838 Central Ave, Highland Park, IL 60035 847.433.8660
At long last, a few clips from our documentary about The Space Elevator are now up on the Bitter Jester site! Click here to watch two scenes from our space elevator doc as well as snippets of several other Bitter Jester projects!
Special thanks to Ben Shelef of The Spaceward Foundation, Brian Turner from The Kansas City Space Pirates (as seen on Conan O'Brien!) & everyone involved in this project for their time, effort, and help!! We are currently seeking completion funds for this project!
Whether you're here as a new nominee interested in getting an idea of what we're going to produce this year ... or if you simply want to take a look at one of our short documentaries, just click right here and enjoy!
In other, unrelated news ... BJC is proud to announce that we are very strongly considering mounting an all-new Comic Thread sketch comedy show this summer! Check back for more details or click here to read about our proposed production!
In a recent short article entitled Jesters Ain't Jokin' by the Pioneer Press (you will need to scroll down a touch), Daniel Kullman and Nicolas DeGrazia were named as "People to Watch" with regard to their co-creation of the First Annual Port Clinton Film Festival.
It's a short blurb, but a fun read. Enjoy!
Bitter Jester Creative is very proud to announce our partnership with Amdur Productions to create the 1st Annual Port Clinton Film Festival in downtown Highland Park, IL! The film fest, scheduled to take place in conjunction with the 25th Annual Port Clinton Art Festival, will be comprised of nationally-submitted short films, live filmmaker seminars and talks by industry professionals, plus screenings of well-known feature films that have been shot in the City of Highland Park.
The festival will run from Thursday, August 21st thru Sunday, August 24th beginning at 6:00 pm each night. The film screenings and seminars will all take place at the Landmark Renaissance Place Movie Theatre on Second Street.
More information is coming soon! In the meantime, visit www.PortClintonFilmFest.com, call the festival hotline at 847.433.8662, or e-mail filmfest@bitterjester.com with inquiries. We look forward to seeing you at the movies!
Congratulations go out to Daniel and Nicolas for each being recognized for their achievements on one of their short-form documentaries created for the Highland Park Student Honors Dinner this year.
Both Nic and Dan were honored by the Highland Park Chamber of Commerce with awards in appreciation of the high quality of their short film and the work they have put into helping make the Honors Dinner in 2007 such a success. The film will be available to watch online soon!
Well, we are back from Utah with almost 66 hours of footage from the Space Elevator Games. We will have some clips up on our website very soon!
In the meantime, please watch another documentary we made that recently won the coveted " Editor’s Choice Award” on the industry website crackle.com. This project, called “Tim O” is about Tim O'Malley, an actor and teacher from The Second City here in Chicago.
If you like it, please take a moment to click on the little thumbs up logo. The winning short film will have a chance for a cash prize and a pitch deal with Columbia Pictures. You will have to sign up on the crackle site in order to vote, but it literally only asks for your name & e-mail address and you get zero spam, from our experience.
Thanks, all! We will let you know when we have space elevator footage to show!! Stay tuned ...
The tether repair was completed and the Kansas City Space Pirates left defeated. The high school team, Technology Tycoons, ran once more but were bested by the wind. The USST team had just mounted their climber and we were told to clear the area when the tether broke again. Only this time it was at the top of the 400-foot crane.
The heavy blue tether (an industrial strength machine belt) came cascading down to the left of the USST team's massive cargo container that holds their 10 kilowatt laser. The noise it made as it hit the ground was a heavy flapping sound and it piled up in one giant heap. The safety line attached to the USST climber did its job, but the games are now over with no winner of the half-million dollar purse declared. The prize next year will be $900,000.00 ... unless something changes in the meeting that's about to take place.
Entry 13 - Space Games Headquarters, Farmington, UT
Well, not fifteen minutes after we went back out on the field after deciding to stay (see our previous entry for more wonderful details!) ... the Kansas City Space Pirates went out on the field and were just about to clamp their climber on the tether when the tether itself snapped at the bottom. This has never happened before at the games.
Dan considred running again, but decided against it (most likely because he didn't want to be written about a second time in our entries). The end of the 400-foot long tether was whipping around in the wind some 200 feet away from the crane and 75 or 100 feet above the ground. Attached to the end of the tether was a large metal rectangular clamp that soon began to unfurl. After just a few seconds it flew off the end, tumbled through the air, hit the top of a lamp post (a one in a hundred shot, if you saw it), and flew down into the ground about four feet away from Travis, who was operating our boom mic.
You know, there's a funny thing about wearing hard hats while large metal objects are falling from the sky. When people shout "heads up!" ... you effectively remove your head protection by tilting your head back. Yesterday one of the MIT Tether Pull comeptition team members was hit in the shoulder by 3/4 inch nut that fell from 400 feet. not a pretty sight.
OK ... HAVE TO RUN!