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Starts and Endings by the Bay by Karl Cohen
Ray Dolby was a warm spirit always interested in what you were up to, according to co-workers. photo: courtesy Dolby
The Bay Area Film Looses Good Friend
Ray Dolby, whose Dolby Labs has been supportive of the entire local film community for many years, was 80 when he died. He suffered from Alzheimer's disease and was diagnosed with leukemia in July.
Dolby was born in Portland but attended Sequoia High School in Redwood City. While there, he was a student projectionist and worked after school at the Ampex Corp. where he started to figure out how to reduce unwanted background noise in tape recordings.
While still working at Ampex, he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Stanford (1957). He earned a doctoral degree in physics from Cambridge University in England in 1961. In 1965, he founded Dolby Laboratories in London but later moved the company to the Bay Area.
Apparently, his first successful product was a system for eliminating the static noise on cassette tapes used for copying music from vinyl albums. Today, Dolby Labs’ technology has been built into 7.4 billion consumer electronics products, from car stereos to DVD players to high-definition televisions. Dolby is a publicly traded company with 1,600 employees.
A scene from Paley's 'Fetch" showing at SF State. photo: courtesy N. Paley
Pixar Goes Dark In 2014
Although Ed Catmull, their president, recently told the press they want to release an original feature every year and a sequel or prequel every other year, the release date of “The Good Dinosaur” has been moved from 2014 to Nov. 15, 2015. The last year they didn’t release a feature was 2005.
The change in the release date resulted from serious script problems that were not resolved. Bob Peterson was removed as the film’s director. A replacement director has not yet been named.
The movie is based on the premise that an asteroid never hit Earth, and dinosaurs and humans coexist. Catmull says that nobody remembers that you skipped a year, “but they will remember a bad film,” suggesting that the unresolved problems were serious flaws.
Pete Docter's “Inside Out,” a project set inside the brain of a young girl, is still set for a June 19, 2015 release. “Finding Dory” was moved from that date to the summer of 2016.
Parks' Fine 'Sand' Short
Corrie Francis Parks creates a fine looking 'sand' short. She writes, “I'd like to announce an exciting animated collaboration with my friend and writer Kelly Luce. Kelly is releasing her debut collection of short stories this October and I had the privilege of animating a few scenes from her book.
With an oracular toaster, volcanoes and a woman in a shower among the plot points, this turned into a fun project. Enjoy this brief glimpse into Ms. Luce's strange & wonderful mind.” https://vimeo.com/cfparks/hanasasaki
Corrie also says, “Kelly and I met at the MacDowell Colony during the Great Ice Storm of '08. A week without power in rural New Hampshire is a great way to start a friendship. Five years later, we finally found an excuse to work together.”
From Tyrus Wong retrospective at the Disney Museum. photo: courtesy Disney Museum
Special Exhibit Hall at Disney Museum
The Walt Disney Family Museum has a turned a fairly large army gym into an excellent two story space and special exhibit hall for temporary exhibits that is a short walk from the building that houses the permanent collection.
The first show is a large Tyrus Wong Retrospective, is a major educational experience as well as a rare chance to see an important exhibit honoring an artist who created the look of “Bambi” before going on to a career at other film studios.
The show begins with Tyrus coming from China as a boy, his lonely stay on Angel Island and his being reunited with his father—he never saw his mother or sister again. It touches on his family’s poverty including his not being able to afford ink so he learned how to use the Asian bamboo watercolor brush by painting with plain water on paper.
It also covers his formal art school education, life as a struggling WPA mural artist during the depression and then his being hired by the Disney Studio (he never met Walt).
Wong introduced the studio to a visual approach quite different from the gothic architecture and atmosphere of “Snow White” and “Pinocchio.” He combined his love for Chinese painting with the subtle “less is more sensibility” and interest in abstraction found in some early 20th Century modern art.
The studio used his ability to render forests and fields with a soft brushwork to create soft focus backgrounds that added to the film’s illusion of depth and atmosphere. They didn’t need to add details like individual branches or blades of grass to create lush forests.
Wong also contributed a natural look by having the sun light come through the trees, allowed for dark areas that showed little or no details. That let the audience focus their attention on the animals in the patches of light and color. By having a single source of light, the sun streaming through the trees, Wong created the films appealing look.
