watched 'Der Ostwind'

I loved it. It looked great, and I liked the story. I thought the desaturated look, animation, and narration made for a subtle expressionistic feel. The animation was at least equal to hollywood's 'Flyboys,' I thought. While I'm obviously biased, I'm pretty sure I'd really like this short even if I didn't know the creators.

I'm looking forward to asking Rob how they integrated some of those live action scenes with animation. Green screens? Did they use soundstages? At the LDS MPS? Cool stuff.

Sundance '07

So the Sundance Film Festival is underway, and there's one film I'm really pulling for. Rob Au is the visual effects supervisor for Der Ostwind, an entry in the Short Film competition. I also knew Ostwind's director Kohl Glass, a little, and he is a smart, talented filmmaker. Rob is brother-in-law to my (and Ian's) BYU roommate Rob Rogers, and Rob Au was even in the Intro. to Film class I TA'd at BYU. So I take most of the credit for this success. Good luck Rob!! If I was living in Salt Lake I'd get up to Park City and pass out buttons and stickers for you in a heartbeat.

Sundance Shorts (including Der Ostwind) and Docs are available to watch online here.

Also interesting is that "Napoleon Dynamite" director (and BYU alum) Jared Hess is on the jury for the Short film competition. There's two other members on the jury, so even if he wanted to play favorites, it probably wouldn't matter. In any case it's good to see BYU-ites continuing to represent at Sundance!

Make news come to you

If readers of this blog are, like me, checking blogs and news sites daily, you may, like me, get tired of the time it takes to open and close browser windows - often to find that no new posts have been made. Time is easily wasted.

A popular solution are rss aggregators/readers (rss stands for real simple syndication). Does anyone else use these? I use bloglines, and find it pretty useful (click here to see other rss readers) Some may find it more trouble than it's worth (bloglines is a little tricky to figure out), but I - in trying to keep up with about a dozen sites - find worth in being able to just look once at a list to see if any new post or news is available.

Here's a screenshot of my rss list:



Also, Amber got me into the dashboard feature on macs, and I use a bloglines widget on that. Technology can save time!:)

vacation pictures

It's been a busy holiday break with a lot of great things happening. Here are some of my favorite pictures of us in California.

the baby blessing at Katie's family's church

notice mary fitting right in

the favorit baby lucas (left) and baby ben (right) picture

check out mike's pinstripe tux

sam and mary at the reception

the sisters

juddy's catch

"Captain EO" Clip

On Judd's (aka The Rumbler) blog he brought up "Captain EO," the 3-D Michael Jackson short movie. The ensuing discussion got me curious about the movie's availability, and it isn't for sale. I found a clip, and (since Judd's YouTube link was deleted) I thought I'd embed this clip (it may run smoother if you let it completely load before playing). Judd is right - I can see the Star Trek - Borg influence. Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas have come up with such original stuff. That's great that FFC wrote and directed, and that Lucas wrote the story.