Well the BotsIQ competition came and went in a blazing two days. While that wrapped up most of the filming for the documentary (with a few post-competition interviews left) there’s still a long road ahead in first sorting all the footage, and then editing it all. As I go through stuff I’ll be posting more clips.

In the meantime here’s a cool shot Sir Cam-a-bot (more info coming soon) caught inside the arena. Witch Doctor was a beast.

(I post lots of updates on the Facebook Page, which trickles down to Twitter. Keep updated there)

Just finished lighting the arena. I’ve been helping build it since Saturday. It’s a beast.

I’ve also found myself living on the roof of the arena for the past few days too. I think I might have been a cat in another life, hoping from beam to beam.

Early registration starts tomorrow. Then more registration. Then the battles. It’ll be insanity meets awesomeness. And it’s National Robotics Week! Let the fun begin!

Exciting news – the other day Bots High was the featured Kickstarter Project of the Day!

About a week left to go – please help out and donate today!

Bots High – Robotics Documentary – Teaser Trailer from Joey Daoud on Vimeo.

We’re about 4 weeks away from the grand finale – the National High School BattleBots Championship. So far I’ve mostly been filming everything myself, but this time I’m bringing in more crew, more cameras, more epicness – to do things right and make sure everything is covered.

However, the epicness does not come cheap, which is why I started a Kickstarter project. Basically Kickstarter is a cool way to fund projects where people pledge money to reach a goal, and that money is only deducted from your account if the project is fully funded.

So the project is to raise funds to film the championship with multi-cameras, and also to travel to San Francisco to film the regular BattleBots competition, which has an open class where some of the high school teams will compete. Plus I want to interview the cool people out in SF.

So please check out the Bots High Kickstarter page and consider becoming a backer. Like PBS, there’s different rewards for different levels. You can get a DVD, poster, t-shirt, associate producer credit, and all sorts of other stuff.

Thanks for your support (I need it)!

Welcome aboard to RobotShop, a new sponsor of Bots High, as you’ll notice in the sidebar. They’ve just created a documentary page in their resources section and guess what the first film is they listed that relates to robotics!

Contact me if you or your company is interested in becoming a sponsor.

Bots High Teaser Trailer from Joey Daoud on Vimeo.

It’s probably not the best to call this a trailer, since I really have no idea how the film will shape up (though I’m 90% sure Flamin’ Fluffy will be in it), but this played in the trailer section of the Borscht Film Festival, so I’m calling it a trailer.

It’s more of a good highlight reel of all the action at Mayhem in Miami. It even includes foreshadowing!

YouTube and blip.tv links.

The Explosive End of Fluffy from Joey Daoud on Vimeo.

The first Miami BattleBots competition went off this past weekend. As you can see in the video, I don’t think you could have asked for a more spectacular ending.

Stay tuned for some more videos from the competition.

Just got done with the Bots High exhibit at Sleepless Night. Tons of fun, thanks to everyone who came out. The video was a pretty stylish video of Fluffy destroying a robot shell. Kind of epic (coming online soon). And as you can see Fluffy was on display.

Awesome news – the gallery is going to be around until Art Basil, so I’ll be working on getting more videos in the space (I’m thinking something interactive, if I can pull it off).

If you just found out about the film at Sleepless Night, welcome and thanks for stopping by! You can stay updated with the newsletter, or become a fan on Facebook.

There’s a new page set up with different sponsorship options. This is for companies or individuals who would like to get more involved, help the film be the best it can be, and get their name out in the film, the podcasts, and on the site.

Check out the sponsorship page.

Of course no amount is too small, and you can donate to the project here (tax deductible).

This past Sunday was a task competition at the Miami Science Museum. A ring is filled with 10 red and 10 blue balloons, and the task is to design a robot to pop an assigned color, plus a white balloon on the back of your opponent, while preventing yours from being popped.

While this isn’t the main focus of the documentary, it was still a lot of fun and lots of the teams that participated have or will be building robots for BattleBots.

The top two teams were from Columbus. Actually, they were the same team and decided to split their odds and build two robots. Seems to have paid off.

The team in third place has one of the best stories. They’ve only been doing robotics for a few months, beginning from a workshop held over the summer (I feel bad, I forgot what school they’re from).

Here’s a video from a camera I stuck in the heart of BatBot, made by Mechanical Misfits:

Bot Cam on Bat Bot from Joey Daoud on Vimeo.

And here’s a stylized video from a match shot in slow motion:

Robot Dance in Slow Motion from Joey Daoud on Vimeo.

The robot with the syringes ended up coming in first place, while the other robot came in third.

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