Summer Days

This is the view from my hotel in Marina del Rey, where I've been since the 30th for AFM. I forgot how winter (um, "winter") can be in Southern California. Hot, chilly, breezy, warm- all over the course of one day.

Yesterday and today have been disturbingly bright and hot, a change from the overcast and nippy weather that first greeted us when we showed up at AFM.

I've been trying to find a way to snap a good picture of the beach, since AFM takes place right on the beach in Santa Monica, but I barely have time to respond to text messages, let alone run about snapping photos.

It's been a tiring and trying experience, though I feel that I've learned a lot about myself. For instance, I've found that I am able to fake my way through public speaking without anyone being aware that I'm a wreck on the inside, about to fall apart from nervousness. I've found that I enjoy public speaking after it's over. I've found that I'm good at mingling and playing nice, even when I don't like the people I'm schmoozing with.

I've also found that I need more than five hours of sleep each night to function well. When did I get so old??

So ready for a Disneyland excursion before going back to the wintry wonderland of Korea.....

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Press

I'm in a ton of backgrounds in photos of Jackie Chan from the past couple weeks. Generally looking sour.

Back in Korea, finally! It's been a long month of travel, confusion, airports, early call times, and too many foreign languages, but I am back!

I don't know how long I'm back for, as I really need to go to LA for at least a few days, but I'll settle for being back in Korea for the next little while.

I'm tired but happy about the way things have progressed. I guess I'm content? There's a little bit of personal drama, but nothing that's going to make me completely miserable, so I'll take it.

Between the lack of sleep over the past month and the jet-lag, I'm a little befuddled lately. I'll get back to blogging once I'm able to stay put and get some sleep.

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Latvija

Some things about Latvia (which is spelled "Latvija" here):

- Streetlights go from green to yellow to red to red+yellow to green. Smart! Prepares people to get ready to start driving again.

- Seriously, daylight hours- how is it possible for the sun to stay up for 15+ hours?? Does the sun not go down in the summer? Is it like Alaska? How did I not know that this phenomenon happened in some European countries?

- Latvians, for the most part, speak admirable English. They really are amazing- most of them seem to speak Latvian, Russian, and English. I can barely manage English and Korean.

- Taxi drivers are the same the world over. Going from our hotel to Old Town always costs about the same amount of money (less than three lats), but the amount we pay to go from Old Town back to our hotel varies enormously (from five lats to seventeen (!) lats).

- The weather here is unpredictable and temperamental. I think one day can change up to nearly 20 degrees Celsius, with the sun going from bright and shiny and hot to nonexistent in about twenty seconds flat. It can be sunny, with nary a cloud in the sky, and then raining, and then foggy and damp, and then sunny again all within an hour. It's causing a lot of the staff to become rather ill, though I'm trying to keep myself healthy by drinking massive amounts of water and staying away from the sickest crew members.

It's been a trying experience, being on set. I love traveling, but being in transit so frequently and for such extended periods of time is exhausting.

More later. I have to go be emotionally unstable with my co-workers, the little lambs that are frustrated because they can't communicate with the rest of the crew.

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Quickie

Oy vey. My blog is falling wayside due to my hectic schedule! Some quick photos:

A cute tree frog that we met in Tully, just near Mission Beach in Queensland, Australia. The weather didn't do us any favors, but we muddled through.

And this froggie made me feel a little better-- such a pretty color, this guy! I didn't hold him (are you crazy?!) but I probably would have if I had seen him for longer than five minutes.

My anti-volcano dust outfit on Yasur, a volcano in the South Pacific. I can't even begin to describe how much volcanic dust and dirt that I swallowed in two days!

More blogging to come, I promise. I'm just so tired-- after 30+ hours of traveling yesterday (Saturday) going into Sunday, I went home for one night before getting up at the crack of dawn (again) to get to the airport early in the morning for a very long flight.

I'm done with layovers and airports for a while. Whew.

There's six hours of difference between Korea and Latvia, so I'm ready to drop right now (it's only 11:30!) but I can't, because we're meeting and planning for tomorrow. Sighs all around, way to make a Monday even less enjoyable.

Once things settle (definitely by mid-May), I'm sure to be a better blogger.

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Hong Kong, Part 2

Though we went to Hong Kong for a shoot and a few meetings, we ended up having most of last Wednesday to ourselves, to explore the place and get some food that agrees with my finicky Korean traveling companions, the same guys with whom I traveled to Beijing.

Hong Kong has some similarities to Beijing, but more differences. I actually really quite liked Hong Kong (most parts of it) and because practically everyone speaks English, more or less, I felt quite comfortable there.

 The neighborhood of our hotel. Because Hong Kong has so little land, they've built up rather than out (much like Seoul). Lots of really tall, quite narrow buildings. Our hotel is in an area called Happy Valley (Wan Chai District, but all the cab drivers understood me when I said Happy Valley), which made me happy. Sometimes, it's the little things.

 The view from my hotel room. Somewhat like Korea, Hong Kong tries to keep things green, even if it's just a few plants or a couple trees. I most definitely appreciate that. I don't know if it's true, but my mother always told me that if my eyes needed some resting, I should look at trees or grass, look at the green of nature. I still believe it's true, because my mommy told me so.

Buildings outnumber trees, of course. Lots of tall, shiny buildings, lots of run-down, worn-out buildings, all kinds. It's kind of amazing that there's still room to drive around in Hong Kong. Traffic is similar to LA or Seoul-- it's almost comforting to know that people, no matter what their race, drive in pretty much the same fashion. Though Hong Kongians drive on the wrong side of the road, of course.

