I used my Canon 7D to film the launches at 60fps and then conformed it to 24fps to slow it down. You can do so in Cinema Tools and go to ‘Batch Conform’ and select the folder with all the video files, but make a backup first because it doesn’t keep the originals.

I also helped get Eric in the air when the sun was setting and picked up my newly delivered Glidetrack which is how I got a couple of those dolly shots at the end. I will post a video talking about my tripod and Glidetrack set up soon.

I stayed up late last night trying to comment on every new subscriber’s Youtube Channel thanking them for their subscription, and this morning put together just a few outtakes from filming this video. I hope you enjoy it!

It’s funny to see all the comments, almost 440 now, because the internet is such a funny place. Every other comment is either how funny the video is or how ‘gay’ it is, which doesn’t bother me, I actually think it’s funny! I included some of the funnier comments so far at the end of this video.

Blog Update | So yesterday was a fun day at Henson’s flying. There were about a dozen people set up and flew. Jim had a great flight and Lee soared as well, earlier on. The overcast stuff cleared off and there were a few thermals to be had out there.

I flew for about an hour and a half and got to about 5,000′. Eric W. came and sledded Henson’s for the first time so I knew he’d be willing to drive my car so I headed down the ridge in  a nice lifty line, but never hit much of anything again and landed at Dr. Dales field. By that time it was getting late in the day anyways. I had a great time and can’t wait to fly at Henson’s again soon!

What I mean is the fact I was on top of the hill and the road fell away from the image and gave me the ability to get the road and the sunset in the shot together, but also because it had been snowing, the road was wet which reflected the sunset. It goes back to the adage that the best camera is the one you have with you (I also didn’t go to this spot to take a photo, I just happened upon the situation). I didn’t have my Canon 7D so I used my iPhone and tweaked the photo in some Apps: TrueHDR, Cropulator, TiltShift Generator.

This is the image I talk about:

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Inspirational

1. Great short film on a guy who does what he loves

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Funny

1. Irreverent humor from SNL that parodies horrible local commercials with the random business of flags.

2. Like two scoops of raisins in your cereal, not after this:

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Film/Animation

1. Cute little music video:

2. Ok Go did it again with this viral music video:

Last year when I was sitting in my graduate-level Environmental Chemistry class my mind got blown away by a realization. I’ve always heard about ’stardust’ and other things of that nature and I didn’t pay much thought to it, but put it in the realm of unicorns and lyrics from70’s or 80’s music. But that class brought a whole new meaning to it and this video touches on that realization I had that day. I say I had a realization in the sense that I learned something new.

We are composed of atoms from dead stars that exploded a long time ago. We could not exist if these stars did not shrink, burn up, and die! Think about it for a second. We are made of stars that died and exploded, and are only in existence because of those events. It’s hard not to share something like this. I know when I found out about it I immediately told several people, and thought ‘how did I not know this already?’

I couldn’t find my notes from this class (so feel free to correct me in the comment section below, even if you think the Earth is only 4,000 years old), but essentially this is what happened:

After the big bang there was only Hydrogen in the universe and all other elements, like what we’re made of, were created from Hydrogen. That happened from a star burning Hydrogen for a long time (understatement), and as it ran out of Hydrogen the star began to shrink, it also became hotter with it’s smaller mass. As it became hotter it excited elements to the point where it formed Helium which would only be able to be formed at this high heat and pressure (nuclear fusion), and the star would burn Helium, until it ran out again and the process would continue burning up an element, the star shrinking, thus increasing the heat and pressure to create new elements, until it would turn into a supernova and die, exploding these new elements all over the universe, to eventually form us, and everything we know. It’s called stellar nucleosynthesis.

That is at least a super simple version that I can remember without my class notes from 2 years ago. Here is a link to NASA explaining it a bit:

http://nasascience.nasa.gov/big-questions/when-and-how-did-the-elements-of-life-in-the-universe-arise

and other smart people:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=37551

http://www.bautforum.com/archive/index.php/t-34911.html

I used old footage from when I was making my Nikon Festival Contest video and color corrected in an interesting way to me using Magic Bullet Looks. All the footage used came out of my Canon HF100 too.

