Postcard From Earth at the Sphere Las Vegas

From searching out the world's oldest cinemas over the last several years to one of the newest entertainment venues and a screen 20x bigger than the largest IMAX. Here are a few highlights from a screening of Postcard From Earth at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Adventures Across the Western USA

And thus concludes another road trip. 

From snow-covered mountain top resort towns to a reunion in Vegas to winding remote passes and an alien Trump on the outskirts of Area 51 ... this latest round of travel shoots covered over 7000 km through Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington.

 

I was light on the sneak peeks this time largely due to a lack of downtime, but I can assure you there will be a lot of highlights ahead. As always, I appreciated the recommendations and concerns over the last few weeks. Everything was totally fine - albeit a lot quieter than usual. 

Stay tuned for new previews soon. 

It's good to be home.

Your Cinema Needs You at the Paramount Theatre

My thanks to the Kamloops Film Society for selecting my documentary, Your Cinema Needs You for a series of screenings to help celebrate the 70th birthday of the historic Paramount Theatre in downtown Kamloops, British Columbia last weekend. 

Seeing this project travel the world and play in so many unique and historic venues has been the cherry on top of what we saw happen back home with the Monarch Theatre. 

Thank you so much for the continued support!

Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada

A few visuals from the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Generative AI & the Movie Theatre Documentary

With generative AI trending heavily this week on the back of some new Chat GPT updates, I set out to do a few experiments to see if I could learn more about the process - and hopefully, produce some hybrid results from original images that were created and restored during production of Your Cinema Needs You. 

Instead of simply generating content, what I wanted to see is if I could use an archival image I restored, an illustrated image of the Monarch I commissioned, and an image I photoshopped myself into - and experiment with how those elements could be combined and fine tuned. 

While the image of me in theatre was a simple Chat GPT conversion of an existing image, the wide shot of the theatre is a hybrid combining generative AI, hand drawn elements by my friend Jess, and "tests" where I photoshopped specific details of the theatre to further stylize and manipulate the results. Everything is increasingly falling into a new gray area. 

I personally still want to work directly with artists, particularly because, even here in a simple test, collaborating with Jess is what made this fun and gave our approach a point of view. 

All that said, did I like the result? Yes. Do I still have concerns about what the future of AI means for original content? Every. Single. Day.

Seven Magic Mountains Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

A few visuals from Seven Magic Mountains outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.