Original author: Sramana Mitra

January 15, 2018

Every entrepreneur starts her journey somewhere.

Colorado is a premier location for entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers. This is why I co-founded and commit a portion of my time to Startup Colorado; an organization that empowers and sustains startup communities across Colorado. One of the programs that Startup Colorado runs – called Startup Summer – cultivates and engages undergraduate entrepreneurs looking to get involved in the Front Range startup community.

Startup Summer is an immersive 10-week program that includes weekly seminars from local entrepreneurs who teach the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. The student entrepreneurs form teams and build companies while receiving coaching and mentorship from alums of the program and local entrepreneurs, culminating with a pitch competition. The program admits 50 student entrepreneurs from around the country, bringing together different backgrounds while exposing them to the Front Range startup ecosystem.

Startup Summer is now in its sixth year. All internships are paid. If you are interested or know a promising student who wants to take advantage of this opportunity, the application is here and closes on January 31st.

Oh, and if you’re a company in Boulder or Denver that wants to participate and host an intern, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we’ll see if we can fit you in this year.

Also published on Medium.

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Original author: Brad Feld

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Maureen Kelly

A chain of block erupters used for Bitcoin mining is pictured at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, California October 28, 2013. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Bitcoin transactions are enabled by so-called bitcoin miners, who are rewarded for digitally checking transaction records with newly minted bitcoins. China is home to the world's biggest bitcoin miners but is cracking down on the sector due to concerns about excessive energy usage. At the same time, Canada is actively courting bitcoin miners as regions like Quebec have excess power capacity. Other countries like Kazakhstan and Venezuela are also said to be courting miners.

LONDON — Canada is luring bitcoin mining companies to its shores as China, the current global hub of crypto mining, looks to crackdown on the sector's energy usage.

Several industry sources Business Insider spoke to this week said that bitcoin miners are thinking of moving to Canada after lobbying from the country's energy industry. Quebec specifically has been wooing bitcoin miners in the hopes of boosting local economies. 

Reuters reported on Friday that Bitmain, the world's biggest blockchain mining company, is looking at moving operations to Canada and said utility company Hydro Quebec is in talks with around 30 large cryptocurrency miners about potential moves. BTC.Top, another major miner, is also setting up shop in Canada.

"We’ve seen a lot of movement towards Canada," Chris Keshian, the CEO of San Francisco-based Apex Token Fund, a fund of crypto hedge funds, told Business Insider. "The Canadian government is relatively friendly towards cryptocurrencies [and] energy is relatively cheap there."

Bitcoin mining explained

Bitcoin mining involves computers completing complex cryptographic problems in return for newly "minted" bitcoins. The process, which could theoretically be carried out by anyone, is an essential part of the bitcoin network, allowing transactions to happen.

To ensure transactions are not falsified or records of ownership changed, participants of the bitcoin network must sign off on transactions in "blocks" that are recorded in a decentralized database known as the blockchain. These blocks are checked and sealed by the bitcoin miners, which do the cryptographic work. In return, they are rewarded with bitcoins.

An interior view of U.S. bitcoin mining company Bitfury's mining farm near Keflavik, Iceland, June 7, 2016. Picture taken June 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jemima Kelly

While the system is designed to be decentralized, around 5 large "mining pools" controlled by a handful of companies dominate about 75% of the market. These mining pools, the bulk of which are in China, use huge amounts of power. The amount of energy used by computers "mining" bitcoin last year was greater than the annual usage of almost 160 countries.

The Financial Times reported this week that China is looking to outlaw bitcoin mining due to "concerns of excessive electricity consumption and financial risk."

Arthur Hayes, the CEO of Hong Kong-based crypto derivatives trading platform BitMEX, told BI: "Some of the people that I've spoken to, they've been de-risking their Chinese mining exposure in the middle of last year.

"The large miners have been relocating operations around the world in anticipation of a possible crackdown. Miners are cognisant of the fact that they have too much exposure to having operations in China and are relocating equipment and operations to outside of China."

'A good parallel would be putting in oil mining rigs'

While China is cracking down, countries like Canada are looking to lure bitcoin mining operations. They see the potential to reap taxes, boost local economies, and use excess power.

Quebec is one of the largest hydroelectric power producers in the world and routinely produces a surplus meaning electricity is cheap. A cold climate also makes computer cooling costs lower and Canada's political stability also makes it attractive.

Hayes said: "You have idle power that's not being used — why not relocate a bitcoin mine there and at least you're getting some tax revenue?"

Chris Keshian, CEO of Apex Token Fund. Apex Token Fund

David Vincent, business development director at electricity provider Hydro Quebec, told CoinDesk in a recent interview that a campaign to lure tech giants to the region launched in 2016 in fact attracted the bitcoin miners.

Other countries like Kazakhstan, traditionally a mining powerhouse, and Bhutan trying to woo bitcoin miners. Hayes said. Sources BI spoke to said South American countries such as Venezuela and Chile are looking at the space.

Hayes said: "There are governments proactively trying to court bitcoin mining companies because they have low power. 

"It actually makes a lot of economic sense in a lot of these hollowed-out, commodity producing, high industrial areas. You have power plants serving this commodity producer that can't stay open anymore."

Joseph Bradley, an analyst at Apex Token Fund, told BI: "What’s really interesting, and what we think that this signals, is that more developed countries are starting to understand that blockchain is infrastructure and these systems are absolutely digital infrastructure."

Keshian said: "This is effectively unlocking a huge amount of value globally and the countries that learn how to unlock that value and capture it stand to benefit substantially. A good parallel would be putting in oil mining rigs."

Bitcoin mining operations can cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to set up, Keshian said. 

"These guys need forecastability," Bradley said. "It is not easy moving mining operation."

Original author: Oscar Williams-Grut

An image showing the classic 1943 poster and its 2018 update side-by-side. US War Information Office/Royal Navy/Business Insider

British naval accounts are distributing an update of the classic 1943 "loose lips sink ships" poster. It warns "loose tweets sink fleets" — a reminder not to put sensitive operational details on social media. It shows the new HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier going down in flames.

The Royal Navy has revamped one of the most famous wartime propaganda slogans to warn its sailors to be careful what they tweet.

It issued an updated version of the 1943 "loose lips sink ships" poster, tweaked to refer to social media instead, and featuring the new HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier going down in flames.

The message was posted on Twitter Thursday morning by the official account of HMS Queen Elizabeth, along with a reminder that "OPSEC [operational security] isn't a dirty word!"

As the images above show, the new, Royal Navy-branded poster is an homage to a well-known 1943 propaganda poster distributed by the United States Office of War Information.

Instead of the 40s-style battleship shown sinking in the original poster, the 2018 version shows the Royal Navy's new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier, which is identifiable from the trademark "twin islands" design of its flight deck.

The message the poster is designed to convey is the same as in the '40s, though the media are different.

HMS Queen Elizabeth, with its distinctive "twin islands" design. Getty Images

In WWII, commanders were worried that people with access to military information could carelessly share it in conversation, which could eventually be picked up by hostile intelligence services and used against the US military.

Today, the concern is that sensitive information could inadvertently be posted in public by somebody on board who did not realise the significance of what they were sharing.

It's easy to find images taken by people on board the ship on social media who tagged their location, though there's nothing obvious in them to suggest they could risk the ship's security.

Business Insider went aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth in December and spoke to sailors on board, including one who talked about social media.

Able Seaman Callum Hui, the youngest member of the ship's company, said that he uses networks like Snapchat to post photos to his friends back home — but that there are sensitive areas on board he knows not to document.

In a statement to Business Insider, the Royal Navy declined to elaborate on the specific poster campaign, but said it was part of a "robust" operational security plan.

It said: "The Royal Navy takes operational and personal security very seriously and robust measures are in place to ensure the security of the ship and the ship’s company is not compromised."

Original author: Kieran Corcoran

The new Ranger is Ford's entry into the revived mid-size pickup market.The former generation was dropped in 2011, and fans have been wanting it back in the US ever since.The new Ranger is stylish, rugged, a high-tech.

Say hello to the all-new Ford Ranger pickup.

Ford unveiled the truck on Sunday, just as the 2018 Detroit auto show was kicking off. To say that this thing was hotly anticipated is an understatement. Perhaps the only other new product that has gotten Ford fans as excited in recent years is the soon-to-arrive, all-new Bronco SUV.

The Ranger is Ford's bid to enter the revived compact pickup game, taking on the Chevy Colorado, GMC Canyon, Toyota Tacoma, and Honda Ridgeline. The segment has come back strong, but Ford dropped the previous generation of the Ranger back in 2011. 

Ford

The carmaker announced the new pickup at the Detroit auto show last year and on Sunday pulled the cover off the production vehicle, which will go on sale later in 2018 for the 2019 model year. Ford didn't announce pricing, but we can assume it will be directly competitive with the Colorado, which starts at about $20,000.

"Ranger has always held a special place in the hearts of truck fans," Ford vice-president Hau Thai-Tang said in a statement.

"The all-new Ranger is designed for today’s midsize truck buyer, delivering even more utility, capability and technology for those who blend city living with more off-the-grid adventures on weekends."

Small pickups are big

Ford

The compact segment is really a mid-size segment, as the new generation of smaller pickups aren't as downsized as their predecessors, such as the Ranger and Mazda B-Series vehicles that Ford and former partner Mazda discontinued in the US but continued to sell in other markets. 

The new Ranger will be powered by a 2.3-liter turbocharged EcoBoost engine (horsepower wasn't shared when the vehicle was revealed) and come with a ten-speed automatic transmission, a combination that ought to delivery appealing oomph along with good fuel economy.

Ford

The frame, according to Ford, is steel (and the all-new platform will also undergird the Bronco). Given that the carmaker has made a big switch to aluminum for its bestselling full-size F-150 and larger Super Duty pickups, there was plenty of speculation that the Ranger would be similarly engineered. We'll have to wait until we actually get to Detroit and can ask around about what metals the Ranger is made of.

Trim levels will consist of an "entry-level XL, mid-level XLT and high-level Lariat trim series with available Chrome and Sport appearance and FX Off-Road packages, and in SuperCab or SuperCrew cab configurations," Ford said.

The FX package is particularly interesting: Ford based the offroad system on its bonkers F-150 Raptor high-performance pickup. (The pickup-truck world is already wondering if the Ranger will get the Ford Performance treatment and join the Raptor in the family as its little brother.)

Not shortchanging buyers on premium features or tech

Ford

In keeping with a trend, the Ranger won't skip on premium features or technology.

"Ranger incorporates smart driver-assist, passenger convenience and connectivity technologies," Ford said.

"Advanced driver-assist technologies include standard Automatic Emergency Braking, while Lane Keeping Assist, Lane Departure Warning, a Reverse Sensing System and class-exclusive Blind Spot Information System with trailer coverage are standard on XLT and Lariat trim levels."

Lariat trim trucks will "include Pedestrian Detection and Adaptive Cruise Control," and the Ranger will be available with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto through the Sync 3 infotainment system, which will also provide Amazon Alexa integration and a 4G LTE wifi hotspot supporting up to ten devices. Audiophile truckers can also opt for a premium Bang & Olufsen sound system.

The design of the Ranger is styling and aggressive: a big-looking pickup in smaller package. Coolest element? The "Ranger" names stamped in large letters on the tailgate.

The year ahead will be a big one for pickups as a true truck war breaks out. The new Chevy Silverado will take in the mighty Ford F-150, and now the Colorado will have its hands full with the new Ranger. 

Get the latest Ford stock price here.

Original author: Matthew DeBord

BIIThis is a preview of a research report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here.

Nearly every global bank is experimenting with blockchain technology as they try to unleash the cost savings and operational efficiencies it promises to deliver. 

Banks are exploring the technology in a number of ways, including through partnerships with fintechs, membership in global consortia, and via the building of their own in-house solutions. 

In this report, BI Intelligence outlines why and in what ways banks are exploring blockchain technology, provides details on three major banks' blockchain efforts based on in-depth interviews, and highlights other notable blockchain-based experiments underway by global banks. It also discusses the likely trends that will emerge in the technology over the next several years, and the factors that will be critical to the success of banks implementing blockchain-based solutions.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Most banks are exploring the use of blockchain technology in order to streamline processes and cut costs. However, they are also looking to leverage additional advantages, including increased competitiveness with fintechs, and the ability to use the technology to create new business models. Banks are starting to narrow their focus, and are increasingly honing in on tangible use cases for blockchain technology that solve real problems faced by their businesses. Regulators are taking an increased interest in blockchain technology, and they're working alongside major banks to develop regulatory frameworks. Blockchain-based solutions will start to emerge in different areas of financial services. The most successful solutions will solve specific problems for banks and attract a large enough network to create widespread benefits. 

 In full, the report:

Outlines banks' experiments with blockchain technology. Details blockchain projects at three major banks — UBS, Credit Suisse, and Banco Santander — based on in-depth interviews. Discusses the likely trends that will emerge in the technology over the next several years.Highlights the factors that will be critical to the success of banks implementing blockchain-based solutions.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More NowPurchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now

Original author: Peter Newman

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Quarterback Cam Newton #1 of the Carolina Panthers carries the ball against the Denver Broncos during Super Bowl 50 at Levi's Stadium on February 7, 2016 in Santa Clara, California. Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Audiences will see more long-form ads, longer than 30 seconds, than ever before this Super Bowl, according to NBC.  Less than 10 spots remain to be sold. While big advertisers like Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Kia will be running ads, others like Honda are sitting out this year.

Digital advertising may have encouraged companies to experiment with newer formats like six-second ads, but longer ads continue to reign supreme at the Super Bowl.

There is more interest in longer commercials for the upcoming Super Bowl than short-form ads from advertisers, and audiences are likely to see more long ads than ever before, according to NBC. 

"You will see more longer-form, longer than 30 seconds, than you have in any other Super Bowl," Dan Lovinger, executive VP of advertising sales at NBC Universal Sports Group, said during a press call on Thursday. "Advertisers look at this as the ultimate platform to tell a story and storytelling takes a little bit of time."

The increased number of long form ads stands in contrast to the current trend for advertisers to experiment with new, shorter formats aimed at digital audiences. Both brands and TV networks like have moved toward shorter ad formats in recent months.Personal finance company SoFi, for example, purchased six-second ad spots for a Viking-Lions NFL game in late 2017. 

While big advertisers like Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Kia have already announced that they will be running ads, less than 10 Super Bowl spots remain to be sold before the game on February 4. Meanwhile, others such as Honda and Fiji Water have chosen to sit out this year. Back in October 2017, Lovinger had said that only a "handful" of slots remained. 

The cost of running a 30-second spot during the game is averaging $5 million, according to Lovinger, with NBC expecting to generate $500 million in ad revenue at the Super Bowl. This is inclusive of both pre and post-game units and commercials during the "This Is Us" episode following the game.

NBC is also set to fill up its coffers post the Super Bowl, with the Winter Olympics at Pyeongchang kicking off on February 9. Lovingersaid that he expects the Olympic games to exceed $900 million in national ad sales.

Original author: Business Insider

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Facebook users contacted by Business Insider on Saturday said the posts they were seeing in their news feeds were mostly from friends or family members; they saw relatively few posts from organizations or people they follow. Some said the ratio of posts from Facebook friends to those from organizations they follow was a big change from their past experience; others didn't notice much of a change. The observations follow the company's announcement Thursday that it plans to make sweeping revisions to its site, including de-emphasizing in the news feeds posts from news and other organizations that users follow.

The next time you check Facebook, you may only see a few articles from news publications or posts from other organizations you follow — if you see any at all.

Facebook users contacted on Saturday said their news feeds — the list of posts you see right when you log into the Facebook webpage or load the social networking app — were dominated by posts from friends and family members. Users reported seeing few posts from organizations or people they follow that weren't shared also by their friends. And some users — including this reporter and his wife — reported seeing none at all.

Kelly Snider, a San Jose resident, said she saw only a few sponsored posts and only a couple of posts from organizations she follows.

"The majority, way more than I ever saw before, is from friends," Snider said. "It is overwhelmingly friends, and that is unusual to my eyes."

Of the first 50 posts in Colin Stokes' news feed, just 10 were from organizations or people he follows.

"I was surprised that the numbers were this skewed," Stokes said. "I expected more balance."

Facebook representatives did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Company executives Thursday announced sweeping changes to its service and particularly to the way the news feed feature works. Addressing criticism that its social network was yielding a negative effect on users' well-being and being manipulated by organizations spreading propaganda or trying to illegitimately attract visitors to their sites, Facebook said it would give priority in its news feed to posts from users' friends and family members and play down those from organizations and people they follow. The company did not say how soon it would put the changes in place.

The changes threaten to upend both news organizations and the way in which many users get news and information. Some 45% of US adults get news from Facebook, according to a Pew Research poll in September, and many news organizations have come to depend on the traffic they get from the social networking — much of it generated from users clicking on stories they see in their news feeds.

Users' observations about their own news feed may not necessarily show that Facebook has put the changes in place. The company customizes each user's feed based in part on posts they've interacted with in the past. If users see in their news feeds few posts from organizations they follow, it could simply mean they've seldom clicked or commented on such posts in the past.

Some users who spoke to Business Insider said that while they were seeing relatively few posts from organizations they follow in their news feed, they didn't think they were seeing much less than they'd seen before.

Gretchen Lembach, for example, said she only saw one post from a news outlet she follows in her news feed — and that one was also shared by one of her friends. But that didn't seem unusual, said the Montclair, New Jersey, mom.

"I'd say it feels about the same," Lembach said.

Original author: Troy Wolverton

The Gangneung Olympic Park for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Gangneung, South Korea.Pyeongchang 2018When a city is chosen to host the Olympics, the country's government usually shells out hundreds of millions to build extravagant venues for the athletes and fans.

The 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea will be no exception.

The Korean central government has taken on half of the $62.6 million in costs for building a new stadium for the winter games' opening and closing ceremonies in Pyeongchang. The country has also spent more than $1.5 billion on the Alpensia ski resort, which will serve as a main Olympic venue. In total, the 2018 Winter Olympics will cost South Korea about $12.9 billion, nearly double the amount the country projected when it won the bid in 2011.

While some of the minimalist venues appear to blend in with the snow, others, characterized by sweeping curved lines, look ultra-futuristic.

Original author: Leanna Garfield

Amazon's ad revenue could reach $4.5 billion in 2018, according to an analyst note by JPMorgan.The company is set to emerge as a challenger to Facebook and Google's dominance of online advertising.Its scale and data, fast growth, investments into developing advertising channels and reputation among advertisers make it well-positioned to emerge as a big player.

Advertisers are not the only ones betting on Amazon's rise as a crucial ad vehicle countering Facebook and Google's dominance of digital advertising. Wall Street is too.

Amazon is well-positioned to emerge as the third scaled digital ad platform after Google and Facebook, with its ad revenue set to surpass $4.5 billion in 2018, according to a note by JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth.

Here is why JPMorgan thinks Amazon's ascent is inevitable: 

Amazon has a killer combination of both scale and data

Amazon's sheer scale and data makes it a considerable alternative to the duopoly. Facebook may know the most about people and their interests, and Google may know what people are actively searching for. But Amazon is unique in that it is the only one that has the data on what people buy.

"Amazon is best positioned in our view, with its in-market customers, scale, strong access to data, shopping history, ability to close the loop and leading market share in smart home speakers with Alexa/Echo," Anmuth wrote.

Retail is set to be the biggest advertising opportunity for Amazon, JPMorgan says. Amazon only accounted for approximately 10% of the $18 billion in US online retail ad spend in 2017. But retail represents a $6 billion market opportunity for Amazon in the US alone.

Amazon is a fast-growing, high margin business

Amazon doesn't break down its ad revenue, putting it in its "Others" bucket. But it has one of the fastest-growing digital ad businesses in the United States, already ahead of both Twitter and Snap's ad businesses.

According to JPMorgan, ad revenue represents more than half of Amazon’s "Other" revenue and has grown in the 60% range in the past few quarters. And with advertising being a high-margin services business, its margins are only set to increase more.

"We expect Amazon’s ad revenue to grow rapidly over the next few years, reaching $6.6 billion in 2019, or a 55% 2017-19 CAGR," Anmuth wrote. 

A shift in accounting practices should boost net revenue for Amazon in 2018, with greater margins and gross profit, according to JPMorgan. The company is set to rake in approximately $5 billion of gross profit dollars from advertising in 2019.

Amazon is actively scaling its ad business

Amazon laid the groundwork and consistently pumped in resources to develop its advertising business throughout 2017. It has imminent plans to open a new office with over 2,000 jobs dedicated to advertising in New York City, has built out ad tech for publishers,  helped marketers target their customers with ads and focused in on search advertising.

Amazon offers three different primary ad units including Sponsored Products, Headline Search Ads and Product Display Ads. It has also built out a programmatic ad offering that can be utilized on third-party sites, offers a header bidding solution, has tested in-stream video ads with NFL advertisers and will reportedly soon allow companies to promote their products on Alexa.

"Amazon is actively scaling its ad business by accelerating ad sales force hiring and opening more inventory to more sellers on the platform, and appears to be gaining momentum with ad agencies," Anmuth wrote.

Advertisers have been increasingly warming up to Amazon 

Amazon has been readying its blitz to try to sell its services to media agencies, and advertisers and media agencies are warming up to that prospect. Global ad holding companies including Publicis, WPP and Omnicom all plan to increase their ad spend on Amazon by 40-100% in 2018, from an estimated $500 million in 2017 to over $800 million in 2018.

"I think that they are a force to be reckoned with, they are excellent with everything they do," Kristin Lemkau, chief marketing officer at JPMorgan Chase told Business Insider last year. "You have to do business with Amazon."

Still, Amazon has some catching up to do. Google generated $61 billion and Facebook had $27 billion in advertising revenue in the first three quarters of 2017 respectively. Amazon, on the other hand, is estimated to have generated approximately $2.8 billion in ad revenue in 2017, according to JPMorgan. 

Original author: Tanya Dua

Grateful Dead. Peter Simon

It took 14 years for Amir Bar-Lev to make the Grateful Dead documentary, "Long Strange Trip," 10 of which was spent just trying to convince the band to let him make it. What was intended to be a 90-minute doc that would be released for the band's 50th anniversary in 2015 led to a 4-hour, 6-part doc that's now available on Amazon Prime.

Documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev is no stranger to ambitious projects.

He's given us a look inside the complexities behind a 4-year-old painting savant (“My Kid Could Paint That”), explored the hero complex bestowed on an NFL star who went to fight for his country after 9/11 (“The Tillman Story"), and was front-and-center while the legacy of Joe Paterno and his beloved Penn State football program crumbled before our eyes (“Happy Valley”).

However, none of those compare to taking on the Grateful Dead, and its lead guitarist and figurehead Jerry Garcia, in his latest movie, "Long Strange Trip."

"Long Strange Trip" director Amir Bar-Lev. Tibrina Hobson/Getty

“This is the film I’m most proud of,” Bar-Lev told Business Insider. “On some level, this is my life’s work.”

For over a decade, Bar-Lev, an admitted “Dead Head,” tried to convince the band that he was the director worthy of making the definitive film on the legendary band. It finally happened, but there were many twists in the tale of how “Long Strange Trip” was made, including how Bar-Lev landed the job at long last.

Other directors failed

The Grateful Dead's original plan was to have a 90-minute documentary to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the band (which would have been released in 2015). But like the unconventional way the Grateful Dead operates, “Long Strange Trip” became a daunting task to accomplish from its inception.

Before Bar-Lev came on, other directors tried to tell the story and had to back out, in some cases because of all the moving parts that surround the band. At one point, acclaimed director Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting,” “Milk”) had beat out Bar-Lev to make the movie. However, Bar-Lev said he later learned Van Sant bowed out. That left Bar-Lev as the only willing director to take it on.

Bar-Lev didn’t just roll with the band’s quirks, but also convinced his investors to go beyond the 50th anniversary plans, and make a movie that was hours longer.

After four years making the movie (three of them just editing), he premiered “Long Strange Trip” at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in its final 4-hour form. Amazon Studios acquired it and has made it into a six-part documentary (currently available on Prime) that masterfully traces the life of this complex band that was birthed during the LSD craze of the mid 1960s, and by the 1980s was worshiped by millions.

Pulling the rug from under the audience

A highlight of this deep dive into the Dead is the treasure trove of things Bar-Lev and his team kept coming across while making it.

“We found never-before-seen footage and photos and audio recordings in people's attics and storage lockers,” he said. “We had a vast network of people looking for this stuff.”

The Grateful Dead performing with the Wall of Sound. Sundance Insititute

Over the years, as Bar-Lev kept convincing the producers that the movie could be longer, it gave him the ability to delve into aspects of the Dead that wouldn’t have worked in a 90-minute documentary. One example is looking at the loyal roadies tasked to build and break down the “Wall of Sound” every show during the band’s 1974 tour. The footage and interviews of the massive construction, which at the time was the largest concert sound system ever built, is a remarkable sight for newbies to the band — and a wicked acid flashback for the Dead Heads who were there.

The length of time it took to complete the movie also gave Bar-Lev the ability to convince notoriously camera shy Grateful Dead songwriter Robert Hunter to go on camera. But instead of attempting to give Grateful Dead fans a glimpse inside the man responsible for the lyrics to some of the band's most famous songs, Bar-Lev used the opportunity to show the audience that this is a different kind of rock band movie. 

“I realized there wasn't much I really wanted him to answer,” Bar-Lev said of talking to Hunter. “So I asked him a question I knew he hates to answer which was what's the song 'Dark Star' mean? And he did exactly what I hoped he would do, it provoked his ire and he answered in a very funny way and then basically kicked me out of his dressing room.”

The method to Bar-Lev's madness here was that he thought there were some things about the Dead that should never be explored, because if they were a part of the beloved mystique of the band would be lost forever.

“The question at the heart of the Grateful Dead is what does it all mean? That should never be answered, because once it's gone the magic is gone,” Bar-Lev said. “So we tried to make a point of that when interviewing Hunter. By exactly putting the wrong question to the wrong person.”

It’s alive!

What sets the movie apart from most documentaries about rock bands is that “Long Strange Trip” is as unconventional as its subject. Though Bar-Lev tracked down the existing band members for interviews, along with a slew of others who were in their orbit through the decades, the movie is filled with Easter Eggs for the most obsessed Dead Head, jump cuts in the story’s timeline, and appearances by the Frankenstein monster.

This last one is probably Bar-Lev’s most radical storytelling device. Using masterful editing, the iconic horror figure that Jerry Garcia loved as a child is highlighted throughout the movie for major moments in the band's existence.

Publicity photo for "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," which Jerry Garcia loved as a kid. Universal

“The appearance of the Frankenstein monster changes over the period of the film,” Bar-Lev explained.

“The first time he shows up Jerry is terrified of the monster,” Bar-Lev said (and as we learn in a Garcia interview Bar-Lev’s team uncovered that was done before his death in 1995). In the interview, Garcia said one of his all-time favorite movies as a kid was the classic comedy/horror “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” At that point he was scared of the monster.

“The second time he shows up Jerry identifies with the monster,” Bar-Lev said. In the doc, Bar-Lev uses footage from 1931’s “Frankenstein” — of the monster smoking and playing a violin — to mirror Garcia forming the band.

“The third time he shows up it’s when Jerry’s daughter says that the fandom around the Grateful Dead has become too much for Jerry, and now he identifies with Doctor Frankenstein.” We then see “Frankenstein” footage of the doctor looking exhausted as the monster can no longer be controlled.

“The audience might not know it, but ‘Frankenstein’ is charting our progress,” Bar-Lev said. “Every time the monster shows up the audience achieves another milestone in the greater understanding of the movie.”

That’s what Bar-Lev hopes audiences get from watching “Long Strange Trip.”

“If I’ve succeeded then you get to the end of the movie and you don’t just have any more questions about why people love the Grateful Dead, you’re not even interested in the question anymore, “ Bar-Lev said. “My greatest hope is for the time you’re watching it you’re participating in a Grateful Dead story.”

Original author: Jason Guerrasio