Construction is EVERYWHERE in Hong Kong. I'm not exaggerating, either- it was very rare for me to be able to see a clear view without the sight of cranes or skeletons of buildings. It's a city that's constantly renewing itself, it seems, with mini-facelifts and chemical peels.

Old buildings and new buildings, all jammed together in a small area. It's remarkable what small footprints some of these buildings have- I kept expecting them to sway a little when it was windy, but they managed to stay perfect upright.

Crumbling buildings with new buildings in the background. They co-exist peacefully, for the most part, with the higher-end shops in the newer buildings, while the fun, cheap shops are in the run-down buildings.

This building looked like it was once rainbow-hued, but the paint's faded and chipped. The weather was unfortunately cloudy the day I took this photo, and I didn't bother re-touching it, but you get the gist.

I like this building. It brought to me an immediate 70's flavor, with that avocado color and the panels of glass. I'm not up on my architecture, but I'm pretty sure 70's wasn't what they were going for. Oh, well.

Most of the newest buildings seemed to be made of glass and steel, all shine and no nonsense. Pretty in their own way. I have very dichotomous taste, and Hong Kong really gave me both extremes, in terms of architecture.

Last building picture! I think this was the Hong Kong Space Museum, which we didn't go into. Why get education when there are all kinds of much more interesting things to see and drinks to have??

We stopped in on the Hong Kong Filmart for just a few minutes, to see our company's booth and meet up with our CEO and the guy from Marketing that was manning the booth. Because we visited on the last day of the film market, it was pretty empty.

 I'm so mature, right?? This was the entrance to the hall where our booth was located. I look extraordinarily pale because I'm standing right in front of a glass wall. I'm not actually that white.

My traveling buddies! This is a crappy picture because it was texted to me. My CEO just sent it to me a couple minutes ago, so I'm including it. Don't we look happy? We always look happy in pictures, but trust me, we were exhausted by this time.

Next week, I'm going on a quick jaunt to Beijing (with different traveling companions, sadly) for a few meetings, then to Australia (back with these kids) for a shoot. April's going to be a wild and busy month! I'm going to try to moblog, since I'll have data roaming and all that. We'll see if I have the energy and time.

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Wangfujing, Beijing

A couple weeks ago (at least, I think it was a couple weeks ago ... days are beginning to blur together for me), two co-workers and I went on a business trip to Beijing. Rather than Wangjing, which is the area in Beijing that I traveled to last year, we went to Wangfujing, which is in a much nicer part of Beijing.

There were loads of high-end shops, huge malls, and luxury car dealerships all over the place in Wangfujing. We didn't have all that much time to wander the (clean) streets, since we were there for a series of meetings with a prospective client, but I managed to take a few shots (on my phone, so forgive the crappy photos).

The first day, we went out and walked down the promenade, passing by three enormous malls. The weather was overcast, making for really uninteresting lighting, but I took a photo of this mall (which we didn't go inside) because it's marked "Lotte," which is a huge Korean and Japanese conglomerate. Touches of home, even in China.

We managed to find a Starbucks for our caffeine fix (one of the guys is a complete coffee junkie) and wandered through the mall, the boys doing some price comparison with Korea (we went into a Nike store, a Gap, an Adidas store, and walked past countless others). I asked the guys to buy me a watch at Cartier, but had no luck (one of them told me to wait a hundred years and he'd buy it for me).

That mall on the right side is the one that we actually wandered through. We chose to go into that mall because it had a big Starbucks sign on the exterior, and everyone needed some coffee (our flight was at 8:40 in the morning, which meant we met at the office at 6:30 in order to get to the airport).

Exterior of the hotel, which was also conveniently where all our meetings took place. It was a funny little place-- not super nice, by any means, but livable. I can deal with livable. My Korean co-workers worry about me a lot because I don't seem very outdoorsy, which means that they think that I'll die if I'm in less than four-star accommodations. I'm not that bad, geez.

Our first night, a couple people took us to dinner. They decided that we should experience hotpot, Chinese style, which is quite different from shabu shabu, which Koreans took and modified from the Japanese. There are shabu shabu places a-plenty in Korea, but no hotpot places. Who were we to argue with new experiences? So off we went.

As it turns out, I don't mind hotpot. I'm not the biggest fan of lamb (though I really, really liked the lamb skewers that I had had in Beijing last year), especially over-cooked lamb. I prefer my lamb to be a large portion, like a leg, and cooked medium, so it's still pink in the middle. Neither hotpot nor shabu shabu are really conducive to cooking thin slices of meat to anything except boiled to death, so the lamb wasn't all that great. The beef wasn't that great, either, so maybe I'm just a picky meat eater (actually, I really am).

Hotpot wasn't the best thing I've ever eaten (not even the best thing I had during this trip), but it was okay. The boys, on the other hand, couldn't handle it at all. They didn't like the sauce (some sort of sesame-ish sauce that had the look of peanut butter but the viscosity of Thousand Island salad dressing), they didn't like the tofu (it was a little strong and pungent compared to Korean tofu), they didn't like the herbs (no idea, but similar to cilantro), and they couldn't really deal with the lamb (Koreans don't eat much lamb). It was hilarious (I am a mean person).

After dinner (during which the boys ate about eight bites), our companions excused themselves, as they had to go back to work, and I was left in charge. What a crap idea. I speak about five words of Mandarin, the most useful being "cold water," because in Beijing (or maybe all throughout China?) restaurants bring glasses of tepid water. I learned how to say "cold water" on my first trip to Beijing last year, when I couldn't handle drinking the body-temperature water.