The “Bambi” portion of the exhibit consists of approximately 40 small color sketches and two video displays. One shows scenes from the film while the other features interviews with Wong, who is now 102, and others. There are more than 150 works displayed including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, delightful looking toys created for his kids, wonderful kites, and more. The show closes Feb. 3. To learn more read the exhibit notes by the show’s curator here.
Exploratorium’s Amazing Kanbar Theatre
It is an impressive unorthodox looking hall with the walls fanning out at a wide angle from the curved stage. It can seat over 150 people on the flat main floor with additional seating on the raised curved back level. On one side of the back section is a built in lounge with a food and drink bar for catered occasions.
The theatre has a complex lighting system and two sound systems. One is a sophisticated public address system and the other is a state-of-the art multi-channel system. The person in the booth can combine the two systems to utilize almost 100 speakers placed strategically around the hall.
When I visited the Exploratorium’s new theater, they were showing a video of the South Bay’s salt ponds shot from a blimp. The sound system led you to believe the hall was actually the cockpit of the blimp and I sort of felt the sound vibrations coming from the blimp’s engines.
The glassed in booth contains a bright high definition digital projector, a new 16mm film projector and the hall’s lighting and sound controls. The booth is a room that juts out above the raised seating area at the back of the hall.
There is a lot more to the theatre. Off the stage area there is a storage area on one side and a hallway on the other that leads to a green room and a much bigger room that Liz Keim, the Exploratorium’s Cinema Arts Program Director and a Senior Curator, uses as her office and work space.
It can also be used as a reception room or food prep area for a reception in the theatre as it has a built in sink, long counter and cabinets.
The office is in the south west corner of the building so Liz plans at some point to experiment projecting on the room’s large plate glass windows so people walking or driving past the Exploratorium can watch moving images.
Local film groups may be using this hall in the future for programs, but at the present time the Exploratorium is still training techs to operate the equipment and run programs. Running the hall as it isn’t a one person job and they are still figuring out the basics, plus there were additional problems created when they had to cut their budget, hours and staff.
Outstanding Animated Visions at SF State
This fascinating AND free October 23rd program at SF State included both unique well-known and obscure films and shows that a wide variety of different materials and techniques can be used to achieve success. It also acknowledges that great animation comes from many parts of the globe.
None of the films have a traditional story structure. Instead each uses original artistic and narrative approaches to deliver content. You might be amazed at the drawing skills or use of design, textures and other elements in these films.
The program touches on several once forbidden topics including sex and politics. While half of the films are light and at times humorous, there are also surreal experimental films and two gripping personal works that deal with their content in unusual ways. You will probably be thinking about some of these films later.
While this program is entertaining and at times amazing, it also illustrates the power of animation to reach adults as a rich intellectual medium in ways quite different from live action films. It also demonstrates that women create exceptional and memorable works.
Program, Wed, Oct 23, 7:15pm at San Francisco State's Coppola Theatre:
Fine Arts Building, Room 101, Public Invited, Free
“Fetch,” 2001 (4:33) Nina Paley (Flash drawing) USA
“The Beloved Ones,” 2007 (6:02) Samantha Moore (2D digital & fabric) UK
“The Hat,” 1999 (6:04) Michéle Cournoyer (ink drawing) Canada
“Night Hunter,” 2011 (16:05) Stacey Steers (cutouts & color pencil) USA
“Tangled Tale,” 2013 (5:28) Corrie Francis Parks (sand & digital paint) USA
“Dog,” 2001 (5:38) Suzie Templeton (stop-motion puppets) UK
“Kali, Le Petit Vampire,” 2012 (9:00) Regina Pessoa (digital woodcut) Portugal
Waving the Flag, 2006 (4:07) Sheila Sofian (paint & 2D digital) USA
“Britannia,” 1993 (7:30) Joanna Quinn (pencil drawing) UK
“Carnival of the Animals,” 2006 (10:35) Micheala Pavlátová (drawing & digital paint) Czech Republic
“Dear Pluto,” 2012 (4:11) Joanna Priestly (2D & 3D digital) USA