Tomorrow, I'll be on a local radio show talking about UWOL.

A woman I know runs a film festival (www.chaosfilmfest.org) in a mountain town near me, and she called me up several weeks ago to ask if I could send her some links to UWOL films. She elected to screen Geir Inge's "Born by the Sea" and Jeff Hendricks "Touching Generations" at the Chaos Film Festival this weekend. So congrats to Jeff and Geir for getting their films screened in a juried festival.

Meanwhile, she has arranged a radio interview to discuss the festival and invited me to come along and talk about UWOL and the fimmakers' films. The radio channel also airs its broadcasts on the web, so if you want to tune in, anywhere in the world, you can. At www.kgnu.org...12:30 pm Mountain Standard Time.

The best part? They asked me to bring along an audio clip for the show, so you can tune in, all around the world, and hear Geir singing Norwegian folk tunes while he paddles his red canoe.

We're gonna make him famous!

Congratulation Meryem, & all others involved in UWOL.
To see your hard work on UWOL starting to get more & more attention must be a great feeling. Congrats also, to Geir & Jeff I think it's great that your stuff is being shown at the film festival.

Bryce

Just want to wish you good luck today and your radio perfermance, Meryem.
At an age of 80 years my father did get his first PC today and I'm back home helping him sort it out.
We have a little storm going on, always bad weather when uwol is on the run :) We're going to tune in on the radio and listen to you :)

Regards
Geir Inge

Congratulation Geir and Jeff! How exciting to be recognized in broader circles. Thank you Meryem, for providing a platform to lift us all up and give us opportunities to hone skills and gain experience.

UWOL 2008 begins!

Cat

Hey Meryem,

Break a leg/vocal chord today, eh?

Looking forward to listening in...

Jeff

Hey Meryem,

I just got through listening to the radio program that you were featured on...awesome job, you sounded like a pro. I like how you named every country and region represented in the contest…that was pretty cool. You should get into radio broadcasting because you have a terrific speaking voice.

…also…

Thank you very much for the kind words about my film.

Geir…it was nice to hear you sing again, a singular and pure voice!

if anyone wants to hear the broadcast, here is the link

http://www.kgnu.org/ht/listings.html

click on the noon show for Feb 1 and go about 50 minutes into the program to listen to our esteemed colleague Meryem Ersoz say great things about the worldwide UWOL and DVinfo community.

Again, great job Meryem and thank you...

Meryem:

Very nice job, Meryem !!!!

i just listened to a couple seconds of this from the KGNU website. thanks for the link, jeff.

man, i talk so fast...hard to say all that i want to say about UWOL in just a few minutes...

it's just great that our filmmakers' films are getting seen in these platforms, in front of live audiences. i only wish jeff and geir could be there tomorrow when i introduce their films to the actual film audience, so that they could see people enjoying their work.

i am always bragging on how talented and wonderful you people are...

I just listened to that segment from Jeff's link and you did a very good job, Meryem. I enjoyed your description of how all this UWOL thing got started.

That film festival sounds like fun.

Hey Meryem,

Just listed to your interview in full and it sounded great.

It is absolutely amazing what you have created, and it seems to me that UWOL is something that is so much a part of many people's lives every other month. I think you and the team should be so proud of yourselves.

Thanks for the link to the interview Jeff - I know the viewers of your entry are going to be very impressed, as it truly was an amazing piece of work - as was Geir's wonderful entry.

Meryem, I think that chorus of voices I mentioned some time ago appears to be getting louder as you stamp your mark on UWOL. Well done - you deserve all the wonderful things that appear to be heading in your direction!

Had a fairly quiet month planned for Feb however, looks like our family is now planning a bit of an adventure...amazing how a little thing on the other side of the world can influence our lives so much.

Hope all UWOLers are enjoying the adventure too.

Thanks for the link Jeff to KGNU radio website
loaded in to itunes
Just listened too Meryem on the show, here in little old England
Well done and best of luck in the film fest Jeff and Geir.

hey y'all, just reporting back from the Chaos film festival...great films, you two, they both held up well under projection. projection can expose all of your mistakes (as i know a little too well from personal experience...)

jeff, i have to say, WOW...a very nice web film looked great projected.

it's always interesting to see stuff projected, it can substantially change the meaning when you shift the context--i'd say, jeff, that i very much liked the original web video, but i loved it on the big screen. the great job you did editing it and piecing it together as a story really translated to a bigger screen. you packed a ton into three minutes...

and geir, totally unique to be seeing beautiful land- and sea-scapes from norway transported to the tiny mountain town of nederland, colorado.

nice work, you two. i wish the whole UWOL gang coulda been there to watch with me...

Meryem,

Give us a report on the rest of the fest when you get a chance...other films, atmosphere, etc. I want to live vicariously...

I don't think I could have sat through my film on the big screen...I would have been a nervous wreck.

