Archive for August, 2008

While stumbling around on the internet, I found a press release from Intel about a “Mass Animation” project being sponsored by Face Book, Reel FX, and Aniboom.  The concept seems interesting enough.  Animators will be able to use Maya to animate shots for a short.  The director Yair Landau will (I’m assuming) select the best versions of each shot to be used in the final piece.  Reel FX will take the work and (again, I’m assuming) do the lighting, rendering, compositing, and editing.

Interesting concept.  Might be worth keeping an eye on.  You can read more here.

For quite a while now I haven’t been submitting Till Death Do Us Part to festivals.  As unfortunate as it is, I’ve been so busy that I can’t find the time to deal with the somewhat tedious process.   I won’t go so far as to say that I won’t submit it to anymore festivals ever.  It just won’t be happening very often.

What now?  I’m not exactly sure.  I always had thoughts of putting it on DVD and selling it ultra cheap, but honestly, I’m not sure if I can find the time for that.  There is a lot involved and I certainly don’t have the time to market it as needed.  Another possibility is to find a distributor.  That may not be a bad idea if I can get accepted.  And lastly, I could just put it on the net for everyone to see.  I’ll be making some decisions soon.

I learned quite a bit through this experience.  I’ll share probably the most important piece of info with all of you making your own shorts.  Make them short!  Twelve minutes is too long.  I talked with quite a few programmers from various festivals that really liked TDDUP, but it was too long to fit in their show.  If you embark on the journey of making your own film (and I can’t recommend it enough), please do yourself a favor and make it under 5 minutes.  Not only will it be less work, but you’re more likely to get it into festivals.