| Having been scheduled to launch on October 28th, the Jiberish and Level 1 sponsored Spotl!ght Project ran into a few hiccups on Sunday. Blake Kimmel, the principal film maker for the short, was facing a challenging stint of finals during the week leading up to the proposed launch. To make matters even worse, ABSTRACTmall was running out of bandwidth and this was going to be the first digital download for the site ever. Weighing in at over 100 Megabytes, the Spotl!ght Project created the nasty potential for server crashes and high fees for aM. Thankfully, cofounder and project sponsor Court was able to get the system running smoothly, and by mid day on the 27th AQhost, the company that hosts ABSTRACTmall.com, was able to upgrade the hosting plan and alleviate concerns of a crash. Blake's final editing touches were the last piece of the puzzle and everything was looking good. Aside from a few crazy parties leading up to the weekend, and one on Saturday, Blake was on track to finish on time. Court had randomly flown out from Mountain View California to visit CU Boulder being a former CU student himself, and the two teamed up to get the kinks worked out of the video. Unfortunately, with all of the partying and finals, the film just wasn't quite done by mid day on the 28th. Blake actually stayed up all night on the 28th nailing down the titles and then uploading the film... it was a little bit late, but at least it was done. In actuality, the film that Blake had uploaded was sponsorship footage for Josh Bishop, a semi-pro local skier starring in the Spotl!ght Project and room mate to Blake, and intern to ABSTRACTmall... The first thirteen lucky buyers got Josh's footage instead of the film, and were also made privy to his personal phone number at the end of the raw short... Court realized the mixup after double checking the system, but it was too late to do anything about it as Blake had just left for more classes and wouldn't be back for four hours. What's more, Blake's cell phone had broken a couple weeks earlier while he was skiing at Arapahoe Basin on opening day, and he couldn't be reached! Busted Cell Phone Mike Clarke, another one of Blake's roomies at Boulder, and a pro skier featured in the Spotl!ght Project and Level 1's Real Time, was fielding the chaos at NewSchoolers as confused customers realized the film was wrong and Court had taken down the product entry. The waiting game began. |
Blake finally got home from his first class to realize that everyone was pissed at him. He locked in with the computer and tried to make things right and upload the correct film. Unfortunately, he accidentally uploaded the right film to the wrong web server, and then left for class again. Two hours, and a few more public apologies later, Blake was back from class. Court was punching the wall, Mike was laughing his ass off, and Josh was getting prank calls. Finally, finally, finally the right film was uploaded to the right web server and the world got it's first look at what is arguably the first worldwide digitally distributed, independently produced ski film ever! The Spotl!ght Project, being sold for only $0.99 to anyone anywhere. the idea behind this film is to create interest and excitement for freestyle skiing and a few up and coming riders. With help from Jiberish and Level 1, ABSTRACTmall was able to pull out all of the stops and match the same kind of entertainment value that only itunes could previously offer. A fully featured high definition version of the film, inlcluding New Zealand throwback footage of Blake Kimmel and Dillon Morris and other extended footage features will ship on November 5th. So far the digital version of the Spotl!ght Project has been a huge success and everyone who has bought it has either loved or hated it... but the one thing they all agree on is that it's worth a buck. Plain and simple. For those of you who have an extra couple of bucks to share, please check out our artist scholarship fund linked from the news desk. ABSTRACTmall is trying to raise $25K to create an annuity for art students that it will couple with an annual contest open to students worldwide. |
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If you like what ABSTRACTmall is doing for independent artists, please consider donating to our Young Artist Education Foundation. All donations will go towards the creation of an annual scholarship fund to fuel the next generation.