After the fact reporting: Electronic Theatre

I saw the Tuesday, 1:30PM Electronic Theatre screening.

• There was a 15-minute pre-show "performance" of an interactive paint/flyaround system. A slow drifting camera let the artist paint CG forms in the space-- lumpy sticks out of the ground, mountains in the background, lumpy sticks emitting lights that swarmed, stringy things that wiggled, and a "dragon"-sort of thing that flew all over the newly painted "garden." I found it 100% uninteresting-- tortuously long and boring, and oy, the music...
• I enjoyed the ILM and DD pieces, though I always want more "explode the shot" breakdowns. They exploded wow rh10, the big drive-away with the freeway crashing down.
• "Cubic Tragedy" was the standout funny, smart, well done short animation, with hilarious references to CG software. Click here to view/download.
• Blur studios had two brilliant, adorable short animations-- the first was "Gopher Broke": a gopher trying to get food from trucks going to a farmer's market; the second was "In the Rough": a caveman couple working through some marital issues. They're using the right checklist: story, character, cinematography, and they were both visually stunning. I'd like to see them make a feature-- are they making a feature? Their polish reminded me of Pixar.
• The presentation was cursed, as usual, by a number of well-produced, visually interesting, but pointless and WAY TOO LONG shorts from France: "La Dernière Minute" (abbreviated version-- thank goodness), "Overtime," "Helium," "Workin' Progress." The last three of those are from Supinfocom, which must be destroyed. A slightly less pointless, but still too long short from Poland was "Fallen Art"-- gross. To people making animation shorts: PACING, PEOPLE!
• Shane Acker did a piece "9" which seemed interesting until the end-- I didn't get it. I did enjoy the trap which was set for the predator, and the pacing was tight. I get it now-- Brian explained the souls-in-the-metal-box thing to me-- ok, very nice...