Since I speak English and the boys speak even less Chinese than I do, I was designated speaker for the entire trip. We decided to "explore" Wangfujing, which means that we walked about three blocks. Directly in front of our hotel was a very long row of government-managed street food carts. The boys decided they wanted to try something, since their dinner was less than satisfactory.

These carts just stretched on and on and on. It was amazing how well-ordered and clean they were. The boys later found out that Wangfujing is kept very clean and neat because a lot of tourists visit and spend a lot of money. Most of the non-Asian people seemed to be Russian, which makes sense, geographically, but is frustrating, when one doesn't speak any Russian or Chinese.

I tried to get one of the boys to eat something slimy or creepy-crawly, but had no luck. I kind of wanted to try scorpion, just because it's something to try. Plus, I feel like they would be crispy and hollow, and not really taste like I'm eating a bug. I absolutely cannot bring myself to try 번대기 (bundaegi) in Korea (silkworm larvae) because they are plump and squishy-looking. Shudder.

We actually had Korean food from the street carts, tteokbokki (떡볶이) and mandu (만두), then went to a convenience store to buy bottled water (do not drink tap water in Beijing!) and snacks. It was an early night, leading into a post-lunch meeting the next day, so I got plenty of sleep- a first for me in China!

After meetings all afternoon the next day, our last night in China, we went out to a big dinner with a whole bunch of people. It was actually an amazing dinner. We ate at Nobu, then went next door to the Ritz-Carlton and had champagne and cigars at the Davidoff Lounge (I had champagne and tried one puff of one of the boys' cigars).

That would be the cigar that I tried, and the guy that I swiped it from. I don't smoke cigarettes, so I don't really get the smoking thing in general. I have a weird, sexist opinion that I can't seem to change about women who smoke- I'm pretty sure it's the Korean blood in me, because while about 99.99% of Korean men seem to smoke, it seems like less than 10% of Korean women smoke. Ah, general inequality in Korea, it comes up in the most random ways.

On the other hand, another gender inequality moment for me was the fact that during the entire Beijing trip, I never once carried my own bag. I had a laptop bag and a carry-on, and in the hours that I was in airports or airplanes, I never once saw my carry-on. The boys even took it through security. It was a little bit bizarre, but typical of Korea- men in Korea carry their girlfriend or spouse's purse for them. Not like in the U.S., when the girl's in the bathroom or trying on clothes- dudes in Korea carry their woman's purse constantly. Like, walking down the street. Entering a restaurant. In movie theaters. I used to think it was so weird, but I've gotten used to it.

When I commented that American chivalry is totally different, the guys asked me to explain. So I told them how guys in the U.S. don't carry purses, but they do open doors and seat ladies first and all that jazz. The concept of "ladies first" is foreign in Korea, as evidenced by men always sitting down first, entering through doors first, ordering first in restaurants, and so on and so forth. Once I said all that, one of the guys unfailingly opened all doors for me (the guy whose cigar I tried), but not in a sarcastic way- in a rather sweet way.

I didn't know the two guys very well before we went on this little trip together, but we became much closer, and I was very pleasantly surprised. There's something about going to a foreign country together, where nobody speaks the native language, that brings out the true colors in people. I'm glad I was stuck with two genuinely nice boys (I keep saying boys, but they're both older than me) that made the experience more fun than I expected it to be.

Hopefully we're awarded this film, so that I can work with these two for the next few months! Crossing my fingers and holding my breath. Should hear back this week.

Was slightly sick over the weekend, and am trying hard to get over it. Overdosing on echinacea was helpful, I feel much better today than yesterday. Need to get better before the weekend, since a friend is visiting Korea from San Diego and staying at my place this weekend!

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Aspirations

I've been working in visual effects for eight years. That can either be seen as a long amount of time or a rather short amount of time. For me, since I'm 29, it's a long time. It's more than a quarter of my life that I've spent doing this work.

In the eight years that I've been working, I've met a lot of female producers. Not many female supervisors. I suppose that this means women tend to be left-brained, whereas men are more right-brained (with exceptions, of course). Which is why I was so happy when "Kung Fu Panda 2" did so very well when it premiered- it was directed by a woman, Jennifer Yuh Nelson.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson is not only a woman, she's a Korean-American woman. She came from Korea when she was four, I came when I was three. She grew up in the town right next to the town where I grew up. She grew up in Lakewood, she went to college in Long Beach, and I imagine that if it weren't for our age difference (10 years), she and I might have crossed paths at some point.

It amazed me to read that "Kung Fu Panda 2" is now the highest grossing film that's been directed by a woman. I am so proud (I really think Korean-Americans are my people, even if I also think that Koreans are my people and Americans are my people- they are not my people the way Korean-Americans are), just because this achievement shows me (and all the younger kids that are the way that I was) that it's possible, that we can do great things, and that dreams are not meant just for sleep.

I don't know what my real goals are. I don't have a five-year plan. I do know that the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment that I have after finishing a film is something that I love. I also know, though, that I'm getting tired of the politics and backstabbing and favoritism that is prevalent in this business.

For now, I am content in Korea, though my job is ever-changing and my co-workers are still confused by me (it's been almost two months, people, adapt already). I feel a little more comfortable here now, though I can see that my behavior is a little different (more about that in another post).

I'm looking forward to the weekend and some rest and buying some groceries- I have no vegetables other than half a cucumber and an onion- and perhaps taking some real pictures with my real camera. Please let the weather be clear!

