Don't forget

Are you a screen printer, or do you know someone who is? WELL, you and/or they are in luck, 'cause The Big Idea is having a poster contest!
Our colleague at the Contreras-Gabriel project, Diana Gabriel, approached us to partner up for a poster contest. We'd offer up our themes, and she'd display the winners at Morton College.

Diana's sculpture in the Willis Tower lobby. She's legit.

The contest is also a print exchange, so you get copies of all the other winning posters.

Link after the jump!

Cameron Moore & Michael Una

Well, the Kickstarter campaign is pending approval. The video isn't quite done -- I'm doing some last minute tweaks this week -- but I got antsy and decided to submit it with the last fine cut. Now it's just a waiting game, reloading the page every few hours to no avail...

Happy New Year

Hello friends and readers,
Happy New Year, belatedly. If you look at the blog, you would think nothing much is going on here at The Big Idea, but that is, like, so totally a fallacy, guys. Lots and lots has totally been happening around here, I swear.
We're more than halfway through January and things are really picking up steam. We're going try to be better at this whole blog updating thing. The Facebook page and Twitter feed are more reflective of how busy we are. Almost done with the month and we've printed 1,000 promotional postcards with info for the kickstarter, locked down all of our prizes, interviewed some brilliant musicians, got a poet to write something for each episode, and saw a 3-D camera in action.
So, we're about three weeks away from the Kickstarter launch, tentative date being February 10th. Things are going smoothly -- the video is nearing completion, as we try our best to make the sound not terrible. Video isn't too hard to fix mistakes with, but sound...if the sound sucks, you're screwed. There's no getting around that. Learned lesson #1 of making this webseries: time to buy a lavalier microphone. For you non-filmmakers out there, it's a mic you clip to a person's shirt. It's way better for picking up just their voice and not the sounds going on all around them (especially traffic, which has doubled the length of the last two interviews we've done just from stopping the subject as a truck drove by).
This is where things like the kickstarter and any grants we manage to get would come in handy. HINT HINT.

The two interviews this week were awesome too -- more on that next week.

More soon, we promise! In the meantime, check out our other pages!

On thismia americana

We thought we'd take a break from working on our rockin' Kickstarter video to tell you guys about one of our favorite stories here at the Big Idea, a story that partially inspired the show and is going to open the series. It's the first story we tell when we pitch the show, and it's a wonder it's not a more well-known tale.
We filmed part of an historical reenactment on it last month, which is why it's on our minds.

The story behind the unique plant Thismia americana, discovered by the equally fascinating Norma Pfeiffer.

Big Idea Interview: Amy Fowler

Hello all!
So, check out where we went today the other day last week a few weeks ago:

That adorable little cottage is the location for Mimi's Garden, a small business that is run by the lovely Amy Fowler. Amy was nice enough to let us into her home and take us on a late-summer tour of her grounds, guarded by the fierce pup Jessie.

Crunch time

Well, we're pretty much unstoppable.
Managed to get through a lot of the Kickstarter video. Our idea is rather ambitious and involves a lot of location and wardrobe changes, but we burned through the more complicated half. We'll be shooting the remainder of the video next week up at Harper College, as well as interviewing Mimi's Garden entrepreneur Amy Fowler. Suuuuper pumped.
Today we filmed under the el tracks of the Armitage Station:

As well as at my favorite, the Field Museum:

Where the monetary gods were smiling upon us. Not only did we avoid the $22 minimum parking lot for a $4.00 hourly parking spot, but we also managed to negotiate our way from paying $32 to $24 because Mario, ever the prepared one, brought his student ID.
We wandered, getting appropriate shots where, we could, paying the badass Sue a visit:

Rawr.

Working with some good stuff here, folks. Things are really starting to roll. Expect to see a lot of activity here in the next few months...

Signing off til we realize we've forgotten to update yet again.

The Gemini Capsule

Lots of stuff is going on here around The Big Idea.

We had an awesome meeting this week with Cameron Moore (of the electronic band When Clouds Attack) and Michael Una of Unatronics, two very talented gentlemen who are working on building the instrument you see in the video above. It's called The Gemini Capsule, and it's a nifty little instrument where each knob controls an aspect of what's playing (tempo, pitch, etc).
This was all we planned to interview the guys on when, digging deeper into our opinions on music and sound they started getting into the nifty, fascinating world of circuit bending and opened a whole new can of worms.
The link provided tells you all about the details of circuit bending, but it's basically where a person opens up a simple electronic instrument (we saw some children's toys and there were some mentions of a since-sold cop-shaped cookie jar that talked when you opened it) and mess around with the circuits inside, causing the instrument to make all sorts of interesting, funny, weird sounds. Simply licking your fingers and touching the motherboard wires work, but these guys went as far as to stick screws in the instrument and put clamps on the screws (we got to play with one of these -- a small keyboard -- and moving the clamps from screw to screw made the tempo, beats and notes change. Pretty fun).
A perfect subject for the show; circuit-bending is all about learning by tinkering and exploring. Michael called himself something along the line of an engineer by experimentation. Between the two of them, Cameron being more of the software guy and Michael more into the hardware, they've got a great team going, and we here at The Big Idea are sure looking forward to our official interview for episode 104, the episode on Waves.
Also in the works:
-An interview with gardener Amy Fowler of Mimi's Garden, we'll be exploring her garden for episode 103 (Growth) and talking about the disappearance of the honey bee and what it could mean for us fpor Episode 101 (Extinction).
-Another interview with a registered dietician (thanks to Cameron and Michael!) for episode 105 (Nourishment)
-Also for the Episode on Nourishment, we're trying to get interviews with Pastry Chef Amanda Cline of West Town Bakery and The Travelling Cowboy Chef John Wayne Formica.
-We're also proud to say we're close to locking down an editor, who also produces and directs. You can check out Aaron Trager's own work here.
-Also, we are close to locking down a composer too.
-We've also taken aboard another awesome camera guy, Mario Contreras, a veteran documentarian and an all-around great guy with a ton of experience and advice.
-In addition to that, Mario's amazingly talented artist wife Diana Gabriel, is helping us put together a poster contest/art exhibit slated to go up next Spring. Keep an eye out for it, we'll be giving you tons more updates on this as things develop!
-Kickstarter is now slated to launch September 15th.
Updates soon!