Hey! I'm Jon Radowski - hot air balloon and airship pilot, builder of balloons, occasional music producer, and now: Filmmaker. HotAir.TV is my little place on the web which I plan to cultivate into the one-stop shop to find all sorts of hot air ballooning videos, films on balloons and other rare media files, but first of all will be my own debut ballooning film which will soon be available on DVD.

(that's me!)

I'm currently undertaking what I consider a "monumental" hot air ballooning film. I expect it to become for ballooning what "On Any Sunday" has become for motorcycling, or as important as what A, B and C have collectively done for the Pythagorean Theorem. Honestly, I think it'll give good exposure to the sport of hot air ballooning, and hopefully may even gain some mainstream play on the outdoor/learning TV networks if the planets align. It could become sort of a cult favorite, or just flop completely and be forgotten about in three months. In short, anything can happen. But I'm aiming for a star on the Walk of Fame for this one.

Working Specs:
Feature length - 45-90 minutes
Cinematic 24P framerate
Standard Definition 4:3 format (possible widescreen 16:9 option)

Keeping with the theme of "up in the air," the ballooning film has no notable working title yet, although I have been kicking around a few ideas I like. I'll figure it all out as the film takes shape during editing. Dozens of hours of film and hundreds and hundreds of scenes will unfurl into a coherent, scenic storyline visualising the beauty of ballooning and what makes hot air balloons so appealing to people of all ages. The entire film will be set to an original score (written and recorded by myself) with some narration only when absolutely necessary.

I've invested a lot of money and much of my time over the past two years to shoot hot air balloon footage for the project. Filming has wrapped for the present moment. In watching all the preliminary raw footage, I'm simultaneously excited and horrified, respectively, at how much amazing footage I've captured, and how much of it has to be relegated to the proverbial cutting room floor to wind up with a film that won't require a really, really comfy couch and two days to watch.