This is my 500th blog post! Some posts have been completely useless, but still. It's a milestone. I'm celebrating by working a few extra weeks in Korea, yippee.

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Mandatory Fun

Last night (on a Wednesday, of all days), I went to my very first 회식 (pronounced "hwe shik" and technically meaning a dinner or a meal).

Like much in Korea, it's more than what its name implies. First of all, it's mandatory. It was a group from production management and supervision, and I was basically informed that we're having a 회식. No silly questions like "are you free?" or "what's a good day?" or any of that, just an announcement and expectation that we would all be there. We didn't even know where we were going until Monday, and even that changed a few hours before we actually left the office (we were supposed to eat eel (I've never tried it) and then switched to a beef place at the last minute).

In bigger, more corporate companies, it's apparently customary for the higher-ups to torture their underlings by making the poor kids sing and dance and drink excessively and generally entertain their bosses. Thankfully, we don't quite have that vibe here, though it does still exist to some extent (if one of the two supervisors that attended told you to drink, you drink).

We started out quite well. Dinner at a barbecue place- not typical Korean barbecue, though, it was more like thick steaks grilled at the table and then cut up on the grill. Really good, though also really greasy. We all ate like pigs, probably helped along by the fact that the drinking started almost immediately. Beer and soju, of course.

Soju bombs, in LA, are a very different creature than what they are here. A soju bomb is a shot glass filled with soju that is dropped into a half-filled glass of beer, then chugged. (Like an Irish car bomb, which is a shot glass of whiskey and a splash of Baileys dropped into a half-pint of Guinness.)

Here in Korea, they drink somacs. (So = soju, mac = maekju (맥주), the Korean word for beer.) A varying amount of soju is poured into a glass, then beer is poured over it. I'm told that the beer should be poured in a rather slow stream so that the drink fizzes and foams. I drank one at the insistence of one of the vfx supervisors, but since I don't like beer, it was wasted on me. He made the somacs with just a little bit of soju, quite a bit of beer, and a ton of foam. (I liked the foam, I have to admit- and side note, Koreans don't drink beer out of pint glasses. They're more like dainty 6-ounce (8 ounces, max) glasses.)

Dinner was fine, even fun- we were sitting in a private room and the group I was sitting with (it's impossible to talk to people at the other end of the room, after all) was a cheery, talkative bunch. There were a few awkward silences, but after the first three bottles were emptied, everyone got a little louder and a little less awkward.

The second place we went to was a bar, technically, but since we were such a big group (about twenty, I think), they seated us in a karaoke room (노래방: 노래 (norae) means song, 방 (bahng) means room).

I have never witnessed such silence in such a large crowd before, other than at a funeral. At the restaurant, the loudness of the restaurant itself helped get us through the awkward moments. The sizzling of the grills, the waitresses running to and fro and telling us things, various dinner companions ordering more food or drink- all that noise masked the underlying quiet. In a noraebang (the common English spelling, though it's misleading for pronunciation), if no one's singing, it's very, very quiet. And very cold.

There was a strange, long lull where people didn't do anything at all. We sat there, around an enormous table, nobody talking. I think if the drinks had arrived sooner, we might have been okay, but the food came first (Koreans eat constantly while they drink, it dumbfounds me completely) and the drinks took their sweet, sweet time. It felt like an eternity of sitting in silence, some of the guys smoking (oh, smoking indoors, when will it stop??), some people silently nibbling on bar food.

That mood stayed with us for a good ... hour? One of the vfx supervisors finally took it upon himself to lift us out of the doldrums and forced everyone to drink by continually making us clink glasses, cheers, and down our booze. One of the guys was convinced to sing, and then things finally picked up. I think four people ended up singing (the first guy sang "Diana," by Paul Anka, and he was pretty awesome), then we were off to the next bar.

The next (and, thankfully, last) bar was literally right across the hall from the karaoke place (both on the third floor of a building filled with bars and restaurants). It was a fusion Japanese bar, which means they had lots of sake and a better selection of bar food. I don't know why, but it was much less awkward at this bar. (Though I was immediately put off by the Corona beer flag they had hanging on the wall. I got over it eventually.)

We stumbled out of the bar around 2:30 in the morning. All three locations were between work and home, so I walked home in about three minutes, trusting that everyone would make it back to their respective beds safe and sound.

This morning was pretty telling. I walked into our office (production management and the assistant supervisors all sit in a big bullpen together) and there were ... two people. Some folks are out on set, but two is still a very small number compared to how many people there normally are. It's been quiet all day, with nary a peep from the eight or so folks that eventually tiptoed in. (There are usually about 15 - 20 people in here, depending on the day.)

I'm tired. I think I'm too old to be partying on school nights- I used to be able to do it without any problems at all when I was in my early twenties, but those days are far behind me now. I can't seem to shake the fatigue today, so I'm probably going to conk out early tonight and try to catch up on sleep. I'm just thankful that I don't feel wretched. Combining soju, beer, (cheap) whiskey, and sake was probably the worst idea I've had in a long time. (Hi, 엄마 and 아빠! Poor parents, reading about their daughter's terrible drinking habits.)

I took some photos on my phone last night, but in the cold (and rainy) light of day, they are truly crap photos. Besides, I don't really know these people well enough to be posting pictures of them in a bar. So no photos. At least, not this time. I'm sure there will be another chance to document Korean drinking culture at some other point.

Last night was the first time that I've really actually talked to people at work about anything other than work (or niceties). It made me feel strange- I feel so American here, but I also see that I belong, in a weird sense. All the things that made me feel out of place in the States are perfectly acceptable here, but the things that I take for granted in the States are bizarre here. I felt off-balance all night, but people were quite nice (and drunk) and more willing to talk and put me at ease.

