VES Awards Trip

2007.02.27 - Tuesday

I've finally managed to sort through both my pictures and those of my co-workers from our recent trip down to the 2006 VES Awards in LA and choose some good ones for the site. To the right is the Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica. It's not exactly close to where the awards were being held in Hollywood, but Santa Monica is a much nicer area for a visit. The hotel is an older building with an art deco style, and is certainly quite a bit different than the newer hotels around it. Its teal and gold colour scheme also helped it to really pop out from the larger white buildings on Ocean Ave. I arrived on Sunday and spent a couple of hours catching up with Aruna, who I've known for several years and worked with at GVFX but don't see much due to our slightly different locations, who was kind enough to give me a ride from the airport. He mentioned that since it had rained the night before, the air was especially clear. I certainly didn't notice any difference from home, at least not in Santa Monica, and certainly not right by the ocean. The first thing I noticed when I got outside of LAX was how everything is painted white. I know it looks great in the sun, which LA certainly gets a lot of, but I couldn't help thinking about how awful and dirty all of the buildings would look after being exposed to even one week of solid Vancouver rain. I guess that's why we don't have many white buildings!

On Sunday evening we took a cab over to Hollywood for the awards ceremony, which was held in a large hotel complex which housed the Renaissance Hotel and the Kodak Theatre among other things. The VES Awards were held in a large ballroom amongst it all. I'm not sure exactly how many people were in attendance, but according to the VES site it was between 800 and 900. Included in this group of visual effects people was George Lucas, there to present legendary VFX supervisor Dennis Murren with a lifetime achievement award.

Everyone was telling me that the awards ceremony itself would be boring, but it wasn't that bad. I'm not sure if it moved along more quickly this year, or if I just didn't notice, but it really didn't seem like it took too long. A lot of time was given to Dennis Murren's award, with a specially made reel of his work along with a couple of longer speeches. With Murren finally on stage, a drawn out standing ovation followed as he accepted his lifetime achievement award from Lucas. Trevor Adams and Louie Hinayo were both nominated for "Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Broadcast Program, Commercial, or Music Video" for their work on the Cylon Centurions in a different episode of "Battlestar Galactica". Their category came up before Brenda's and mine, but unfortunately the Gecko from one of those Geico commercials ended up winning.

Eventually our category, "Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series", got its turn. I thought the competition looked okay, particularly the ghostly animated characters in the "Smallville" episode "Zod". I thought they would take the award for sure, since CG characters, even ghostly ones, which are interacting with an actor almost always win out over space ships. I have to admit I was surprised and relieved when the presenter, Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer fame, announced "Battlestar Galactica, Exodus Part 2" as the winner. Brenda, who was the Lead Compositor, and myself got up and met VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel and VFX producer Mike Gibson along the way to the stage.

I had the opportunity to go up to the podium so I figured I might as well say something. Of course, I wanted to thank everyone who worked on the show with us, but I instantly forgot their names as soon as I looked up into the bright stage lights. So a relatively quick "thank you to everyone at Atmosphere who worked on the show" had to do. I probably should have spent a bit more than 30 seconds thinking about what to say if I had the chance, but I guess I didn't want to jinx anything. In 3D alone we had Daniel, Nik, Chandra, Paul, Scott, Louie, Andy, Eric, and Trevor working on this show, so nothing happens in a vacuum, and that's not even getting to the compositors. Everyone put a lot of hours into "303" and obviously the hard work was worth it. It would have been nice to have more people down at the awards; maybe next time. Once again, thanks everyone for the great work!

Drew noticed that Dennis Murren was nice enough to mingle with everyone after the show, and wasted no time organizing a picture. If you aren't familiar with his name, you're almost certainly familiar with his work, since it appears in almost every Steven Spielberg and George Lucas film made since "Star Wars", among many, many others.

Well that just about covers Sunday. Brenda and I were fortunate to come away with the hardware, and I hope that a good time was had by everyone. It was certainly an interesting show, and definitely worth the trip. Since I was incredibly busy with Babylon 5 at the time, I didn't realize how tired I was until Monday morning when I just couldn't wake myself up. Thankfully there was nothing pressing to do. Eventually I got back in touch with Aruna, who once again was a great "host" a gave Louie and I a quick tour around Digital Domain. I knew that place was large but it's definitely and eye-opener to see the facilities in person. With several large, but nicely decorated warehouses full of artists, software developers, and the like, it's easy to see why the big VFX houses are able to get so much done and at a high level of quality. I'm sure it's a very interesting place to work. Even being in the building felt somewhat inspiring, though I'm sure that feeling would evaporate pretty quickly. Eventually our visit was over, and Louie and I snapped a few more pictures on our beach-side walk back to the hotel, arriving just in time to pack our bags and catch the flight back to Vancouver.

I was back home barely a day after leaving, and with enough time to stop by work and check on some renders. Everything had gone smoothly while I was away, and finding that out was the perfect cap to a nice trip. I only hope that if I get another chance to go down there, it turns out to be for more than 30 hours!

