WWW August 2004

Works

Athens Olympic Meteor Designed By Light Installation Artist
And Berklee Professor Mitch Benoff To Illuminate City’s Highest Peak For
2004 Summer Olympics In Athens, Greece

The Athens Olympic Meteor, a light installation created by Mitch Benoff, light sculptor and professor at Boston's Berklee College of Music, is a winner of the international competition for public art to accompany the 2004 Olympic Games. For his installation, Benoff created a series of brilliant streaks of light that rocket at 400 kph to the top of Mount Lycabettus, the highest point in Athens, creating visual meteors that will be visible from points citywide, including the Acropolis and the Old Olympic Stadium.

"It’s like the Olympic torch racing to the top of Athens tallest hill that you can see again and again," says creator Benoff. "These meteors of pure light reflect the beauty, boldness, and Olympian heights of excellence that the Games represent."

The Olympic Meteor's light show starts at one minute before midnight on August 12, sending 28 consecutive meteors flashing up the hillside for the 28th Olympiad, which begins August 13. The Meteor will continue its brilliant display nightly throughout the Olympics, every hour on the hour, between 9 pm and 2 am.

Benoff's installation is a winner of the international “Catch the Light” competition commissioned by the Athens Olympic Committee and the City of Athens. The Athens Olympic Meteor is the largest and most visible of the nine light and sound installations chosen for the city. The light sculpture itself is longer than a football field, comprised of 50 strobe lights that rise in a line up the side of Mount Lycabettus. Says Benoff, “The meteor doesn’t exist in the real world…it’s a mix of technology working with your eye to create the image in your brain.”

Trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, Mitch Benoff has been a light artist for over 30 years. The Athens Olympic Meteor will be the most sophisticated application of his groundbreaking sculpture "Speed of the Earth," which he developed in 1993 at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He has exhibited installations in the United States and Europe, including at two of Boston's First Night celebrations. A native of Los Angeles, Benoff is also a musician and record producer, and a professor of Music Production at Berklee College of Music. Mark West and Pat McDermott of Design Continuum in Newton, MA worked as design consultants on the Athens Olympic Meteor project.

EarthHart Productions Announces Fall 2004 Feature Film Screenwriting Course in Cambridge, MA with Nantucket Festival Winner Andrew Arthur

Through the educational division of EarthHart Productions, company President Andrew Arthur will be teaching Feature Film Screenwriting in the fall of 2004 on the Harvard University Campus.

Classes will be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Tuesdays in Cambridge, Massachusetts for ten weeks starting September 28th, 2004. The tuition is $575 for non-students, $150 for students, with several partial and full scholarships available for Harvard students.

Andrew Arthur is non-resident Film & Drama Tutor at Harvard University's Winthrop House and is the winner of both the Nantucket Film Festival Tony Cox Award for Excellence in Screenwriting and the Woods Hole Film Festival Screenwriting Prize for Best Screenplay. He previously taught a highly praised screenwriting course at The Boston Film and Video Foundation.

Mr. Arthur has this to say about the class:
"Dynamic, exciting, passionate, funny, dramatic experiences in a darkened theater begin with a great screenplay. In this course students will master strategies for building stories that work, read and critique each other's writing, polish an existing work or complete the first draft of a short film, a treatment or the first act of a feature and develop a list of exciting story ideas for future exploration. This course is for present and aspiring writers and screenwriters, directors, producers, cinematographers, and all those interested in film and the art of storytelling."

For more information or to register email art@earthhart.com or register online at www.earthhart.com.

Wrinkles

SWING INTO FALL WITH NHFX: SIGN-UP FOR THE PRO-CELEBRITY GOLF TOURNAMENT

This is a new wrinkle for supporting a film festival in New England. If you play golf and are a member of the independent film community or want to meet those who are, you will want to participate. On Tuesday, September 21, the New Hampshire Film Expo (NHFX) will be hosting a pro-celebrity golf tournament at The Ledges, just over the border in York, Maine (we love all of New England, not just NH!). Proceeds will support Make-A-Wish Foundation of NH, New England regional Boys & Girls Clubs' arts enrichment programming, and NHFX student scholarships and workshops!

Registration has now begun for golfers and company sponsors of this
great event! An updated list of pros and celebrities who've been
confirmed will be available soon. For all the details, including how to
register as an individual player, a threesome or a company sponsor,
please visit the NHFX website (www.nhfx.com) or download the
tournament flier by visiting this link:
http://www.nhfx.com/2004/downloadflier.pdf.

Wraps

HD IN MOTION

July's "HD in MOTION" industry soiree as presented by the Boston Final
Cut Pro User Group (BOSFCPUG) and Boris FX ignited the first day of
MacWorld Boston. Over 400 people congregated at the hip Paris at
Faneuil Hall to celebrate Boston's HD filmmaking and motion design
community. On hand were members of the Conservation Department of the
New England Aquarium, who discussed their use of the Panasonic Varicam
camera and Final Cut Pro HD as part of their HD production workflow.
Highlight of the event kudos go to Dion Scoppettuolo of Apple and his
Boston debut of Motion, Apple's new high-performance motion graphic
design and production application. Party and cocktails promptly ensued
with lots of filmmakers and industry professionals attending, including
over 35 producers and editors from WGBH. Notably, many of those in
attendance thanked the events' producers for heralding Boston's growing
community of digital filmmakers and “creatives” otherwise absent from
the return of MacWorld Boston.

Women in Film & Video/New England Announces Summer Fest Screening at the Boston Public Library

Women in Film & Video/New England will present a program of films by its members. The screening will be held starting at 1pm on Saturday, August 28, at the Rabb Lecture Hall located in the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. The screening is free and open to the public.
The line-up will be as follows: At 1pm, GREETINGS FROM IRAQ by Signe Taylor, and INSIDE HER ART by Erin Dalbec. Next, at 2pm, we will screen WHEN GIVEN LEMONS... by Naomi Greenfield and PACKRAT by Kris Britt Montag. Finally, at 3pm, we will start with DENTAL FARMER by Ellen Brodsky and finish with HIGH, FAST AND WONDERFUL by Maryanne Galvin. The filmmakers will be present to discuss their work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS