Steve Rotfeld Productions
Veteran producer and old friend Vince Sherry, (now the Executive Producer of Forensic Files 11 on HLN, formerly the lead producer on the original Forensic Files show for MedStar Television, and between those stints, was a field producer for Steve Rotfeld Productions), invites Future Media Corporation on location to assist in production of several episodes for his Emmy-nominated SRP show: Xploration: Earth 2050. “E-2050” tries to figure out: “What the world will look like in 2050? Where will advancements in science, technology, engineering and math lead us?”
“Wearable Air Bags” Feature
Auto crashes are the 9th leading cause of death in the world. If scientists can design new products such as wearable air bags to prevent many of those deaths while promoting wellness simultaneously, it will save billions of dollars in healthcare spending and people would live longer. Our production crew investigated wearable air bags for senior citizens – an offshoot of the auto industry – at Key Safety Systems in Sterling Heights MI.
“Drones & Dogs” Feature
Future Media Corporation provided production services for this episode titled: “Animal Kingdom Meets Future Tech.” Although Detroit’s downtown area is amid an economic upswing, hundreds of city-owned acres form a sprawling landscape of vacant land and deteriorated buildings. Hundreds of thousands of people moved out when life became hell on earth. Many of them left their dogs behind creating an estimated Detroit population of at least 10-thousand feral dogs. We accompanied “animal humanitarians” in southeast Michigan who use dronecams to locate and develop plans for control and care of these animals
“Smart Cement” Feature
Future Media Corporation provided location video production services for this episode titled “How Things Are Made.” Cement is the most-used construction material on earth. This segment on “Smart (pliable and crack self-repairing) Cement ” features scientists at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Smart Cement” is lighter-weight and will last many times longer than conventional, standard-mixed cement.
“Manufacturing Industrial Diamond” Feature
This “Growing (Manufacturing) Industrial Diamond ” feature – a stronger and less expensive material to produce than mining natural diamonds – is used for industrial cutting and polishing processes. MI State University and industry scientists in East Lansing, explain that diamond is the best conductor of heat and that its many properties will lead to important improvements on earth long before “2050”.
UPDATE:
In Feb. 2020, “placemaker agency” Lansing Economic Area Partnership (LEAP), began an area-wide site search for an MSU technology spin-off company called: Great Lakes Crystal Technologies (GLCT). It’s a world-class diamond research collaboration between MSU and Fraunhofer USA Center for Coatings and Diamond Technologies, in partnership with MSU’s Spartan Innovations, and the VanCamp Research & Incubator Center, with assistance from LEAP’s Business Accelerator Fund. The research had reached a “growth point” to begin manufacturing industrial diamond for the world market. If you’ve watched the episode above, you understand the basic process and get an inkling of what it will contribute to life on “Earth” before “2050”!
