Bit Films Fall 2010 Internships

I'm pleased to report that internship information is now posted for the Fall 2010 session!

Fall 2010 internship details here

This is our fifth consecutive internship session, running from September 20 to December 17, 2010. Applications are due (via email) no later than Monday September 13, 2010 at 5pm (EDT). We understand that this is short lead time for those in need of making visa and travel arrangements. Because the projects are ongoing, the internship period is flexible; if in doubt, apply!

Everything you'd want to know about the two films being produced in-house (Caldera and Tube) is available via the link above. Today I want to mention the amazing work environment that surrounds the productions and is home to the work we do.

First of all, the studio is on the Hampshire College campus. During the fall, classes are in session so the place is buzzing with activity -- there are lectures, shows, presentations, screenings, sporting events, and more happening all the time and right next to the studio space. Interns have audited Hampshire courses in the past and we certainly expect this to continue.

Nearby Amherst and Northampton are politically liberal college towns with lots of food and entertainment. The PVTA bus system connects them, Hampshire, and the other four colleges in the Five College Consortium so transportation is straightforward. There is also a bike path connecting Northampton and Amherst (which summer 2010 intern Josh ran daily as an impressive commute/exercise regimen).

In addition to lots of US participants over the past four sessions, we've had interns from China, Argentina, South Africa, France, and England be a part of the program in the past. We are eager to fold different voices and histories into the studio so we do our best to support international applicants through the Visa process, finding a place to live, and getting oriented.

So check out the call for interns, look into the films, and see about joining our crew. We look forward to hearing from you.

Request Tower 37 on OpenIndie

I was very excited when I first heard of OpenIndie, the website that will let fans request independent films and allow people anywhere to host screenings. They now have a nice little film widget (below) that lets you request the film really easily! Please check it out if you haven't already and ask for a local screening of Tower 37 -- or host one!

Gender Roles in Pixar's "Day and Night"

Pixar's latest short, "Day and Night," marks an exciting new direction in mixing 2D and 3D animation while hearkening back to animation styles of the past. And I appreciate that it strives to share a valuable lesson in understanding and acceptance.

Lots of people are raving about it, but overall I found the short rather depressing. To me, it was about two spoiled white boys who figure out that they have everything they need already, and they're exactly alike too.

But most troublesome for me were the representations of women, and in particular how men behave around women. It's even a step back from Knick Knack, from 1988, where at least the voiceless white buxom mer-woman was awake and active in her courting of the male snowman.
Side note: the mermaid in Knick Knack had digital breast reduction surgery early in the new millenium. John Lasseter is quoted as saying this was done because "it was just crossing the line for me personally as a father."

The clip I remember most from "Day and Night" was where Night discovers a bikini-clad woman inside Day's sleeping butt. If you haven't seen the film, that sentence may make absolutely no sense. Thankfully, the clip is available online as a part of an odd little making of video. Jump directly to timecode 1:17 if you want just the clip I'm discussing here, or watch the whole thing, below.

Anyway, the woman is sleeping on the beach. She's totally unaware of being spied on by a huge and phallic-nosed Night (just watch that nose when he first is aware of her existence - schwing!). He's a total voyeur, and she is utterly vulnerable.

Night's first reaction to discovering her? He looks around. Guilty and nervous. Like he found a wallet on the ground. I fear for that girl when he then lowers his eyelids and throws out his gigantic tongue. He transforms into a total sleazeball predator.

He finally makes his physical move to capture her inside his belly (animation theorists will have a field day with the metaphors this new technique offers). But when she's not there, he looks at his foot like he might have stepped in something. I can only assume he's trying to find her.

Women (silent, blond, sexy, white) as property to be acquired, hunted, and ultimately captured, by men who must be sneaky, tricky, aggressive, and physically superior over one another.

This isn't new stuff for animation, and many give "Day and Night" a nostalgic "Get out of Bad Gender Dynamics Free" card because Tex Avery and others did this kind of stuff generations ago. But I watched with my 6-year old daughter and 9-year old son, for whom nostalgia played zero part. For them, it was just another demonstration of how boys should behave around girls. Badly, I'm afraid.

Thanks to all the participants in the recent e-discussion about "Day and Night" that occurred on Hampshire College's animation mailing list.

summer in full swing

An awesome Bit Films sticker photo by Jeremy Brown, from SIGGRAPH 2009.

It's sweltering hot these days in Western Massachusetts, so thankfully the AC is functional and the Bit Films crews aren't melting. I've been doing a lot of script writing, while the Caldera and Tube crews are deep in production. Caldera recently completed its successful kickstarter.com campaign, so big thanks to all who contributed!

Really I was psyched to find Jeremy's photo and I wanted to share it.

A new challenge: an open source remote review tool

The year opened with a self-assigned open source DCP quest for The Incident at Tower 37. Now it is summer, and with Caldera deep in the animation phase with an amazing team both local and remote, we've got a new set of problems.

The particular one I'm looking to solve is related to animation reviews. Our ideal tool would allow the director to load up HD QuickTime movies on his machine, point at the screen, talk freely, hear what others have to say no matter where they are, pause and restart the video, scrub to a particular point in the playlist, and make annotations. And so on. Remote participants would be watching the same movie at the same quality and hearing the comments/seeing the director as he spoke.

This problem has been solved a hundred times by lots of different people. I know Animation Mentor has some solution for running reviews with bunch of participants, for example. With all the World Cup soccer I've been watching lately on ESPN3, it appears that live streaming of HQ (if not HD) content works even on my paltry DSL line at home. I've also read about cineSync which seems to be designed for this kind of situation. However, I have yet to find an easy and free solution.

There are a few paths worth exploring. If I could set up a situation that streams the director's screen and audio input in a bandwidth-sensitive way (like ESPN3) to anyone interested in watching/listening, that would be great. A test with simple iChat-based screen sharing between two macs didn't do so well, however - the network couldn't maintain a bandwidth that led to satisfactory results on the viewing end. Too choppy and blocky.

Another idea is for every interested party to pre-cache the movies being reviewed, and then have the director launch a master movie player. All participants would launch slave players, and the control commands (play, pause, seek to X, and so on) would be all that would have to be sent over the network from the master to the slaves. Pluses: this is almost possible already with VLC using its TCP interface, and it ensures that everyone is seeing the highest quality video independent of bandwidth. Minuses: it doesn't allow for annotation, nor audio communication. This would handle just the video part.

Part of working on a problem like this is knowing what the heck to search for while doing my research, and I confess that I'm rather ignorant in that regard. What I might call "remote animation review" someone else might call "live streaming screencast" or something. I will post my results as I go, but honestly part of posting this before having any results to share is to ask people for their help finding the sub-components of this solution online. Thanks in advance.