Tesladownunder in the media
The site has attracted a lot of international media attention since 2008 and has now been on TV programs or news in 17 countries from a total of 16 TV shoots. There has been coverage in 9 newspaper articles, 28 magazine or book articles and 8 radio interviews.
Discovery USA TV “Is it possible?” 2010 USA
Maximus Film TV 2010 Germany
WIN TV Australia and 16 other countries “Elec-trickery”
Discovery Channel TV episode 1 Canada
Discovery Channel TV episode 2 Canada
Discovery Channel TV episode 3 Canada
Discovery Channel TV episode 4 Canada
Dutch Novus TV “Fobiac”
German Pro Sieben TV “Galileo”
Supercharged (nearly)
Media that didn’t happen (yet)
Discovery USA “Is it possible?” 2010. Discovery Channel in the USA on April 7 10:00 pm EST with a rescreen on April 8 at 1:00 am and May 2 at 2:00 pm EST.
Title of my 7 mins was Dr Electric, human lightning rod….hmmm. Sounds like I need some colored tights and wear my undies on the outside – perhaps 2 pairs.
Directed by Neil Thomas (Thunderbird Films) who flew in from Canada. It was filmed by cameraman Dean Lomax on Nov, 7 2009. A long 13 hour shoot for 4 hours footage on one camera and 3h on the other. Filmed on location (my home in Bunbury, Western Australia) and shows lots of big sparks and stunts including sparks onto me while in a swimming pool. Hey, I even blew up a few watermelons. Video runs 8 mins.
here on the Discovery site) and reruns seen in Australia here. Other links to TV overseas are:
World News
Zap2it
It showed in Australia on Discovery Channel on Feb13.
WIN TV Australia had a news item on Feb 21, 2009. Reported and filmed by Tiffany Wertheimer. Topic was the Xmas tree 2009. Filmed by Dean Lomax with video effects by Jordan. Video runs 1:18 mins.
Maximus Film Germany. Filmed Feb 5 2010. Screened ?April 2010 and rescreened Sept 1 2010. Two segments, one of which is about crazy inventors. Director was Susanne Bogner, camera by Oliver and host was Harro. Topics included the mini-coil, exploding watermelons, the Faraday cage and the swimming pool. It includes a test with a sparks onto a dummy in Germany. Also some 3d computer graphics showing me moving my arm to show current flows. Very clever. Video runs 14 mins.
“Elec-trickery” WIN TV Australia had a news item on 23/12/08 for 90 seconds. Reported and filmed by Tiffany Wertheimer. Also screened on Channel 9 news and A Current Affair to give wide coverage in Australia. This eventually went international to 16 countries.
First a jukebox selection of 13 international TV news articles based on the Elec-trickery clip. Around 1 minute each.
Above, are a few pictures from the Win TV shoot. The 5kJ capacitor bank explosion of some steel wool and aluminum actually started 2 small grass fires which were caught on camera.
The sources of the jukebox clips above are here:
Reuters Dec 2008 (a large international news service) had this version of the WIN TV segment which they titled: “Zapping for ‘elec-trickery’ man” . Reuters is also the source of these: Reuters, Reuters (Reuters article with narration), Reuters (Rough cut, no narration),Blinkx Video
USA TV news Dec 2008. Made it to the MSNBC Editors Picks
UK TV news Dec 2008, on ITN TV. (…isn’t a Timelord..) Meet Australia’s Electro-man.
China TV News (in Chinese) Dec 2008. The site and details are here. Another Chinese report shows a newspaper article. Details on the Youtube report.
China TV News here New Tang Dynasty TV in English and French.
Italy TV News here, Turkey TV news here, Holland TV news here, Brasil TV newshere, Romania TV news here
A few other countries whose clips I couldn’t capture for the jukebox above are:
Norway TV news here, Denmark TV news here, Indonesian TV news here,Croatian TV here
Switzerland TV news here.
Also was seen in Pakistan, Vietnam, Peru, Bulgaria and Singapore.
The Canadian Discovery Channel – Daily Planet has done 4 videos of my stuff. Nice high quality production which took about 6 hours shooting for each 5 mins. And the first one won an award.
Discovery Channel TV episode 1 shown Sept 4, 2007 in Canada. Runs 5:14 mins and includes smoke rings, electric shocks, capacitor discharges and sparks in the pool.
Original Video – More videos at TinyPic
Above is the Gold Remi Award from the Houston International Film festival awarded to Discovery Channel Canada for this first video segment. Dean Lomax was the cameraman and Dennis Porter the producer. There are about 5000 entries and about 1000 winners in hundreds of categories. In this pdf winner list search for “electricity” will take you to the entry.
Discovery Channel TV episode 2 shown Sept 11, 2007 in Canada. Cameraman Dean Lomax shot episode 1 and 2 in 11 hours. Runs 3:45 mins and includes capacitor discharges, big TC construction. If you have a fast broadband link then view it direct in higher resolution from the Discovery Channel hereotherwise click the video below.
Original Video – More videos at TinyPic
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Discovery Channel TV episode 3 shown Nov 21, 2007 in Canada. Cameraman Dean Lomax shot this in about 6 hours. Runs 5 mins and includes the big TC in a big domed building. Click the video below.
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Discovery Channel TV episode 4 shown Dec 20, 2007 in Canada. Cameraman Dean Lomax shot this also in around 6 hours. Topic is the Tesla Christmas tree. If you are in Canada (only) you can watch ithere otherwise watch it here. Video runs 5 mins.
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Dutch Novus TV “Fobiac” Filmed 7/11/08 Aired 7/1/09
Suzanne de Jong from Veronica TV in Holland along with Frank van Geloven as director and local cameraman Dean Lomax recorded a segment about electricity for a program on phobias. The full 45 minute program is here on the Veronica TV site. Photo gallery is here. Filming took about 6 hours at my place. I provided the Tesla coils and HV stuff which they had seen from my website. She gets confronted by electricity from small shocks on her arm to a mini-Tesla coil. Then on to standing in a cage with 6 foot sparks from a huge Tesla coil striking only a few inches from her face. She was genuinely scared and took a lot of coaxing. After that it was into a pool to have 2 foot sparks onto her head wearing a tinfoil hat. They were very happy with the result and it was fun working with a presenter and director (compared with Discovery videos where interviews were over a mobile phone). The video below is edited to include my stuff only and runs15 mins.
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German Pro Sieben TV “Galileo” Filmed 14/11/08, Aired 16/6/09
Ann-Mirja Boehm is a producer from Pro Sieben TV station in Berlin and filmed this program for a science program called “Galileo”. Again, local cameraman Dean Lomax did the shooting in two 9 hour sessions for 10 minutes on air. Was shown online here a few days later for 1 week but not accessible in Australia. The video below is in German but you will get the idea. The car effects are well done. Video runs10 mins.
Sadly my camera died during the night (see the last photo) and it wasn’t filming sparks at the time at the time it started.
Click to enlarge
Joe Genius is an internet TV program who gave me a “What were you thinking award”.
Supercharged (nearly) 2008
Creative Differences is a production company in the US that raised the possibility of a TV series. This was their “Dr Shock” promo pitched to US Discovery Channel. The plan was for 13 half hour episodes. It wasn’t accepted but it was nice to be asked ….
Above is the promo. It was rejected with the comment from Phil Fairclough : Thoughts from Discovery development exec to ponder: It’s great fun, but doesn’t deliver enough “why are we bothering” to me – no big point to it. Good info along the way, but it’s not driving to or coming from a bigger piece of knowledge – not really satisfying a larger curiosity other than “how will he build a force field?”
Suppose I need some myths to bust ….