Fluidtoons

Animation Attack! 2008 Thanks and Summary


Photo by Karl Sigler!

Animation Attack! was a success! Many thanks to Eric Panter, Festival Director of the Atlanta Underground Film Festival, Bryan Fordney, who was in charge of projection for Animation Attack! and helped me get films, and Karl Sigler, our ASIFA-Atlanta screening coordinator, and Takuro Masuda, animator ambassador.

Also many thanks to all those who came to the shows and gave me such good feedback- it would appear that you guys liked it a lot, woo hoo! :) I heard that one person said that it was the best animation block they'd seen at a festival; what a compliment! Thanks to the Plaza too- Johnny and Gayle are always so amazing and helpful, and I really, really love the Plaza. And finally, a HUGE thanks to the filmmakers, of course!

I have to say that it was satisfying (and a relief) to sit in the audience (when I wasn't in the booth with Bryan) and hear everyone's reaction. They laughed a lot at "Frog" and "Soccer Time", and so many people mentioned "Marvelous, Keen, Loony Bin" to me. Of course "Golden Age" was a huge hit too! And "Muto"- I mean, I think all of the films were amazing.

I should also give a really big thanks to Stephen Schor without whom I wouldn't have had the honor and pleasure to meet a lot of these filmmakers in NYC. Aaron Augenblick, besides being a hero of mine, was kind enough to spread my call for entries amongst his animators (busy on Superjail!!); thanks to Aaron, too! And Vanessa at Augenblick, who's a good friend of Stephen's and is awesome. Be sure to watch the Superjail premiere on Adult Swim on September 28th at 11:45pm!

We were fortunate to have three filmmakers come to Saturday's show- local Amanda Goodbread, whose film "Curtains" we showed at "Roll Yer Own", and Max Margulies and Naoko Masuda, who came all the way from Philly! Their film, "God of Tears", was a festival favorite and rightly so, as it's quite breathtaking and beautiful.

I'm really happy with out things worked out! I can tell you some of the behind-the-scenes, though: I was in a panic all day Friday because when I connected my laptop to the projector, the image was blue and too big. After a couple trips to Best Buy, I replaced the VGA cable, fixing the color problem, and Johnny from the Plaza showed Bryan and me how to scale the image (plus I changed the resolution). I also got RCA couplers at Best Buy to make the sound work, whew!

Oh, one more thing: thanks our volunteers! My friend Laurence, an active ASIFA-Atlanta volunteer, took care of the door during Saturday's show, and Dustin took care of it during Friday's show. There were several other dedicated Atlanta Underground Film Festival volunteers (including William D Tucker himself, as a projectionist, which was delightfully ironic if you've seen the film he's in, "Panels from the Walls of Hell") that made the whole thing work. Thanks guys!

So my next post will be the Animation Attack! 2008 awards! Yay!