Awards Season

Seasons.  Funny thing that.  I thought there were only four seasons growing up -- Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall or Autumn.  As time has progressed, though, it seems as though, the big "WE" want more seasons.

Certainly, for you "Sporties" in the crowd, there is Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer and possibly, LaCrosse season (although, being a native Texan, I have no idea when the LaCrosse would be).  And for those of use who celebrate such things, there is the Holiday Season.  You know, starts somewhere just after All Hallowed's Eve (Halloween, for you youngsters) and ends after the Ball drops in Times Square.

But seeing as how my family and I are enmeshed in the Entertainment Business (No, really, it is a business), we become very aware of all the happy back-slapping that happens in and around Tinsel Town around this time of year (Oh, that would be December through March, I guess).  What, with everyone getting in on the act -- the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (The Golden Globes), the National Recording Arts and Sciences, NARAS (the Grammys), the Costume Designers Guild (The CDG Awards), the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (The Emmys), The Producers Guild (The PGA Awards), The Directors Guild (The DGA Awards), the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA Hollywood (The Annie Awards), the Writer's Guild (The WGA Awards), The Visual Effects Society (the VES Awards) and the Screen Actor's Guild (the SAGGIES?)  Really?  I may have to look into that one. 

With all of these shows, you'd think that there was nothing on Television.  Well, you can answer that one.

Anyway, the BIG event is on the way, the OSCARS.

Red carpet of red carpets, agree/disagree with them, the Academy Awards is the BIG ONE!  It's the one that all the rest are trying to predict, it's the one that has the longest pedigree, it's the one that sits in the middle of the shelf, directly under the spotlight at home, if you're lucky enough to get more than one kind of award.

 If you watch or have a party, be sure to look for my wife and I as we walk by.  Yes, we got lucky again.
Also, be sure to watch this lovely woman, who will be hosting...

I loved her movie from earlier this year, "Love and Other Drugs."  It was fun, funny and insightful, and I hope to be seeing more of her as soon as possible!

See you on the Red Carpet!

L.A. Car Show 2010

Just got back from our annual trek to the L.A. Car Show downtown at the Convention Center next to Nokia Center. Wow! Really cool to see all the new vehicles, new concepts, and hybrid/electric vehicles. Here are some of the things I saw:

                                          Mitsubishi Electric -- 100 mi. range, approx. $20k

                                          With 20% of Chrysler, Fiat is back!

                                          Concept EV from Toyota!

                                          Cool Concept from Nissan, see two below for inside.

                                          Nissan Leaf Electric, 100 mi. range, about $25k

                                          Inside of Nissan Concept, looks like Tron.

                                          Cool looking Nissan Concept

                                          Nissan Concept Convertible.

                                          The original bathtub Porsche

                                          2011 Porsche Boxter, about $45k.  Sweet!

                                          Martin... Aston-Martin.

                                          Sweet looking Lotus!

                                           Lotus Esprit, I think. -- around $45k

                                           Hand-built Morgan, nice tootling up to Napa in this!

                                          The Fisker "Kharma" Hybrid, hand-built. $$$$$!

                                          New Hybrid Concept Jaguar -- I hope they make it!

                                           Front 3/4 of the Jag-U-ar.

                                           The Toyata Swagger Mini Van Concept

                                          Kia Electric Concept car stuck back in a corner.

                                          A new Volkswagen that's out next year (2011)

                                          An Infinity Concept Hybrid

                                           A Cadillac Urban Fantasy Vehicle

                                           Another angle on the slice of cheese

                                           2011 Granite Concept Vehicle from GMC

                                          The 60 miles per charge, $41,000 Chevy Volt

                                          This Transformer was giving me a bad time.

                                          Finally, found Mini-land!

                                           Sweet! A convertible John CooperWorks!

                                          The new Mini CountryMan vehicle, Mini-SUV! 35mpg!

                                          Another cool CooperWorks vehicle!

                                          I was happy to see not one, but two Hybrids in the...

                                          BMW exhibit. With a fully electric coming next year.

                                          Not sure why you'd have to remind us it's "Active."