I could also perceptibly FEEL the cultural differences between my equals and myself in dealing with the supervisors. My peers are obedient and a bit terrorized by the supervisors, whereas I am most definitely not. I have no problem talking back to them and making fun of them, something that I feel wouldn't be as well-tolerated from one of the Koreans. Being American does give me some (small) amount of liberty. Of course, I'm generally pretty good with people (I can say that about myself because I worked really hard to get this way and I know what it was like when I was not good with people at all) and people do not usually take offense to what I say or do, as I'm pretty good at gauging limits.

I had a great (alcohol-fueled) conversation with one of the supervisors, whom I genuinely like as a person, though we have our differences at work. I got some of the guys to try out their English. They got me to try dried squid (which I love) dipped in mayonnaise and soy sauce (not so much).

I can see why these outings are a necessary evil. With the passive-aggressiveness that is so pervasive in the Korean work culture, this is the only outlet that people have in expressing any negative emotions. What happens during a 회식 doesn't count in real life (unless you punch your boss or something), and it's an opportunity to live big for a few hours on the company's dime. With the rumored salaries of some of the newer kids here, I wouldn't think that they really get to go out and party up very often.

Vitamin Water (the restore flavor), a small bowlful of rice for breakfast, and some pretty good pork ramen for lunch have mostly restored my brain cells. If only it would stop raining so I wouldn't have to worry about my shoes anymore...

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Light ... End of the Tunnel

It actually feels like there's light at the end of the tunnel on this movie that has dominated my life for the past 13 months.

One of the weirdest things about working on movies, in my experience, is that you never know what's going to happen. You don't know if it'll make any money, if critics will like it, if there will be a sequel, or even if you're getting a credit. I've worked on a few movies that I haven't received a film credit for, which is a little disappointing (more to my family and friends than me, I think).

With all the constant tension and pressure of having to produce great work without instant gratification, it's always nice to be able to laugh, at least a little.

I saw these posters and they made me laugh. For now, that's enough.

Isn't he a cute Lego? I've seen Hal for countless hours of my life now, but never quite this adorable. I have to say, I think Oa (the planet in the background) turned out quite well. It was a long, hard road to get it looking like that.

This was supposedly an honest poster, but it's a lie. Anything that can be CGI is made CGI at some point throughout the film. (Nobody at work actually uses the abbreviation "CGI," by the way. It's something the media uses, so people have picked up, but we don't say "CGI" unless we're talking to a layperson.)

There is a very long but funny YouTube video that we all appreciated after the WonderCon trailer came out (our first trailer was not met with all that much enthusiasm), showing that people really are supportive of "Green Lantern."

It's always nice to work on something that people are looking forward to. Even with those naysayers that repeatedly post about what a ton of crap the film will be. I'm reserving judgment on the movie until I've watched the whole thing through. I recently sat down and watched a good chunk of it, and I liked it, but I'm really too close to it currently to form any sort of real opinion.

Countdown to my last day on the film: 2.5 weeks.

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Video Relationships

At least once a day, I am in a video conference with our office in LA. One of the weirdest things today was seeing everyone in LA walk in wearing short-sleeved shirts and shorts (one girl in a short skirt, even!) while I am shivering in Albuquerque.

It is one of the oddest things, to see a place that I know well on a daily basis ... but not be there. Especially when the weather is so different, and when there are so many people that I know very well but have never met (or met very briefly).

The price of the world getting smaller, I suppose.

Another strange digital relationship, I think, was the one between Americans and Osama bin Laden. Thanks to the internet, I feel like I heard about his death practically the moment it happened (more accurately, the moment that our government decided to release the information).

I don't talk politics that often on my blog because I find that religion and politics are too divisive, and people tend to get shouty and lecture-y about either subject. (Combine the two and it's World War III). This is a significant event, though- particularly because we're all reveling in someone's death.

Yes, had I been alive during Hitler's reign, I would have been ecstatic to hear about his death. Though Hitler killed millions more people than bin Laden, they both wronged the world with their actions. I just don't know how to feel about being happy that someone has died. Actually happy- not just accepting, as when a murderer on death row is given a lethal injection, but celebratory, as if it's someone's birthday.

Oh, well. Politics confuse me, and my emotions about this confuse me. All I know is that I found this to be really funny:

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Tentpole

I've worked on several tentpole movies. This is an insightful article about them, in Variety:

Biz battles crunch on tentpole vfx
By David S. Cohen

The visual effects budget for Warner Bros.' "Green Lantern" has risen by $9 million, with new vfx houses recruited to bolster the team that's been working overtime to meet the film's June 17 launch.

The Warner Bros. pic will no doubt meet its date, but other effects-heavy films continue to scramble. In fact, the kind of sturm and drang that's swirled around "Green Lantern" is actually par for the course on most visual effects-heavy tentpoles these days -- and the problem's growing.

Such pics now routinely fit the description of a "troubled" project, with "troubled" the new normal. And key players in the f/x biz say that with crunches mounting, it's only a matter of time before some f/x-heavy tentpole can't meet its delivery date -- a nightmare no studio has faced since "Titanic." Should a tentpole be forced to change dates, the ripple effects on a studio, its rivals, exhibitors and tie-ins will be widespread and injurious to bottom lines.

"I think the day (the system) breaks is the day everyone will revise their thinking," said Marvel exec VP of visual effects Victoria Alonso. "Until that day comes, filmmakers are going to push it to the limit. I think it's sad that we will have to watch one of us fail to learn our lesson."

