SIGGRAPH 2007 – Tour of Exhibit Hall
As you can see from my previous post, I’m starting to get media releases for SIGGRAPH 2008 and, well, it got me motivated to finally edit this piece from SIGGRAPH 2007. At SIG-07, I was frantically running around the exhibit hall on opening day with my camera, not sure of where to go to first, for about half an hour before the crowds were let in. The end result, I ended up with thirty minutes of raw tape that I just edited down to about three and half minutes. Hopefully you’ll find it “tantalizing”. ;-) OK, so I won’t get an OSCAR for best documentary. The main idea is to give you a taste of the what it’s like in the Exhibit Hall.
One thing that struck me about the Exhibit hall, was that when I first walked in, there were all these brilliant colors from the exhibit booth displays. I felt as though I had stepped into a modern art painting. Like a kid in a candy shop, so many booths, which do I choose first. Pixar, Disney, ILM on top of the list for sure. A nice discovery while walking around was EON and their 3D displays. Also, another discovery, which unfortunately, the video recording did not turn out, so it’s not in the video, was a guy walking around with with a global view camera braced above his head. A camera that takes not only takes a 360 degree video horizontally but vertically as well. Every degree, globally, is filmed as he walks around.
Another interesting thing about SIGGRAPH is that you never know who you will meet. My first evening there, I wasn’t able to meet up with the Blender crew for dinner, so I had dinner by myself. Not one to sit around alone, I introduced myself to the person at the next table who I noticed was also alone. We got into a discussion about the industry, it turned out he was with ILM, working directly under George Lucas. He shared some pretty cool things with me about an up coming project which will be released this year. He was there to help in recruiting. Note: If you are serious about getting a job in the industry, be it modeling , animation, textures EFX , programing, and so forth, this is the place to be! I addition to the recruiting going on in the exhibit hall, there was also a separate hall, just for recruiting.
At this years SIGGRAPH I hope to get some more interviews, not only with the Blender crew but other industry heavyweights as well. I’d like to see if I can get some of the pro-modelers and animators to sit down and discuss their experiences and techniques.
So between now and SIGGAPH 2008, which is in August, think about who’d you like to see interviewed, and not just members from the Blender community. As we get closer to August, I’ll be asking you for your input.
One last thing, here’s a good laugh for you, yes, that’s me lit up like a Christmas tree and acting like and idiot at the end of the video. There’s lots of hands on exhibits a SIGGRAPH, and this was a MOCAP exhibit.
YOUTUBE not very good quality, but hey, it’s YouTube.
Yeah.. get us more videos..
I also would like you to make more documentaries and not just about Siggraph..
Looks really interesting. I’d try to go to the next one if it weren’t 2,000 miles away.
I’d go if it was like… in this state (NSW). I don’t really have the freedom right now to hop on a plane and go to the other side of the world to see this. If distance wasn’t a factor though, you wouldn’t even be able to stop me from going!