concepts are no more strange or difficult to understand than past advancements were when first introduced. It’s a problem of lacking context; one of the beauties of the universe is the depth of its complexity. The operation of its laws and the manifestation of its forces seem to keep getting stranger the more we understand, as every generation continues to tread into unmapped territory. Just like microbiology, a whole world of previously undetectable phenomena occurs on an atomic and subatomic level, rather than the much larger scale that our minds are accustomed to dealing with.

Because advances in technology that have recently allowed the precise measurement of this tiny world, we know these things to be the stubbornly consistent nature of the universe. The physical laws of this universe are what they are. The only reason we consider some of these laws to be “normal” is because they can be easily observed. Counter-intuitive though many of them may be, they can still be grasped just as we have come to terms with gravity and chemistry and washing our hands on our way out of the bathroom even though they don’t look dirty.

Without regard for the cause and focusing more on the state of things as they currently exist, we can say that the Earth is a sphere because it is a sphere. We can say that objects of different weight fall at the same speed because objects of different weight fall with an identical acceleration. Just as we can say that light is simultaneously a particle and a wave because it is simultaneously a particle and a wave. Even though we understand “things” as we know them to be one thing and one thing only, we must accept the reality of the way this thing occurs, against intuition, just as we accept that the world is not flat, against immediate intuition.

The nature of the universe is a uniquely intriguing delicacy, and there is no reason for us non-collegiate bigwigs to shy away from its fascinating implications. In Stephen Hawking’s eloquent words from A Brief History of Time, which I ripped off to a great extent in the paragraphs above, the nature of the universe “should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the questions of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”

As proud as I am about this, the recognition is unevenly distributed. The fear I have in writing this post is that some might think I’m unappreciative or trivializing the honor of receiving the award. I really hope it’s not taken that way, I don’t want to exude false humility under the pretense of saying it was undeserved. But I hope people realize that my short trip is a tiny gesture compared to the incredible work of so many others who have sacrificed far more than myself to further SOLD’s cause of ending child prostitution and human trafficking in Thailand.

I took 2 months last year to volunteer for SOLD, came back home, put a little promo video together, and got back to “normal life.” Meanwhile, the staff at the organization have spent years of their life working tirelessly toward the cause, and volunteers have spent up to almost a year pouring themselves into the project and their sponsored kids.

I am inspired by and in awe of my lovely sister Rachel, her husband Kevin, Nate and Rachel Sparks-Graeser, Tawee Donchai, Plah Chermui, Michael Manes, Michael and Heather Colletto, Deirdre Flynn (aka P’Dara), Shannon O’Malley, and so many others who have been involved with SOLD. And there are still other remarkable souls in Chiang Rai who are living out their passion for social justice by getting up every morning and selflessly choosing to make a difference.

Every single person listed above deserves a trophy room of awards for the real difference they’re making through their remarkable perseverance. These people truly inspire me in a way I can’t explain short of introducing them, and I hope that others are aware of just how much recognition they deserve. I’m honored by the award I’ve received, but my work is a small piece of the puzzle in a much larger cause. If you know any of these amazing individuals, please let them know how awesome they are. :)

Thank you again to BAPVA for the incredible honor, and thank you to those who are making a difference in Northern Thailand.