                                          And Mercedes ode to a Fuel Cell.  With no infrastructure,

                                           How might fuel cell ever take off?

                                          A beautiful V10 Audi R8, looking bad.

                                          Another angle...

                                           Legendary Big Daddy Roth's Mysterion Dragster!

                                          A little Lizzy Flivver Feuler that I loved.

                                           An entry from Automotive X to get 100mpg!

                                          An electric Bathtub Porsche, about $45k! 120mpc.

                                          And finally, the smart car Batman couldn't live without.

We had a blast seeing everything and watching the crowd when it got slow.  Always a great and fun event.  Can't wait for next year.

Stereo vs. 3D

I've been working for the past two months at a company called Illuminate in Hollywood. Don't look for them online yet, they haven't opened the website yet.

But I wanted to chat briefly about the confusion of the term "3D." 3D has been used to describe motion pictures that need two projectors to show their movie. Typically, because there is a left-eye movie and a right-eye movie projected on the same screen at the same time. Now-a-days, we don't use the red and blue eyeglasses to seperate the two projections anymore, we use circular-polarized lenses to view 3D movie, like avatar.

They're "circular-polarized" so that if you tilt your head left or right, your eyes can still see the 3D.

The word "stereo" in our culture is most-often associated with whatever it is that you use to listen to music. Taken from the Greek word "stereos" meaning 'solid', stereo in music comes from the fact that there is a mix of the sounds available, one of two channels available of music for each ear -- left and right.

Quadraphonic sound was a stereo-system in the 60s and 70s that featured recordings with four channel mixes, and your ears would have fun with pans and dissolves that would float around the room.

But stereo, even from the Greek, means three-dimensional, solid.

Since I work with computer graphics and the work is accomplished with both 3D and 2D tools, using computer graphics to create two images becomes a little confusing.

"So, you work in 3D?"

"Yeah."

"Do you have to wear those glasses to do the work?"

"What?"

"You know, 3D glasses."

"Uh, no... I work in a simulated 3-dimensional system, creating realistic models in a computer."

"Yeah, but do you have to wear the glasses?"

"Uhm.... Let's start this again."

So, as you can see, the conversation can get silly really fast. Computer graphics was often referred to for a number of years as being the XYZ (3 dimensional) world created inside computers and put in movies.

Digital compositing (as opposed to the old optical film/chemical compositing) was largely a 2D system of working for the first 20 years of its life, but over the last decade there has been a lot more crossover and Digital compositing (or just compositing now-a-days) has started having more 3D tools inside of the code and it's now one of the principal tools used to create 3D movies after they are shot.

So, that has to be confusing.

Frankly, I think we, as a culture, need to move away from called 3D movies "3D". We need to start referring to them for what they are. They have a left and right eye projected on a screen and they are "Stereo Films" not 3D.

Then again, we should also stop calling computer graphics 3D as well, since it does 3D, 2D and 4D (yeah, that's another post).

I like calling it CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), but then again, I'm fairly Old School.

Awards Season

Well, another annual Awards Season is upon us. We've spent all of the budget money from fiscal 2009, and now, it's time to review and see if we did anything right in spite of the Recession we're still in.

I can tell you right off the bat that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could not have picked a worse year (Well, maybe 2001) for deciding to expand the nominees for Best Picture to ten from the traditional five. Recently, I reviewed all of the titles and off the top of my head, I could think of three that might be worthy from everything I had viewed in the last year.

With paper and pen, I improved this to five. With a review of all the screeners I had watched, I got this number to six. After some talking with other filmmakers, I realized that there were some pictures that I had not seen and did not have screeners for, so, I watched these. It didn't help.

I will heartily reccomend that we return to the traditional five Best Picture availabilities for next year and stay there. It's worked well this long and frankly, I don't remember the reason for going to the double-five number. Perhaps a review is in order.

Anyway, keep your head above water and don't try to really watch more than three award shows this season. If you do, it's likely that your head will implode from all the vaccuous speculation and mind-numbing conversation about "who's wearing who."

Cheers.