Deanne and I at the VES Awards 2010

Yesterday I went to the VES Awards (Visual Effects Society) with Deanne. I was nominated for an award for the work we did on the movie 2012. We were up agains 3(!) separate Avatar nominations so, yeah, we didn’t win. I kind of knew we wouldn’t. Avatar was very impressive and over 1000 people worked on it for 4 years so they deserve all the awards they get :)
But, the evening wasn’t ruined by not winning. It was really awesome to get to dress up in a tuxedo, see Deanne in a really awesome looking dress and to hang out with a bunch of friends from DD and other companies. They had some awesome speakers and guests there too. I got to hear a talk by Ed Catmull that was very inspiring along with a long talk by James Cameron when he accepted the lifetime achievement award. Other speakers were John Knowles (invented photoshop), Steve Wozniak (one of the founders of apple) and Bill Paxton (Aliens, Titanic and so on..).
It is really inspiring to hear so many awesome speakers who do what we do (and some who don’t). It kind of reminds me how awesome I think my job is. I tend to forget every now and then, but events like these give me a reminder of how lucky I am to work with something I love.
I can’t wait for the next big movie project :)

Me, talking and talking

I got invited to speak at a conference in South Korea called ICON. International Content Creator’s Conference (doesn’t that spell ICCC?? I guess ICON sounds better ;) ).
Anyway, I accepted the invitation and now I am here in South Korea. I have never been here before. I just gave my lecture/speak and it went well. First time I have given a speech with an interpreter. It went well, she was really good and talked to me a lot before my speech to try to understand what I was talking about. I guess it is a bit confusing if you don’t know any computer graphics at all.
I have been here for 3 days now and I have had a blast :) My friend (and former colleague) Young-il lives here so he has been a great guide. The first day we went to an awesome Korean BBQ place. The food here is amazing. In the evening I met some people from his company and we all went out for a beer or five.

The following day was the first day of the conference. I got up early to go through my presentation and add some stuff that I hadn’t had time to put in. (I’m glad I did, because the presentation ran a bit short). At lunch Young-il picked me up and we went on a sightseeing tour instead of going to the conference. The conference is mostly in Korean so I wouldn’t understand much anyway.
We went to Gyongju for lunch. It is an older village an hour outside of Busan, where the conference is. The restaurant was so cool. Basically a really old building with little gardens and court yards and you got your own little room to sit an eat in. The food was SO good. They just kept bringing little plate after little plate with food that was better and better for every plate. I ate so much that I almost exploded.
After the best food so far we went on to our first sightseeing point. The biggest temple in all of Korea. It was so nice and the area around the temple was a beautiful garden. The temple is still in use too which was cool. I loved the ornamental painting they had done on the ceiling of each building. Really beautiful.

After the temple we went to one of the world heritage sites here in Korea. It is a really beautiful stone Buddha inside of a cave. It was on top of this really cool mountain. That was our last stop for the day and we headed back to my hotel where I needed to meet my interpreter to go through the presentation with her.
Last thing we did that day was to go to a Japanese sashimi place for dinner. That was the most fancy sashimi place I have ever been to. The fish was awesome! They served little plate after little plate (seems to be the way to go here) with all sorts of things I have never heard of. And it was AWESOME! The strangest thing we had was a squid, where the middle part of the squid was cut up for us to eat, the back part and the head were on the plate and the head with all the arm was STILL ALIVE!! So crazy! The waitress poured some lemon on it and the arms and head went crazy and almost crawled off the plate! Woha! It tasted really good but it was definitely a strange experience haha!
Today I woke up, had some breakfast, went through my presentation twice and then went to give the presentation. It all went well and I event some questions :)

Now I think we are heading out for more sightseeing before I go to the ICON party tonight in the Busan Aquarium.

