WATCH>> Sundance Channel What’s The Big Idea? Contest: CFLs for Every School Kid in America IN HIGH DEFINITION VIDEO [we recommend it!]

When Sundance Channel asked TreeHugger to come up with a few example videos for their first annual “Big Ideas Contest,” TH Radio’s Jacob Gordon suggested that I cover our pal and fellow TreeHugger Kenny Luna, perhaps the originator, if not of the first big eco idea, at least the first bright eco idea. It really was a pleasure going out to North Babylon, Long Island with Cinematographer extraordinaire Marcus Burnett and getting to know Kenny and his students a bit better. Marcus and rolled in with a crazy Hi-Defination video camera with a 35mm lens adapter rig as well as twenty feet of dolly track. The kids were eager to help set everything up — thanks to all of you who lent a hand! We shot all the footage of the kids in class, much of which was overcranked for slo-motion at 48 frames-per-second. Then I interviewed Kenny and shot his b-roll, again much of which was slo-mo. We did the old trick of having him hold the CFL with the power chord running up his sleeve and just at the perfect moment, we plugged it in; let there be carbon-emission-reducing light! We shot the whole thing in about three hours. It was edited in about one-hour and twenty minutes — that is, after all the footage was ingested into the final cut pro system as well as after all the up-side-down footage was flipped and exported. What’s this you ask? Well with this particular 35mm lens adapter, the Red Rock, all the footage comes in up-side-down and then needs to be rotated in post-production. Given the beautiful images the rig generates, it’s well worth the extra effort.

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