Matt Avant is a friend of mine from a couple of TV stations in Lafayette, Louisiana who has worked in the creative video field and now runs his own comnpany, Media Savant LLC. Preparing to create his first feature film “Lunopolis“, he emailed me in June of 2009 saying that he wanted to add an authentic English voice element to his film project and I happily obliged. Potential snag – he was still in Lafayette, Louisiana and I had moved  to Lexington, Kentucky.

No problem though as it turned out. Armed with an HD Camera and a script that he sent me, I went on over the Fayette County Courthouse and shot the stand-up scene and voice-over that you’ll see in the video to the right. FTP’ed the footage and he was able to download it and incorporate it into his timeline.

Since then the film has made the rounds at film festivals around the nation and has received rave reviews. To get you up to speed, here’s a brief synopsis:

“Lunopolis is the fictional hidden city located on the moon, created by filmmakers Matthew J. Avant and Hal Maynor IV, for their 2009 mock-documentary film of the same name. The film introduces the mythology of this technological wonder beneath the surface of the moon, and the secret (fictional) cult group known as ‘The Church of Lunology’, a powerful organization determined to keep it hidden.”

You can learn more by going to:
http://www.lunopolis.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1539313/
http://www.youtube.com/user/mediasavantllc

“Who’s Christine Bleakley?” you might ask. She’s one of the presenters of a BBC TV Primetime Magazine show called “The One Show“, which airs every weekday at 7pm. The reason why she is suddenly heavily recognizable with water skiing is that  she will attempt (weather permitting) to cross the 22 miles of the English Channel this week as part of a Sport Relief Challenge. Sport Relief is a charity that raises funds to benefit charitable projects in both the United Kingdom and Africa.

Training for the challenge hasn’t gone particularly well, taking into account that she is trying to cross one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world at one of the coldest times of the year. You can see her progress so far in the videos below, courtesy of the BBC’s “The One Show”

It was the Day of Destiny for the main Men’s World Overall Contenders and it was an epic battle battle all the way to the end between Javier Julio, Adam Sedlmayer and Jaret Llewellyn.

• Men’s Jump: Javier took control of the battle with an improved score of 10,330 points while the others weren’t able to improve. In the meantime, Belarus were creating some history of their own with Aliaksei Zharnosek winning the trick event ahead of Oleg Deviatovski and Herman Beliakou.
• Women’s Slalom: Karen Truelove set the bar pretty high, but left the door wide open with 0.5@10.75m. Karina Nowlan equaled it a short while afterwards but then Anais Amade boosted the top score to 1.25@10.75m. Whitney McClintock then did what she needed to in front of the home crowd and scored 1.5 buoys to win her second and third gold medal (overall) of these championships.
• Men’s Jump: Javier was one of the first of the dock and put himself into an overall lead with a leap of 63.0m – two meters more than his opening round distance. Adam was unable to come anywhere near that distance, which left Jaret needing a 70.3m to win not only the jump title (after Freddy Krueger flew 70.2m) but the overall crown as well. Try as he might, he could not get the jump he that he needed and Javier was crowned the World Overall Champions….

Well that’s it – thank for you support and I hope to do this some other time….

Once the situation regarding the Men’s Jump was resolved with the completion of the Prelims, it was time to focus on the finals of Women’s Tricks, Men’s Slalom and Women’s Jump. The action in those finals, shown on ESPN360.com, was nothing short of spectacular.

• Whitney McClintock battled her way to the Women’s World Trick Title scoring a tie for the World Championship record with 8740 points. This put her well in front of young French star Iris Cambray with 8400 and Maria Linares with 8290.
• Will Asher put the dismal performance of the 2007 World Championships behind him to record his second World Slalom Championship, totalling 3@10.25m (41′ off) to defeat Thomas DeGasperi (1@10.25m) and perennial 3rd place finisher Chris Rossi who wiped out before the exit gates at 10.75m for 5.5 buoys.
• Angeliki Andriopoulou exemplified toughness by taking her third consecutive World Jump title in row with her last jump of 53.7m. June Fladburg came up short with a distance of 51.1m while her Danish compatriot Maj Lund Jepsen was extremely happy to finish on the podium just 10 centimeters back.

So the final day beckons – the tournament is perfectly poised with all the heavy hitters in the overall race in both trick and jump finals. Watch out for fireworks from Llewellyn as tries to fend off a big challenge from both Adam Sedlmayer and Javier Julio….

With the Men’s Jump competition being carried over to Saturday Morning, some of the skiers concerned were gracious enough to give their thoughts on the events that took place yesterday. If you have sensitive ears to controversy, you’ll be best advised not to watch these videos – but you know you want to!!

After the great action that took place during Men’s Slalom and Women’s Jump, nothing prepared either me or Tadd Schreiber for what happened in the finals series of the Men’s Jump preliminary round…

• Lance Green (NZE) – Trying to take it huge on one of his attempts and barely making it on the ramp. Sent out the front and crashed big time. A little shaken but otherwise ok after that.
• Rodrigo Miranda (CHI) – good opener but tried to push it a little too hard and went out the front on the second attempt. Tough as nails, he carried on to the last attempt and still jumped well enough to give himself a good chance of making it though to the finals.
• Felipe Miranda (CHI) – After frustrating efforts on the opening two jumps and needing to land his final jump to score, took a big wipeout the back and was injured as a result. From initial reports, he sustained a broken femur.
• Sebastian de Pasqua (SUI) – took a huge digger OTF and was immediately carted off on a backboard. Thankfully the reports received suggest that he’s ok; in fact we was a little perturbed about being administered the oxygen mask.
• Damien Sharman (GBR) – refused the first jump and crashed OTF on the second attempt.  He was ok and fully prepared to jump again, but one of his jump broke in the fall.
• At this point the Official stopped the tournament. After meeting with Team Captains, it was determined that the event will continue on with Damien’s last attempt with a warm-up to precede it. Nothing was found to be wrong with the ramp, the boat or anything else associated with the technical side of the event.

Congrats to the event finalists from Men’s Slalom (esp. after the 8-way run-off to two final spots) and Women’s Jump. Look forward to seeing them their thing in the finals….

So….Men’s Jump’s starts up again at 10am this Morning (Saturday). Hope to have a report and some more videos then.

P.S. Spoke with Marie Vympranietsova (GRE) and she is still prepared to go out and jump in the finals despite seriously  tweaking her right knee on the final jump in the prelims – certainly braver than me I can tell you…