The stresses that studio tentpoles are creating for the vfx industry are not new, as Variety reported in its May 28, 2007, issue. But they have worsened across the board.

Warners isn't the only studio grappling with these issues. Alonso said Paramount's "Captain America" is on a shorter schedule than Marvel prefers, and "We are feeling the heat for it." On Par's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," at least one vfx studio has gone to seven-day weeks, 12 hours a day, and canceled the Easter Sunday holiday for its vfx artists.

"Green Lantern" fell under heightened scrutiny after an early trailer showed little in the way of vfx. Fans grumbled, but that was a calculated risk by WB: Rather than rush some shots for marketing (a common practice), the studio held back the vfx for the second trailer. That gamble seems to have paid off, as footage shown at WonderCon and Cinemacon was well received, and buzz is building.

Chris de Faria, Warner's exec VP of digital production, animation and visual effects, defended "Green Lantern" and Warner's process on the pic. "There is no problem on 'Green Lantern,'?" he said. "We try to add things to make the movie better until the 11th hour. That doesn't mean we're risking the movie up to the 11th hour."

Whispers about problems on the production grew louder after schedule concerns early in the new year triggered high-level meetings to get the project back on track. The cost of its roughly 1,400 visual effects is more than $9 million over the $45 million original f/x budget. That budget is on the low side for a vfx-heavy tentpole, but 3D hadn't been taken into account in the original budget.

Sony Imageworks and Rising Sun Pictures are the primary vfx studios on "Green Lantern," and both say they're delivering on schedule or according to contract. De Faria said one all-CG pre-credit sequence had been cut in development, then added back once the studio saw an early cut, so Pixomondo was brought on late to complete it.

Even de Faria said management practices are still catching up to the reality of tentpole production, where effects have to be built before the picture is tested, then vfx have to be added and/or changed as the picture comes together and in response to audience testing, all while marketing demands shots for the campaign.

All of Hollywood seems to be still figuring this out, and as a result, the tentpole pattern is now well established:

• A movie demands you've-never-seen-this-before visual effects both for marketing and story;
•Ambitious plans and a short schedule leave little margin for error;
•Inevitable schedule problems trigger urgent meetings among studio execs, vendors and filmmakers to get the project back on track;
•"911" emergency calls go out to almost any vfx shop in the world that can take on some last-minute work;
•Everyone runs a harrowing race to deadline despite all the extra help.

Collapse, rest, repeat.

With summer and holiday release skeds already crowded and so many tie-ins for these pics, it's unlikely a studio would let a movie actually miss its date. But the alternative may well be a picture coming to release with far less spectacle than the filmmakers and studio had planned upon simply because there wasn't time or resources to finish it. That is essentially what happened with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1" when it couldn't be converted to 3D in time for its theatrical bow.

There are several explanations for why the studios persist in an approach that regularly leads to cost overruns and inspires dire warnings from their f/x vendors.

De Faria said that in order to remain competitive, studios must be very responsive to the audience, and that means condensing the time from the inception and development of a project to its release.

"Movies this year, like the movies last year, are more spectacular, the vfx are more ambitious than ever before," de Faria said. "The stresses that it places on production management are very real. I feel them every day, but our job is to develop new tools and new systems for dealing with that."

He said post skeds that used to be 21-26 weeks are now 36-40 weeks to accommodate visual effects, but in order to keep that responsiveness, they can't get longer.

Alonso said Marvel tries to do its movies in a 32-36 week post. The short post schedules, he said, are dictated by release dates announced before there's even a shooting script. "So you are always chasing your tail. You work backwards from that release date, then you add production not being ready to shoot or location complications and you shave the weeks you push from post."

Paradoxically, these pressures arise in part out of an attempt to save money. Studios and producers don't want to pay for vfx that will end up on the cutting-room floor. So they prefer to have a cut before handing over shots to vfx. If the editor and director spend a long time cutting, vfx work piles up, which forces the artists to work overtime and drives up the costs per shot.

A less generous explanation, from the anonymous vfx expert, is "visual effects is just another way to not make your mind up." The can-do attitude of vfx companies and vfx artists have brought these projects in on time -- somehow -- and that has given studios and filmmakers the sense that they can delay or backtrack on decisions almost indefinitely.

Alonso's advice for anyone seeking to avoid these crushes is "have a shooting script before you announce the release dates. If you push the shoot due to any reason, do not compress the post schedule. Don't take the time from post, because chances are the post needs will double, not shrink."

De Faria regards that notion as somewhat utopian. He said the challenge is "to continue to deliver mind-boggling high-level visual effects in an environment where scripts are constantly changing, stars' availability is constantly changing and release dates are changing."

Even pushing a release date, he notes, wouldn't necessarily ease the crunch or cut costs, since that time will inevitably be used to improve the film, adding extra work to the schedule.

Over the next year, films that will be angling to avoid a last-minute crunch will include Warner's "Superman: Man of Steel," Disney-Marvel's "The Avengers," Warner's "The Dark Knight Rises" and Sony's "The Amazing Spider-Man." Beyond that, Weta Digital will certainly have its hands full with Warner-New Line's "The Hobbit," in 3D at 48 fps.

All of these movies aim to give audiences something they've never seen before, and as de Faria said, "When the bar is raised, we can't refuse to jump over it." So the movies are bound to get more complex, especially with higher frame rates and 3D, and this pressurized process isn't likely to change.

"Nor should it," said de Faria. "This isn't applicable to a Mike Nichols film, but this is the business of the tentpole film."

