Meet You At Irving Thalberg's Place...

And so begins Siggraph 2012, for the Student Volunteer Subcommittee that is. We convened at the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, thanks to our SV Committee chair, Mikki Rose, who works as a Cloth and Hair TD at Sony Animation. We held our "sync" meeting inside the Irving Thalberg building (and you can feel the ghosts!). Lots of posters from legendary Hollywood films on display, as well as a lobby festooned with Oscars. One small feature caught my eye. I think the window frames in the conference room we met in had to be the originals, as they had these long metal spacer bars with notches cut into them that are used to size the opening of the windows. Nice piece of the past to keep alive and active. Subtly connective.

The purpose of this gathering is to choose the Team Leaders for the upcoming conference, and begin to give shape to the SV program. We worked all through the day going over applications, and finally arriving at our selection of 22 excellent people for Team Leaders.

This time is also for the six of us to get to know each other better. Bonding time for this group of talented people: Mikki Rose, Eugene Harng, Christine Holmes, Carlin Yuen, Grace Arenas Strittmater, and me. We have been enjoying some great restaurant time, with an Argentinian breakfast to start. Carlin was taking pictures of our meals, later making the comment "I’ve always thought that being a food critic would be the best job. You’d just run around saying “I like your food!” “I don’t like your food”.

Later we had lunch in the Sony Pictures commissary, but alas, no celebrity sightings. Lots of people posing as if they were celebrities though, lol.  Mikki toured us through the backlot and I was struck with the dissonant disconnect as we walked past buildings all named after Hollywood legends like Thalberg and Astaire while passing the soundstages for "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy".

In the evening, we gathered at Mikki's home, where we met her dog Kizmet and continued some of the SVSC work on getting our online systems in shape, as well as being introduced to a card game called Set. We now know Christine Holmes is not to be messed with. She's killer at this game. It's now Saturday, and we will continue our discussions at Disneyland, and a final repast at the Blue Bayou. Yo ho!