I also posted this to my new Youtube account LucasRidley. I thought it would be easier for people to remember than my other account, alta8bird. So I thought I better make the switch before I get any more subscribers. It’s really something I’ve been putting off because I’m afraid none of my current subscribers will make the switch.

The name alta8bird came from my first AOL account a long, long time ago and when I signed up for Youtube in 2007, I thought, eh, what’s this thing, Youtube? I’ll just use that random name I had back in the day . . . even though I really didn’t like it, it’s not memorable, and I don’t think I’m doing myself any favors by keeping it if I’m planning on posting more videos to youtube, plus everything else I have, like this website, vimeo, twitter, etc. is in my own name too.

So you can click HERE to subscribe to my new Youtube account, I hope to post a video weekly, but we’ll see . . .

Thanks for watching!

We watched the races with mild enthusiasm as it’s hard to keep track of who is in what place on a video like that, all we were looking for was our alumnus, Jed, who was in the race. Then towards the end this incredible moment happened. Watching the finish line these guys are tearing through trying to make All-American, which is top 25, and we see this guy fall down over and over again, then a guy with huge chops can’t even run in a straight line. We must have rewound that clip a million times with our team peeing in their pants they thought it was so funny! Sad part is if that first guy could have kept it together till the finish line he would have been an All-American.

Ever since then I thought, someone must do the world a favor and get this on the internet. Well, 8 years later, today is that day. I would like to thank Media Enterprises who is responsible for taping the race and Coach Heitzenrater for preserving the VHS to DVD.

Like I mention in the video, I have a lot of respect for what those guys were doing. On one hand it is absolutely amazing that they push themselves to those limits, then on the other hand it is absolutely hilarious to watch. I don’t know if it’s just a runner thing, if maybe no one else will think this is funny. Maybe it’s because I have an idea of what they’re going through that I can laugh at it. Either way it’s hilarious to me.

Hope you all enjoy and stay tuned for more coming very soon.

Below is just another funny running-related image. This one is from our conference meet a few years back when we almost ran over a photographer and you can see a couple of guys flipping out on her. I’m to the right in the image looking bewildered over at those guys.

Depauw guys flipping out on the photographer for being on the course.

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Inspirational

1. Learn to be Lucky:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-its-an-easy-skill-to-learn.html

2. This is a great video that is inspirational to anyone running their own business or thinking about starting one:

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Funny

1. Nice homage to the Monty Python’s Holy Grail troll. I can relate from getting random haters on my youtube videos every once in a while:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEe7JqBgvg

2. One of my more favorite spoof inspirational posters:

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Film/Animation

1. Very well done stop motion t-shirt animation:

So I used a couple new clips that weren’t in the original and recut a shorter version that might be more conducive to people sharing the video around to their friends. Also, most videos that go viral aren’t almost 6 minutes long like the original version of this.

So maybe this will be easier for people to get through, hope you enjoy!

Also, I noticed after last night that the view counter on the original version was stuck at 304 views as it was the night before. Apparently they’ll freeze your view counter if you get too many views right after uploading to make sure you aren’t cheating somehow and clicking over and over on your own video just to make it look popular.

This afternoon the counter would jump by like a 100 views at a time, but now it seems to be stuck again at 925 views, I think that’s a good sign that it’s stuck, which means it’s getting a bunch of views. Thanks for watching!

My wife and I were the first in line of our family to buy tickets. I had the tickets in my hand! That was a done deal! I was going to see Avatar finally! BUT, I had purchased the last tickets so the rest of her family wouldn’t be able to go. So I held back the tears as I got a refund and thought, I’m never going to see this movie. My commitment to family was really tested that night.

Well, the time came and we eventually saw it. My palms were so sweaty during the flying scenes I got dehydrated! Or it could have been the fact I refused to drink water until the family agreed to go back and try and see it again? Anyway, I knew that I had to do a spoof video related to hang gliding. It was just too perfect.
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You're going down Scott - I pretended he had to land because I shot his glider, but really he had to land because . . . it's a glider. I think I started to like the costume too much at this point.