Jeff

Thank you for reporting back to us Meryem.
I must agree with Jeff, me too would have been a nervous wreck watching my own video screened together with audience :)
But as I told you in my mail, we had a little sitting back home with my "old folks" (parents) and it was extraneous/odd to listen to you (and me singing) on the local radio from Boulder/Nederland in Colorado - USA.
My father went walking round the kitchen flour and my mother cried a little bit. In fact I'm 48 years old and consider myself as a grown up. Married and got two daughters (13 and 17 at age), still they (my parents) went on like this:
My father: Oh, our little boy singing on the radio in America, it's crazy - it's wonderfull, it's crazy....
My mother: well, in fact she didn't say nothing at all, just listen and cried a bit. She don't speak or understand english language, hehe, but together with American language and my Norwegian song she let her emotions run free. I just love her (and my dad).
We had a little familier union on our own. I hope I don't seem too selfish speaking this way, but what I try to say is....:
UWOL is unique and without boundaries, gathering people together from all over the world. Isn't great? Thank you Meryem and "your" two boys hanging on, keeping us together for a challenge - making wildlife videos - "for fun" ( rule nr 11).

OK, today I had focus on up coming theme - "adventure".
Went out trying to catch some awsome footage and a blizzard.
Can you imagine?
Video camera's don't like blizzards very much?
The snow do have a way of getting where it shouldn't be... sigh...
I will post a picture from my tour in the tread "Tales of wonder and woe".
When I left my car on the parking lot, there was no snow. When I return from my tour,,, I had to sweep about 30 cm snow from my car.
I love uwol :)

Wish every uwoler good luck and all the best in their challenge for THE exceptional "adventure".

Geir Inge

Hi Meryem,
don't know how these two films was projected?

I'm touring Norway with a big screen show - Real Wild Wildlife for the Masses!
To get the best quality, I record my finished edited show from my NLE and back to tape. Then I use a small Canon HV10 camcorder as a player, using component out, red, blue and green wires. (the HV10 lack HDMI output!).
The projector is a Epson EMP-TW 1000, full HD (1920x1080) projector.

You will not believe how stunning this footage looks in a big cinema! And of course a decent cinema sound system, enhange the action a lot!

Feedback from the audience is unambiguous cheering.

So for future screenings, I will highly recommend you to get as good quality of the film as you can, and in lack of BlueRay and HD/DVD discs, this can be a good solution!

we played Jeff's and Geir's entries from a single DVD--we had to convert Geir's from PAL to NTSC, so that they could be played continuously from a single source, so we had them FTP us their files, so that they could be re-compressed together to a single DVD. playback from a deck or camera would be a very good option, in terms of quality, but since we had to deal with re-formatting anyway, DVD seemed most efficient. thanks to DJ for doing the re-format and compression for me and the players...my business partner does a lot of small, invisible things behind the scenes to support my UWOL habit...

Jeff, the other films i saw were pretty cool--i couldn't stay for all of it, because of child care issues (my daughter was sick most of last week, and definitely would not have held up....), but i just love enviro films.

they had great films...one about the controversy surrounding the environmental impact of the offshore installation of windmills--the footage of large offshore wind farms off the shore of denmark was pretty striking...it focused on questions about the trade-off between impacting the offshore environment to save energy.

another really interesting one about some fellas who dynamited a rock shelf in a set of very dangerous whitewater rapids, in order to make the rapids safer for river runners. also raised some interesting ethical questions...if you had asked me my opinion before watching the film, i would have said doing that was idiotic and an environmental travesty, but as i watched it, i wondered about how different it was from climbers who drill and bolt rocks, which is now a commonly accepted practice...not to open that can o worms, but....

very cute film about hooded mergansers--the filmmakers installed cameras into a nesting spot, so they could study the hatching and fledging of the chicks...

and also an interesting film about a bird restoration project--a large oil spill had destroyed the birds offshore habitat at devil's rock and scientists installed a fake colony, using decoys and recorded audio of the flock and mirrors, to draw the birds back to their nesting site. so more ethical questions about whether humans should intervene in the course of nature.

i very much enjoy watching wilderness ethics films, and these posed some challenging problems and issues.

kevin, mat, and i have kicked around the idea of having a UWOL meet-up at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (the biggie in the States) in 2009, where it would be awesome to be able to watch these sorts of films with our group and chat about them afterwards with our gang...lots of provocative content.

although i almost think that these smaller festivals, where you see the lesser-known films are almost better, because these are truly high-quality, indie productions....and pretty inspiring.

Meryem,

I went to the radio site and listened to the broadcast. I think you did a fine job portraying uwol!! you covered just about everything is such a short time!!

Keep up the great work.

kevin, mat, and i have kicked around the idea of having a UWOL meet-up at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (the biggie in the States) in 2009, where it would be awesome to be able to watch these sorts of films with our group and chat about them afterwards with our gang...lots of provocative content.
Great idea. Would have been a great opportunity to meet with other wildlife filmmakers as well. I'd say let's go for it!

I just listened to the interview. Very well done. I don't think you talked all that fast Meryem. You just had a lot to say.