Sorry Rick, But You're Done

2007.02.26 - Monday

Berman Still Pondering Failure Of "Nemesis"

I almost feel sorry for Rick Berman. Sometimes I feel like people are too hard on him, myself included. After all, he did give us some fantastic Trek in the years following Gene Roddenberry's death. Season 5 of TNG was excellent. The finale, "All Good Things..." remains one of my favourite pieces of filmed sci-fi to date. "Generations" was a good character film, and "First Contact" was a blast. Of course, there was also "Voyager", and "Enterprise". Oh right....those.

The biggest problem with "Nemesis", it seems to me, is how bland the whole thing is. Never mind the wild continuity errors, like Wesley's sudden and awkward appearance at the wedding, or Picard and crew flying down to a pre-warp planet and shooting up the place without even a throw away line about the Prime Directive. Never mind the fact that the cast looks really, really old. The whole movie feels like a paint-by-numbers Star Trek, and Rick Berman is, to this day, still looking at the picture saying to himself: "I don't understand, I've got yellow in all the right places, and green in all the right places, why don't people think it's beautiful?"

Just listen to him in this interview. He goes on and on about the "studio tracking information" and how all of the "science" pointed to the film doing well. Treating an artistic project like a film as if it's some equation to be worked out hardly ever bodes well, if you ask me. "Nemesis" doesn't even feel like a Star Trek film, episode, or story. There's no real moral conflict, no sense of discovery of anything, on any level, and no significant character emotion.

Star Trek, under Rick Berman, had a great start and a decent middle, but for whatever reason he just stopped producing good shows. I don't know if he was actually good at his job at the beginning, or if the golden age of TNG happened because the team Roddenberry had set up was finally hitting its stride. Other than a few memorable episodes, however, Star Trek started to become more about action, sex, and "dark" characters than about exploration, hard sci-fi concepts, futurism, Humanity, existence, or moral progress. Honestly, I think that after "Voyager" and "Enterprise", Star Trek fans got bored of seeing the same old formula over and over again, and I think they sent Berman a message. It's a shame that he obviously hasn't received it.

Finally, The Wii Is Online

2007.02.25 - Sunday

I stopped by Future Shop after work yesterday and picked up a wireless router. As far as the Wii is concerned I was planning to buy the Ethernet adaptor and keep everything wired, but since Sarah bought a laptop recently it only makes sense now to have a wireless router. I chose the Linksys model since I had their wired version before, and this time it was even easier to setup. They provide a wonderful little CD which guides you through the setup process, and thankfully doesn't seem to actually install anything. I ended up having to change my wireless channel to accommodate the Wii, but now everything works just fine.

As far as the Wii's online features go, I'm not sure I'll end up using most of them. The weather channel looks great, and I could see it being useful since it's a lot easier to quickly turn on the Wii in the morning to check the weather forecast than it is to boot my PC. Even browsing the worldwide weather is smooth and comfortable. The news channel seems a bit clunky to me, and the internet channel is certainly no substitute for a computer. The shop channel, on the other hand, could get dangerous. I was browsing through the list of available games, tempted by numerous titles. I'll steer clear of the ones I already own hard copies of, unless I get a real craving and don't want to get my old systems and cartridges out of storage. However, the idea of playing some old games which I never owned, didn't play, or barely remember is very attractive. The Sega Genesis titles "Altered Beast", "Golden Axe", and "Space Harrier II" caught my eye, as did "R-Type 3" on the SNES. These are absolute classics which I never got around to tracking down on Ebay, so I might end up forking over the few bucks to download them.

I still have to work my way through "Elebits" as well. Between that game and getting through Zelda, I'm really starting to get a handle on the pointing functions of the remote. I would say I'm very close to mouse-level accuracy and speed right now, and certainly the remote is already preferable to a thumbstick for any kind of targeting task. The more I use the Wii the more I'm positive Metroid Prime 3 is going to be amazing on the system. I know it's been pushed back again, but I don't care. I want the game to be perfect when it comes out, and if the first two are any indication, I don't expect to be disappointed.

Yes, I'm Still Here

2007.02.23 - Friday

I didn't want to let an entire month slip by without a post, so I figured I should get one done while there is a pause at work, at least for 3D. The new Babylon 5 project has been going well, but it's been extremely tight for time and everyone's been working like crazy. I've put more hours into this show than any other I can think of at the moment, and I hope people will be pleased with the work once they see it. Being Babylon 5, however, I'm pretty sure it will be impossible to please everyone. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

I'll be taking a couple of weeks off once the show is done, which shouldn't be too much longer. I'm hoping to get a bunch of computer chores done in that time, maybe even put a new system together for the first time four or five years. I want to get setup with Vista, and I've had a recent urge to go back and play my way through "Freespace 2" again. I'd also love to catch up on some movies. "Children of Men", both "Flags" and "Iwo Jima" if I can find them playing somewhere. I don't even know what else is out right now. Maybe I'll even see "Ghost Rider", just for fun.

Ah yes, the other news was our recent VES win for "Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series" for "Battlestar Galactica, Exodus Part 2". I took a couple of days away from B5 to go down to LA for the awards ceremony, which was a lot of fun. I hope to get some pictures up on here over the weekend, so keep an eye out for that.

I should be able to get back to regular posting soon, as well. I've got a few things I want to cover, so I should have more than enough time during my break.