Mountain Dew Commercial

Check out my latest Hang Gliding commercial on my new website. It's for Mountain Dew.

Nov 19th flight | Video

Check out the new website for more details:
http://lucasridley.com

Speed Run and the 7D at night

Check out the new blog HERE to see more pictures.

Did a speed run yesterday to get some footage for a project I'm working on and used the Canon 7D last night around a fire to see what it could do in low light. I was pretty impressed and am excited to keep using it!
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http://lucasridley.com

New Blog! lucasridley.com

www.LucasRidley.com is my new website and blog. I still have a lot of work to do on it, but thought I'd go ahead and announce it.

I will still be keeping this blog and will probably double post for a little while here and over there. Once I make the move over there, this blog will still be up so you can see all the past entries.

I have posted a poll to the right there for you to vote which one you like better.

See my twitter feed to the right as well for updates - back to working on the new blog, and a couple other project! (I was out yesterday capturing some time-lapse sequences in Chattanoooga to put into a time lapse video - stay tuned!)

one scene that was timelapsed yesterday

Upcoming New Site | HP Laptop Review

Very quickly: you may have noticed that you were redirected to www.lucasridley.com (edit: I changed it back for now). I am working on making the switch to Wordpress and that website address. It might be a little while before I do this, but wanted to give you a heads up.

I'm looking forward to having multiple pages, like 'Blog,' 'Photos,' 'Videos,' etc. so that it will be a little more organized and easy to see the content. Also, it will be a good showcase and contact point for my business, which I am tentatively calling Lucas Ridley Studios.

In addition, I'm going to be reposting all my videos to a new Vimeo account because of the functionality and quality that they provide.

My new laptop (read below for a quick review!)

Both photos are of one of my dogs, Dudley, both taken with the Canon 7D and 15mm-85mm lens

So part of my HP winnings was an Artist Edition laptop, a Pavilion dv6 to be specific. And here are my impressions of it.

I thought all laptops were created equal, but this thing has a lot of little surprises on it!

For example:

• HDMI output
• built-in webcam
• eSATA connection (for external hard drives)
• button to turn off the touch pad mouse
• altec lansing speakers
• desktop theme that matches exterior artwork on case
• wireless remote control that has a storage compartment on the side of the laptop
• a full keyboard, with numlock pad to the right
• very smooth material used on the mouse touch pad and keys
• glossy screen
• smart battery design - lifts the rear of the computer up to help keep it cool and provide air circulation for the fans

It has a Duo Core 2.3 GHz processor and 4GB of RAM. I'm really happy with it and was able to get the free upgrade to Windows 7 for it, that is in the mail and coming soon. Once I recieve that I will be uploading all my software to it and putting it to the test with the Adobe Creative Suite and Cinema 4D.

Right now my current projects include working on 3 new video contests, migrating to a new blogging software and personal domain name, time-lapse videos with the Canon 7D, still photography, and a ton of tutorials I have piled up in my bookmarks that I need to get through.

Tomorrow morning I hope to be flying! Follow me on twitter or see the widget for my tweets in the right side bar in this blog for little updates, like a picture of launch tomorrow before I go fly and stuff like that.

A Soaring Life on Youtube | Updates

I posted my submission into the Stella Artois Film contest to Youtube so it would provide for easier viewing now that the contest is over.

There are pictures on Life magazine's website of the announcement of the winner. I was so close to being that guy in the picture with Kevin Spacey holding a check for $50,000! But, I am very happy with my Top 10 finish in the contest and am looking forward to hearing about this next short film project that I did for the LG contest. (see that video HERE)

The Doritos contest submission period is over and it looks like there is about 4,000 entries. I've seen some that are really bad, and I've seen some that are really freaking well shot and probably had a budget of thousands of dollars just for props, costumes, etc. See mine HERE.

Although views and comments don't technically count for anything - I'm currently standing at number 204 of most viewed with 2,059 views. Pass this link around to get other's to watch: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/video/1445/

Both the LG and Dorito's contest will announce it's finalists in early January. Until then I have a couple of other smaller projects I'm working on.

Oh, and if you need a laugh, a friend sent this to me and I thought it was pretty funny - click HERE.

Recent Pictures and Higher Res Doritos Vid

Thanks to Eric for sending me this pic of him and me (I'm to his right). I look a lot further away than I was because of the fisheye lens.

Driving to launch with the sunsetting and the glider on top of the car.

Scott flying his bag

Scott again at sunset.

My dog drying off, after hiking at Cloudland Canyon.

Cloudland Canyon State Park waterfall.

