South By SouthWest (SXSW)

[crayon10]

Locally there is a convention called SXSW and among the many activities there will animations features being shown. I will do what I can to see them and report back, by the end of this coming week.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Very nice of you. I'm interested in finding out how seriously animators are becoming interested in, and making plans for, independent productions of feature films (or long metrage films) targeted for the e-readers. I'm VERY curious about that.

[crayon10]

Locally there is a convention called SXSW and among the many activities there will animations features being shown. I will do what I can to see them and report back, by the end of this coming week.

I think I might have over stated by using the word feature but I am still combing through the titles and event schedule. There is a collection of shorts for sure, more on that later.

[crayon10]

Does this fit what you are interested in?

First:Hollywood Lessons: What Film School Didn't Teach Me

Panelists will describe where their education left off and what they've had to learn the hard way. We’ll be looking at how to make the transition from the world of academia to the film world. Discussion will include the place of short films to making your first feature (micro or indie budget) and realistic goals for those films.

Second:I Thought We Were Friends! Business In Film

Focus is on different kinds of financial partnerships and basic deals for back-end and participation, secondary focus is on Horror Story anecdotes.

Third:The Last Broadcast: Entertainment is Social - What's Next?

This panel will be a discussion of the future of new media and entertainment by top-thinkers in all affected industries, from computer chip makers to the guy selling TV’s to regular folks. Each panelist will bring real-world examples and a vision of the future of entertainment.

Fourth:Pen to Paper - Creating Conceptual Marketing Campaigns
Fifth:The Plight of the Indie Animator
Sixth:Production For Emerging Platforms

The panel will discuss production, finance, and distribution of works produced for online, cross-platforms, and transmedia.

Seventh:Watching Windows: Constructing Your DIY Distribution
Eighth:You Are Not a Publicist: Criticism vs. Advertising

Some of these sound spot and others not so much. I will check to see if there are going to publish the panels.

[Paul Fierlinger]

This to me sounds fascinating because it confirms what I've been saying for years about our standard "BIG AND VERY IMPORTANT" festivals; Annecy, Ottawa, Zagreb, Stuttgart and other, smaller ones... which is that none of these festivals have kept up with the times and together, with many animation schools, cover or teach in their workshops subjects which no longer apply in the real world.

[Paul Fierlinger]

OH WELL...
(From New York Times

March 15, 2011, 2:00 pm
What’s SXSW Really About? The Beer
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

AUSTIN, Tex. — The kind of thing you think about in the morning: How does all the beer get here?

There it is, in the alley behind Sixth Street, piled in cases and kegs and on pallets, mountains of beer, from lowly Bud to ZiegenBock Amber (“Only Texans Get It”). Of course, it comes on trucks, mostly white ones, powered by fuel that seems to be going for about $3.39 a gallon, which is better than the $4.19-a-gallon variety that they’ve been peddling in Los Angeles.

Austin takes its music so seriously that it has restricted lanes for musicians loading and unloading in front of places like the Stage on Sixth. But it is even more serious about the beer, which was being shuffled around by a forklift behind the Stage and other joints early Tuesday morning.

This has implications. Unlike the Sundance Film Festival, which is driven by ambition, South by Southwest, the music-film-interactive-tech festival here, is beer-driven. People come less to judge than to look, listen and drink. It can make for hazy mornings, but it also makes for an earthier experience. It’s not so much about what’s getting ahead as about getting in the mood to enjoy what a (sometimes beery) bunch of pop artists has wrought.

[crayon10]

There is a lot of that (beer) but there is networking also but the public, most likely, does not go to those events.