Joe McNally workshop. Or, I AM HANGING OUT WITH JOE MCNALLY FOR A FULL DAY TAKING PICTURES WOHOO!!!!!!!
That tells you more how excited I was about this day. Add to that that I have been working every day for the last six weeks and I you'd start to understand how happy I was to take the weekend off to fly to New York and be at Joe's workshop.
I booked it as soon as they announced them on the Joe McNally blog. I wasn't sure if I'd get a spot or not so I sent the response with express mail. They responded after a while that I had gotten the spot. Sweet. I needed something to look forward to. I waited a while before I booked my flight and hotel, just to make sure I didn't have to work. After a while I realized that I was going to have to work most likely but also that I would have been working non stop up until the workshop came around. So I decided to just go. I really didn't want to miss this.
I booked a hotel close to JFK since I was flying back really early. Oh man, the area around JFK is pretty depressing to say the least. My hotel was the crown jewel of depressingness (yes, I just made that word up). It looked like it belonged in the former Soviet Union haha. The whole place had a bit of a twilight zone over it. I didn't really care since I was just spending two nights there. I flew in on Saturday, landed at 7. The checkin line at the hotel was crazy so I took my rental car and went out to look for food. The areas around JFK are kind of sketchy to say the least so finally I gave up and defaulted to McDonald's. A really sketchy one.
Went back to the hotel, checked in and went to bed. The next day I woke up early and drove up to Dobbs Ferry where the workshop was. It is about an hour north of JFK.
The workshop was great! Basically we got to hang out with Joe the whole day while he walked us through lighting setups and talked about how he was lighting things and his thought process. That was the most awesome thing the whole day, just to hear how he was reasoning and trying to make the picture work. Really annoying how easy he made it seem haha. There were some models from some agency in NY there too. They were all really nice and normal except one girl who was so funny. Probably the blondest person I have ever met. She kept saying the weirdest things making the whole group biting their lips not to laugh. The later in the day it got the less people could hold the laughter back hahaha. Great entertainment.
The best part of the day for me was just seeing Joe do three lighting setups with just one light where the pictures came out amazing. Made me think a bit that I might be overdoing the whole flash lighting thing sometimes and using a bunch of lights just because I have them, not so much because I need them to get the picture i want :)
It was a long day and I learned a lot, and it was really fun to get to meet Joe and hang out with him and his staff.
Drove back to return the rental car like a mad man after my gps for some reason thought that JFK was on the west coast of the US and sent me that way. Just made it back to the airport in time for not paying for an extra day on the car.
Went back to my depressing hotel exhausted. Had a really bad burger with an awesome Corona (beer tends to taste great when you are exhausted I've noticed..). Went straight to bed after that. Needed a few hours of sleep before I flew back to LA at 6.30am.
Not a very relaxing weekend, but one I'll remember for a long time :)

So, since I was in Chamonix away from Deanne on my birthday she decided that we would have a second birthday when I got home. That birthday was today.
Here is my day from start to finish. Woke up early, or so I thought. After about half an hour of total confusion we decided that last night was the night when the daylight savings adjustment happened. That meant, we just lost an hour and didn't wake up as early as we thought. Oh well, not much we could do about that. We packed the car with Deanne's bike and the awesome bike she had rented for me, made sure we had all our stuff and headed to the Rose Cafe for some breakfast. After breakfast we took a quick trip to the Patagonia store next door where I bought myself a really nice soft shell. After all, it was my birthday. Again.
When we were done with the short shopping streak we headed out on the roads. We went on the 10 east heading for Perris Valley. Highlights along the way: a shell station where the bathroom and 3 of the pumps were broken where we lost precious time getting to our first destination.
At 1.07 pm we rolled in to the Perris Valley indoor skydiving place's parking lot. I was so excited at this point. We went inside to register, get our ugly t-shirts and pay. After that we walked in to the indoor skydiving thingy and met our instructor. They started with a lame instructional video followed by handing out the gear we would be wearing in the wind tunnel. I got the purple suit (oh, great, thanks) and, after Deanne had pointed out that it was my birthday, I also got the neon green birthday helmet. Thanks Deanne.
We had paid for four minutes. They said it felt like way more (they were totally wrong). First thing we got to do was to just lie down on the bottom of the wind tunnel, assume the skydiving position and then they turned the fans on while the instructor was adjusting your body position and stabilizing you. Second time he let me fly a bit more on my own. Third time he just walked out of the airflow letting me float on my own! It was so much fun!!! A bit of a balancing act. He then showed me how to go higher and lower. I did, a few times. It was such a blast!! I could turn, rotate, go forward and backwards and up and down. My time in the tunnel felt like seconds!! I didn't want to get out! But, I had to. I came out with the biggest smile. Deanne had gone before me and the instructor had flown with her high up in the tunnel. When she came down she just smiled so big at me through the glass walls separating us. It was such a great place. I had a blast and didn't want to leave. But we had to. We had more stuff to do this day.
After a quick food stop at Wendy's we headed west over the mountains. This part of LA is so beautiful with green hills and nice lakes. This is a big wine producing part of California. We even got to see all of Lake Depressu. Nice place.
At about five we arrived at Aliso Woods Canyon State Park. We unloaded the mountain bikes from the trunk of my car and got the gear on. After asking for some tips from some dude that looked like he had gone there a lot we decided to do the Mathis Canyon trail up and then the Rock-It trail down.
Mathis was a hard trail! It was such a steep and rocky uphill climb for over 30 minutes. We had to stop so many times along the way since our thighs were shaking. Even after my week of skiing in Chamonix! Once we made it up the view was really great. You could see the ocean from there.
The way down Rock-It was a blast! Single track at first with high bushes and grass next to it made it feel even more narrow. Really curvy and fun. After that we hit a really technical section with a LOT of really bumpy rock. Once we got over that section it was more curvy dirt road all the way to the bottom. At the bottom the trail turned into a really nice curvy forrest trail. We got back to the car at seven exhausted and smiling so big. We started heading home after loading the bikes in the car.
Once we got home we headed over to canal club (after a much needed shower). We ended the day with my favorite Escolar Sushi and a Corona.
Such a good day.
More of these please.