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But it was one of those thoughts you have and think I ’should’ do that. Like checking your oil when filling up at the gas station but you’ve just bought two delicious ice cream snickers bars while your car was filling up and your brain can’t fathom putting them down for something that you ’should’ be doing. Well, my ice cream snickers bars this time was my apathy towards the effort it would take to create such a video, but I sat it aside like two melting ice cream snickers bars on a hot summer day and I went for it and I did what I thought I ’should’ do, and I made an avatar spoof (confused yet by the metaphor? me too, I just like ice cream snickers bars).

If I could just wrastle some more help from my friends Scott and Eric for another video endeavor I thought “I could do this.” With Eric’s horrible acting skills, Scott’s ability to paint my face, and their combined experience and expertise in making fun of me, they were perfect for the job. And lucky for me, agreed to do it.

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Eric (left) and Scott (right) were really commited to this job. They even put in overtime and kept making fun of me after the shooting for the video was done. Now that's commitment! But what are friends for? No, seriously, what are friends for? I'm beginning to think I have a distorted definition of friend.

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Normally, I will storyboard something out and get everything just right, but in that area I picked up those ice cream snickers, devoured them, and threw the wrappers on the floor. I took a different approach so the footage might seem more natural. I had a general idea of what I wanted the outcome to be and a couple specific references to the movie, but other than that nothing was written out so everything would seem more natural. Scott and Eric did a good job playing along considering I didn’t really fill them in a lot on all my ideas.

One challenge was giving it that documentary and ‘The Office’ -look with only three people because the camera would be stationary on the tripod any time we’re all three in the shot. But it seemed to work out and get that natural feel as we traded off each being cameramen so we’d get that little camera shake.
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Me jumping on Eric's glider. This was one of those shots where you only have one chance to get it right and we were lucky enough to do just that.

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Getting the costume together was half the battle. I had to go buy the longest wig I could and braid it myself. My wife called while I was doing it and I couldn’t pick up the phone. That was one of the weirdest excuses I’ve ever had to miss a call. Oh, and don’t ever expect to find blue lipstick anywhere if it’s not halloween, I probably visited like 5 different stores and couldn’t find it. I actually made an iron-on tshirt that says “Let’s make Tsahaylu under the Tree of Voices,” with the image of the movie poster below that. My character was going to wear that, but I scrapped it at the last minute because I thought it would clash with trying to look nerdily identical to the real movie characters.
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We shot this in my front yard (thanks for Kurt's help too). My Vietnam vet neighbor thinks I'm crazy now though.

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All in all it took about 4 or 5 hours to film and a little over a full day of editing to put together. I’m going to make another short little video of outtakes and other funny stuff I didn’t use too. I’m hoping this video will garner a lot of views, a similar Avatar spoof video got 800,000 views in it’s first week. I couldn’t imagine getting that many views, but you never know. Pass it around to friends and family and it might get there, you never know until you try.

So put down whatever your excuse is for that project you’ve always thought you should do, and go after it! You just might want to avoid that project involving having your friends make fun of you or you might end up in tears that are soaked in blue body paint running down your face. I mean, I’m just saying, not from experience or anything, just a word of caution.

But seriously I think it went great and appreciate everyone’s help from Eric and Scott, to Kurt, Rex, James, Mike B, Jen, and George for showing their support (James had that cameo at the end, hope your eye is better . . .) to the guy who took a picture of me on his cell phone as he drove by to let me know I was doing something special. And thanks to my wife who not only puts up with these random ideas but supports me. So share this video around to everyone you know, I’d really like to see how many views I can get out of this thing, and I think it is an interesting way to expose people to the sport of hang gliding who might not every look for it.

(Everything was shot on my trusty Canon 7D)
Don’t forget to check out my photoblog: http://lucasridley.tumblr.com
And the new clothing I started making: http://borntofly.spreadshirt.com

Oh and if you do the Digg thing too, then Digg this video: http://digg.com/movies/Avatar_Goes_Hang_Gliding

And most definitely subscribe to my Youtube videos!

If that’s not enough . . . don’t forget to brush your teeth either!