Do you want to go on a surf trip like this? Contact these guys.

Click to see more beach photos from Seal Rocks

My experience of Australia up to this point consisted of two places: Bondi Beach and Melbourne. My expectations of the spaces between all the big cities were of a cross between Mad Max, Arizona, and The Crocodile Hunter. I imagined great dry plains filled with kangaroos and snakes that somehow tumble, eventually, into an uninviting sea (Zoe is assuring me that this Australia does exist. It’s just the other 90% of the country).

We spent a week in Bluey’s – a small community about 4 hours north of Sydney, and 7 hours south of Byron Bay. We stayed with friends in a beautiful house. We ate good food. We slept in a teepee. We laughed a lot. We went to Seal Rocks and met a Fairy Penguin. We explored beaches within beaches. We swam in a warm ocean. We snuggled with horses. We danced with a sunset on a mountain top.

Click to see more photos from this mountain top sunset

Click to see more photos of snuggles with horses

Click to see more beach photos from Seal Rocks

Click to see more places we’ve stayed

NWR just released the [remixed] version of the Karmakaze EP with no less than 3 ArK47 remixes. I made these tracks back in 2008 while living on Venice Beach and it looks like they are now seeing the light of day. I think I gave H3wig about 6 different versions of these tracks – as usual I could not decide which one to finish. Its cool to see that he picked 3 of them to be on this album. Its an interesting little view at how I was making music during that time. I think that if I had to do it again today it would have turned out different – but I guess I can say that about anything I do.

Other notable artists on this album are Austrian Rock/Electronica group Sofa Surfers. Check out Karmakaze on iTunes or listen below.

NWR is produced and fronted by H3rwig Maurer a.k.a. Agent H, a charismatic Venice Beach-based community organizer, multimedia artist and space/time traveler (academy award nomination for sound on Mel Gibson’s’ Apocalypto, Hostel, Mankind Liberation Front, Smack3000, art featured in Rolling Stone, electronic hits charted by Star DJs like John Digweed and Carl Cox)

At 9am on Saturday morning I suddenly felt inspired. I’d rented a camera and some lenses the previous day from Adolph Gasser, the camera sales and rental store near my office. The new breed of DSLR cameras out there can shoot HD video with as much clarity and color as the photos themselves. I’ve been wanting to rent one of these cameras for almost a year. My fun experience with Max a few weeks ago added the final bit of fuel to my motivation. I rolled over and announced that I wanted to make a movie about Zoe brushing her teeth. At first she looked at me like I was completely crazy, but I’m used to that.

“Ummmm….?” She said.

“A movie about waking up, getting up, brushing your teeth and having tea.”

“Tea?” She asked.

I nodded.

“I’m in!” She said.

We do love our morning tea.

And so we made a movie…

… and here’s what I learned: Making movies is hard.

It is definitely many orders of magnitude more difficult than just taking a photo. There are so many more variables at play. I rarely use a tripod for photos, but its almost essential for most shots in a movie. Making the music was also more challenging than I ever imagined.

Zoe was so great to work with. She has a lot of experience with TV and film. She knows about continuity and she makes sure that she moves exactly the same in each shot. There were details that she was paying attention to that I didn’t even notice until I reviewed all of the raw videos. She also has a wealth of knowledge about the story-creation and editing process that really helped me break through some obstacles.

Overall I am really pleased with the results. There is always room for learning and improvement but it is a great first try. If you don’t see the video below you can click on this link to see it in HD on vimeo.

Morning Ritual from Ron Kurti on Vimeo.

“The Passport Sling gives you freedom for your every move, protection for your DSLR and lots of space for your personal items.”