I will not be adding my two cents. This is the business I'm in, and this is its current state. Things change more rapidly in post-productions than they do at any other stage, and that's just how it is.

That's Tomar-Re. Behind him is Oa (a planet). The movie comes out in less than two months. And we will get it done, just like the article says.

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Overheard

From my work husband (the dude I spend most of my waking hours with):

"You're not pulling your weight in this relationship, you never hang up on me."

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Santa Maria, California

During "Alice in Wonderland," I spent quite a bit of time in Santa Maria for work.

Doing some housekeeping today (okay, I'm organizing my work laptop and my file directories), I discovered a folder called "Santa Maria," created over a year ago. This is the trouble with digital files- they're so easy to forget about because they don't physically take up any room or catch the eye.

There were a bunch of photos, taken with my point-and-shoot, of random Santa Maria adventures. I had a weird rush of nostalgia, and then checked myself- do I actually miss that experience?? Good gravy.

Anyway- the photos I decided to post:

I always took PCH on my sojourns to and from the central coast, because I like to see the ocean. The weather wasn't warm, or anything, but water is always soothing and I love that drive.

Just a hop and a skip north of LA, the vineyards start to roll out. There are little hills and small patches of grapes right on the coastline, and this is a typical sight.

 My favorite street, always! "Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Laaaaaane" ... yes, I'm a child. And I love Christmas songs.

This tunnel was always a sign that I was getting close and should prepare myself mentally to deal with the anguish that always awaited me in Santa Maria. I do love these types of tunnels, I think they're fun, with a sort of persistent dusk that I find soothing.

The water tower at ye olde Orcutt, a teeny tiny little ... town? We used to hop on the freeway for about a mile and go to Orcutt for lunch, to get away, whine, and have a drink.

More Orcutt. They obviously like their old-time-y details, like that clock on the street. This is a gas station, all painted up and fancy.

This is just across the street from the gas station. This looks like a fake Hollywood facade, only the Hollywood version would have horses and carriages parked out front and no massage parlor. Such a cute little Main Street.

I remember taking these pictures on my last drive back down to LA. I took a leisurely, meandering drive down small streets and through vineyards because I thought, when am I ever going to come here again? I haven't been to the central coast since this drive.

Shriveled and dry vines, since it was winter (well, the approximation of winter in California) at the time. There is something pretty about the rows of crazy vines and the miles and miles of it.

The winery directory. I like Foxe and Fess Parker, Cottonwood's okay, and I haven't been to the rest. When I first started going to Santa Maria, it was only for two days at a time (one night), and we used to have a driver take us up there and then drive us back to work. We had the same driver a couple of the times we used the service, and he was saying that he does a lot of drives for people on winery tours. That sounded like fun, and I always wanted to do it ... but who has the time, really?

There was just once that I flew to Santa Maria (into the tiniest airport ever, with Fox News blaring from every single TV), and this was the view somewhere over the farmlands of California. I loved that flight, it was so fast and easy.

Sunset from my hotel room. We stayed in two different hotels. This one was the hotel that we "lived" in when I was there six days a week.

Santa Maria, for all the troubles that I had there, was quite beautiful. It's like a peaceful, slower LA, with people that take their time and a small-town vibe with city conveniences.

I have a feeling that when I look back on Albuquerque, I'll feel this way- a little nostalgic, a little bemused, and wondering if I'll ever be back.

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Happy Hour

It's been a rough week.

I'm still at work and will be here for another five hours, so I've started in on the scotch.

Sigh.

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Green Lantern Trailer

Longer, greener trailer is now out here.

Lie to me and tell me it looks awesome, because I refuse to listen to anything else while I'm still mired in this movie!

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Future

Been trying hard to figure out my future after Ryan Reynolds.

It's never an easy thing to do, but it seems even worse lately. I know I should be more grateful that I work in a field that has jobs, and I am. Whining is human nature, I think, no matter what the circumstances.

So for now, I'm trying to let go and see what happens. Like my mother likes to say, you can't do things 억지로 (by force of will). What will be, will be.

There are a couple of very interesting prospects and a couple of not-so-interesting prospects, so I'm just hoping that one of the more interesting jobs will stick and I'll be on my merry way soon enough.

Have to go finish a movie about a green guy first, so I'm going to hop to.

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Korean Solidarity

For someone who speaks Korean every day, I don't have many Korean friends. There are unique reasons for this, but most of them stemming from the fact that my Korean roots are different than others'. My sister and I are grounded in a much more traditional Korean way, a much less LA Korean way. We're different from Koreans in Korea, too, of course, because my parents' Korea is from the 1970's and 1980's.

In Albuquerque, of all places, I found a friend that happens to be Korean. One of my co-workers is a Korean woman who moved to the States after she had completed college (incidentally, she went to university in the city where I was born). She's been in the U.S. for a while now, and is married to an American.

She and I speak a strange Konglish to each other, switching to full Korean to annoy our co-workers, and she's just a funny, sweet person.

Today, she ran up to my desk while I was picking at my sandwich and said, "Jeanny! Stop eating!" and ran off. (She says my name the way Koreans pronounce it, which gives me a pang of homesickness every single time.)

She scampered back with a double roll of kimbap (or gimbap, 김밥), wrapped in, as Koreans are wont to do, about fourteen yards of plastic wrap.

Sometimes, it's the small gestures that put a surprised smile on your face. This unexpected and delicious picnic food always makes me happy, and never more than today.

It's not that I'm sad or depressed or anything, because I'm not. I'm fine here, if annoyed at how busy I am. But eating gimbap, tasting that distinct seaweed, crunching through the pickled radish ... it brings home to my mind and I am reminded of how much I really do miss it.

