Day Twenty 29:
Well I haven't been the best at logging my ideas over the past four months, with work taking up 80% of my daily routine; I've had to prioritize where my additional time can be spent. Yesterday was one of the first days I could actually enjoy the space that lies between feeling obligated to someone else's agenda.
I spent the afternoon of November 14 over at the Historic Carolina Theatre in Durham, NC. A place I must admit I've only ventured to a hand full of times in my 17 years living in Chapel Hill, NC. As luck had it the NC Comic Con is in town this weekend and on hand the theatre decided to feature Brad Bird's 1999 animation classic The Iron Giant, released on August 06, this film is the benchmark of when I realized that my goals of entering back into animation had only been sidelined by the lack of guidance and support during my high school years.
To date this film ranks in my top ten animated features of all time, a post that I should get to writing... Anyway, I looked at this as a perfect opportunity to view the film once again on the big screen, but also to study it a bit further.
I purchased the DVD of the film some years ago and copied a digital version to my G-Drive as a way of having it on the go, as I do with all my films. As a bonus you get an audio commentary with Brad Bird, Tony Fucile, and Jeffery Lynch, Steve Markowski. In July I purchased a Lacie Fuel 2T wifi external hard drive, for my studies at CCA and it came in handy when I decided to use this moment of wide screen film watching to pair it with the commentary version I had archived some ten years ago. Besides the small details of the day, it was a experience that felt like I was attending a panel given by the four members of the crew.
Much can be said on the film itself but, I'm not choosing to go into an analysis of the film at this point. I would however like to talk about the technical advancements that where achieved during it production, in a post to come. I have finally found where I'll spend the majority of my efforts with this blog though. I'm working to showcase the evolution of the art form of animation during my studies at CCA, this coming spring.