Here's a higher resolution version of my Doritos entry. I would still encourage you to check it out on the contest page so it will up my views and make a comment if you feel like it on the contest video page here: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/video/1445/

Super Bowl Here I Come!

It's official - I'm in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest!

Fresh off a submission into the LG Film Fest (see yesterday's post) I knew I couldn't pass up this year's Doritos contest, especially after the Herbert Brothers won a million dollars last year.

So here's the setup - there is no public voting unless/until the judges pick me as one of the 6 finalists in January. If I make it to the top 6 I'm going to need all the votes I can get so stay tuned here (subscribe using the gadget in the sidebar to the right) to see if I'm a finalist. The voting then chooses the top 3 of those 6 to be played during the Super Bowl and the chance at some huge money if it's rated on USA Today's Ad Meter to be in the top 3 of all the Super Bowl Commercials.

I hope you enjoy it, leave comments here, or even better, over at the contest website at this address: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/video/1445/

Any views watching it through the player below won't register in their view counter on the contest website, so head over there to rack up my numbers, make comments, and make me look good to the judges!



Thanks to David, Scott, Eric, Kurt, Sarah, Pablo, Yuki, Diana, and Angela for helping me make this idea come to life.

A Leg To Fly On Short Film

(Watch the video at the bottom of this post or HERE)
So I emailed the contest people and asked if I could just upload this video to my personal youtube account so I didn't have to wait to show it to people - and they said that was fine. It was kind of surprising they allowed it because it is usually a no-no.

Here's some background/behind the scenes info on the film. It is for the LGfilmfest.com contest (their youtube page). There are four categories and this one is in the sports category. There is no public voting for this video so celebrity judges like Jamie Foxx are going to be picking the winners, only one from each of the four categories. 3 will receive $10,000 and one will receive $100,000 (Canadian dollars).

I got home on a Monday morning from the Santa Cruz Flats Race and found out about this contest that same night. Slept on the idea, which the theme for the contest is an inspiring human story and/or pertaining to LG's logo of 'Life is Good.' So I thought about Tip Rogers who is a really nice guy and since the Treetopper's Team Challenge was going on that week I thought he might be down this way flying with everyone so it would make it easier to film him. I contacted him and he agreed to let me film him for this so I went the very next day to film. He was only down for that Tuesday, Wed., and Thursday, so it was as quick of a turn around as it could be. One of my college buddies Matt Phelan created the music for it after just some quick messages to him about the kind of feel I was going for and I think he did a great job.

Please leave your comments here and especially on the youtube page for this video, please go there and rate it and make comments on it. While this doesn't have any public voting I think it couldn't hurt if I had a bunch of comments and good ratings on the youtube page of this video.

Feel free to pass it around, copy and paste this address and email it around:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cykHENutlkI

Also stay tuned in here, bookmark this blog or whatever, for updates on my upcoming projects. I should be posting my Doritos contest commercial within the next few days as well. In addition, I think I will be reposting my other short film "A Soaring Life" on youtube, now that the Stella Artois contest is over, for easier viewing.

Enjoy!

More, New photos | update

Below are some more photos I took the day before yesterday from the keel with the Canon 7d. I have more but I'm going to save them to see if I can get them in the National magazine.

Yesterday I tried using my spare downtube coming out of the nose for a camera mount, but with the 7D out there it just seemed so heavy. I had ankle weights on the back of the keel to counter balance. I took it all apart and I'm glad because by the time I launched there was a slight tail wind.

It would have been some great pics though because I just did a speed run right on the trees at sunset. Oh well, today I might try the same camera mount setup, but with my point and shoot, so it won't be as heavy.

The Doritos commercial is essentially done. I should be submitting it to the contest within the next day or two and then I'm thinking it will take at least 5 days or so for it to show up on the contest site. So stay tuned for that.

Oh, and Stella Artois finally announced who won their contest (not me) - HERE.

Getting ready to launch (see the newer pilot that had just launched to my right).

Getting in my harness after launching

Lookout Mountain Flight Park's ramp, looking towards the end of Lookout Mountain.

Moon in the background.

My favorite way to land - fast on final.

Photo-Extravaganza

The Doritos commercial is almost finished, but wanted to give a quick photographic overview of what I've done with the Canon 7D so far (besides shoot the Doritos commercial with it).

It's a great camera and really worked well for my purposes of filming the Doritos commercial. Stay tuned for that, I'm pretty happy with how it is turning out. And keep watching here to see when my short film 'A Leg to Fly On' is post on the LG contest - and you'll be able to watch that from here too.