I think I'm going to try to make some gimbap for my lovely Korean friend on Saturday (we're all working), when I can get away with coming in later. If I'm up to it, maybe I'll even document it. Gimbap's one of those things people always ask about, and it's really easy, just time-consuming and a bit fiddly to get the technique down.

Really good gimbap, but still not as good as my mother's. Of course. ^_^

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Drama Queens

Most of the artists here in Albuquerque are animators.

I know that visual effects is a quite isolated industry- you burn your bridges in this business and there's not much going back. On the other hand, if you're in, you're IN.

One of the things that people outside of this industry don't seem to know is that artists are vastly different, and they tend to skew one way or another by department. For instance, I love working with compositors. They are usually quick, good under pressure, and hard to ruffle.

On the opposite side are animators. They're high maintenance, like that needy girlfriend one of your guy friends has, who whines a lot and clings like Saran wrap. Sorry. I digress.

So most of the younger crowd here at work are animators. The lighters and compositors are a bit older, and a higher percentage of them are married, most of those people also raising kids (hence their move to Albuquerque and out of kid-unfriendly LA).

Since the younger, singler people are the ones that tend to go out, while the older, married people go home to their families, I hang out with almost 100% animators. This would usually grate on my nerves. I didn't have many animators as friends in LA, for good reason.

Animators, generally, feel like they breathe life into characters. They are the ones that make the movie move. They are the ones that are obsessed with their work and never go home. The best animators are the passionate ones, and the passionate ones can be quite annoying in social settings.

Because I work with so many of these danged people, I have come to love them as friends. It can't be helped, after all. Spending enough time with someone will either lead to love or hate. Rarely indifference (I have a story about that, though) and rarely flippant acceptance (I don't accept well).

Being expatriates in a foreign land (read: from a metropolis, to a small town), we tend to stick together. All of these factors combine to me being friends with people that I perhaps wouldn't see quite as frequently were we all living in LA.

I don't dislike that fact at all; in fact, I really appreciate that I have a much more diverse group of local friends than I've ever had before in my life.

However!

Animators are drama queens.

One of them walked up to me today and said, "I almost got into a fight because of you!" No, it wasn't to preserve my honor. It was really about HIM. Be a drama queen all you want, but don't use me as an excuse to add more drama.


Had to vent about that, I'm done now.



My turn to be a drama queen! It's FREEZING.

Literally, of course, but also because there's been a problem all day in our building at work. The heat recovery chiller (which doesn't sound very warm to me) broke and they aren't getting a new one until tonight.

First of all, today is the coldest day so far in 2011.

Second of all, I sit near a row of windows, and the cold is seeping in through the glass, around the glass, everything, There's a buffer of about 30 feet from the windows that is strangely drafty and chilly, and I sit in that area. I'm a Popsicle.

I'm really hoping that heat recovery chiller is fixed by tomorrow. I'm sitting at work right now, wearing all the clothes I wore out of my house this morning, including a puffy vest and a puffy jacket. I've been sporadically wearing gloves inside the office today, that's how disturbingly cold it is.

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Shit Rolls Downhill

(Parents, family members, other sensitive people that read my blog- please excuse the use of the word "shit." It really is appropriate in this case.)

There is a saying in colloquial American English, shit rolls downhill.

We say this a lot during the production of films, as it is very true in our case. For instance, the executive of a large studio, Mr. Smith at Amazing Studios. He is technically "overseeing" all the movies that his studio is currently producing. That means that, on average, he has about five to ten minutes each day to devote to whatever film that I happen to be working on.

In those five to ten minutes, Mr. Smith will, without knowing the entire history of the single image he is viewing, judge and make comments on whatever is put in front of him. This, in turn, trickles downhill to his minions, who must relay the information to their editorial staff and all their vendors.

One of those vendors would be whatever company I am working at. There will only be a few people (the head honchos) from my company that hear the comments that have filtered down from Mr. Smith to Mr. Johnson to Mike to Joe.

Those comments become long, verbose paragraphs by the time I get them, full of emotional jargon that must be converted into technical adjustments that can be quickly consumed and regurgitated by artists.

In essence, a five-minute once-over by Mr. Smith can lead to John the Artist working for two weeks.

Hence, shit rolls downhill.

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The Furies

Granted, I am not a character from Greek mythology. I do not have two sisters with whom I terrorize men. I do not have snakes in my hair. I am not able to turn men into stone (a skill that I really would use quite frequently).

However, I am reminded lately about how furious I am capable of becoming.

I am infuriated by so many things currently. Some of the people I see daily are making me feel homicidal, on an hourly basis. The passive-aggressiveness that is so prevalent, the finger-pointing and the sly comments ... it's all got me on edge. If you're going to be accusatory, just DO IT. That way, I can face it, point out why you're wrong, and move on with my life.

When I stress out like this, I tend to clench my teeth while I sleep. I wake up with my jaws aching, which is not a good start to the day.

I don't know how to lessen this feeling, this anxiety. It started raining late last night and is still raining now, the longest I have ever seen rain in this city. That's making me feel a little better. Something about rain, cleansing and cathartic, soothes me. (The white noise that I use sometimes when I can't fall asleep is a rainy Amazon jungle.)

I cannot wait to change my life again. Move somewhere new, with new people. I think this might be a new addiction, and one that I don't care to try and control.

I'm eyeballing Vancouver and London. Rainy cities, true, but also full of culture and very, very different from Albuquerque or LA. Hmm...

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