Coldplay at Shoreline

I recently went to the Coldplay concert a few days ago and was not let down. Having seen them hear last time at the Filmore (thanks to a friend spending all day to find me one of a 1000 that were sold), I was interested to finally see them outside. The Twisted Logic tour was just another example of a great band with real talent expressing themselves to 17,000 fans. You really appreciate how much fun these guys have doing what they do and can truely see their talent as well, especially with Chris' vocals.

They were nice enought to stall the start 30 min due to heavy traffic and played a 17 song 1 hour 45 min set including the 3 song encore. A few highlights were "Low," "Don't Panic," and "Fix You." But the lead into "Till Kingdom Come," the discussion and appreciation that the band showed for the late Johnny Cast stole the show. They then went on to play a cover of Cash's "Ring of Fire" which was my personal favorite moment.

In all I can't say more then recemmending anyone remotely interested in them to find a way to see them play live. Find tour dates here: www.Coldplay.com

SIGGRAPH 2005

Simply Amazing!!! That's the only way I can describe my first ever trip to the annual 3D convention, this year being held in L.A. I went with Landis, his wife Anna, and Roger for a week of life changing memories and experiences. So much happened that I don't know where to start.

For starters George Lucas himself was present to speak on the current state of theindustry and its future. Mainly saying that all future movies will no longer ever be known as "Special Effects" movies or "Non-Special Effect Movies." Every movie will be a Special Effects movie because the industry is going to turn completely digital and even the smallest film that is a drama will have some sort of computer-aided post or pre-production work on it. Though, surprisingly, this wasn't one of the major highlights.

The actual exhibits were just awesome. geting to meet the real people behind the scenes and learn about what they do and more importantly, what I need to do to get to where they are. I was really impressed most with Disney, Rhythm % Hues, and The Gnomon Workshop.

We also met some pretty powerful people in the field. I met Rob Coleman {For non CG-people} (VFX Supervisor at ILM- you may have seen him on the Star Wars DVD extra's) the first day prior to the Lucas speach in a book store. He was extremely nice. Landis introduced us to the CEO of Blender. He was most hospitable, inviting us back to his hotel, poolside for drinks. We also met Jason Schleifer in a hallway (He rigged Gollum, period.) Also, extremely outgoing and actually found it hard to believe that we recognized him.

Ultimately, despite the unmeasurable contacts and knowledge gained, we left with the grand prize of the PNY raffle on the last day. Almost knowing that we were going to win that day, we had talked about it the whole car ride there. We arrived at SIGGRAPH at 3:45PM, walked over to the PNY booth and filled out the raffle info at 3:55Pm and at 4PM, Landis won an $8.000+ computer!!! Unbelievable, the video card alone is worth $3,000 (NVidia Quadro FX 4400). Not a bad 15min to end the convention with.

Anyway thats about it. Feel free to let me know how your SIGGRAPH went if you attended.