I went to a USC Film School Animation Festival at the Hollywood Director’s Guild which is located around the corner, practically, from where I live, and I’ve gotta say, why haven’t I find out about things like this before? Open to the public, free admission, free parking, free food, and a very interesting stylistic mix of about 20 short films, which in this case all involved hand- or computer-animation, to provide the main course of the evening’s entertainment. My friend Peggy invited me, and her friend Hy (not sure if that’s how her name’s spelled) knew about 90% of the people there and introduced us to a bunch of the present and past student directors as well as other people she knew. I wish I’d had business cards, as well as a more professional-looking website to show off. (Projects for the near future…)

The show was an impressive mixed bag, with what I felt was a severe glut of films of overly symbolic or implicative nature. Sometimes direct, fun, fast-paced graphics are what’s needed. Maybe even a music video or two; computer animation lends itself well to that. (I was hoping for something along the lines of The Gate to the Mind’s Eye, but no one came through… That’s like what I’d (attempt to) make, at least. I’d do the music for it, too… Move over, Mr. Dolby.) And speaking of which, I was impressed by the musical scores, since the student directors apparently had teamed up with student composers who had in turn teamed up with student musicians. The image and sound quality was impressive too; image resolution was good enough to avoid any stair-steppiness and whatever sort of LCD projector was used was very clear. The Director’s Guild, folks. I’ll definitely be checking out what other sorts of films they’re screening there.

Next, friend (and new friend) and I went our separate ways, and I discovered a parking ticket on my car! I had deliberately spent some quality time scrutinizing the parking sign like an eagle-eyed lawyer, looking for any possible ticket-consequenting note before I had left my car there, and so when I saw the ticket under my wiper blade I eyed it testily from afar but then thought, there’s no possible way I’m parked incorrectly, so I’ll just contest it, so whatever, happy day! But you must be curious (as I was): what was it for, then? Expired tags. And I just had gotten new tags in the mail a couple weeks earlier. More evidence that it’s clearly a conspiracy, as I’ve been saying all along.

Next stop: I saw some extremely bright green laser beams being used as beacons/searchlights originating from The Grove area, so I went to check out the source. Talked to one of the guys running the equipment out of the backs of two white vans parked at the edge of an upper story of the parking lot. Each beam is only 10 watts, he said, so I wondered why anyone would use those rotating searchlights which use tremendous quantities of power and bulbs which burn up after a short time. The reason is that those can be safely aimed straight up or in arbitrary directions, whereas laser beams, although relatively harmless at that power level (we put our hands in the path of one of the beams) can still be dangerous when looked into or could cause some chance interference with aircraft due to the concentratedness at distance (due to coherency) of the light. Each of these beams was aimed at a bare location in the Hollywood hills (rather than upwards), so the hills would terminate the beam. The locations were picked so a beam wouldn’t be shining into someone’s home, for example. (Website of the laser effects company. Odd domain name.)

And, that’s all. The lasers were part of a promotion for Batman Begins, which could be… Batman Falls Down and Skins His Knee for all I care. Nah, I’ll probably see it. Probably has some good computer animation.