Congratulations Rob Hillstead MFA

Congratulations Rob Hillstead for defending his MFA thesis today, which included his film "Blossoms" and his paper which presents the irrational method as a production model for this film's creation. Solomon Nagler was the external over Skype. Things went well. I regret that we no longer have the budget to fly our externals to Regina for the process as that always creates a better environment for discussion and analysis and also has spill-over benefits including possible talks with other students, sharing and networking between colleagues, and a greater degree of unofficial critique. It's the times we live in.
Went out for a mead at Bushwakkers afterwards. It's the first time I've had their mead. It was okay but a bit beer-y. While there, I met Rob's co-writer Mandy Pavlovsky who is also working in immersive virtual reality production.
Rob is the eighth MFA student that I have supervised or co-supervised to graduate. I am going to try to put together a short bio or each one. I think I know what all of them are doing except Fazail, who I WAS on Facebook with but who does not seem to be on it anymore. Last I heard he was back in the Maldives. Here is my list: 

Brian's film "The Sabbatical"

William and I attended the late screening of The Sabbatical, Brian's new film, at the Imax theatre. It was very good. 

Clean up day at the university

Margaret is sick today. I spent the morning sweeping and tidying up the animation room and meeting with students. Re-read and re-watched Rob's work to prepare for his defense. The legislature building renovations are lit up well and in the early evening light, it seemed very mysterious. Perhaps it is jut the Twin Peaks talking. 

St. Nicholas Day

Woke up this morning to find our shoes full of candy and other surprises. Nice morning in bed with treats and cats. 

Twin Peaks and hot chocolate

William and I have been watching Twin Peaks. We took a break so that William could eat hot chocolate with a spoon on the chilly (but very warm for December) back deck.
Mike came over in the afternoon, in town for just the weekend, but I didn't take any pictures while he was here. Don't know why. We watched Metropolis because h'ed seen it during the Mathew Good concert recently. This evening we had a great time at Allan and Jana's Christmas party. 

Sarah Cummings Truszkowski at Artful Dodger

Sarah Cummings Truszkowski and Margaret Bessai

End of a long week. I took the grad class for lunch at the club where we had a great turkey buffet. Their presentations were excellent and informative. I'd like to work such a session into the course earlier next time, but it didn't feel right this semester with so many of them coming from outside the faculty.

Robert Truszkowski

Still full from lunch, we went out to the Artful Dodger and an exhibition of new painting by Sarah Cummings Truszkowski. We'd seen some of the earlier versions of these in her studio in August but these are even more stunning. As we were leaving, we noticed that Patrick Johnson was playing some piano. William joined him for a few minutes. We talked about the Rocky Horror Show which Patrick played piano in but who's spot on the stage was hidden from our view.

William Bessai-Saul and Patrick Johnson

Margaret's parents' "new" living room

The wall painting, trim, carpet cleaning, and new furniture delivery have finally all come together for George and Margaret to assemble their parent's living room into a new, exciting socializing space. In particular, George has committed vast amounts of his time to this, probably so he can finally begin to feel some degree of belonging within the house that he's been living in for the past few years. Great work guys.

Caligari pitch to City of Regina

As a group of us sat stoically in the gallery as professionals and supporters of the project, Chrystene Ells and Berny Hi made a precise, passionate (not to mention quick) five minute presentation to the city council for the Caligari Project 4 month arts and culture festival for next fall. As I'd hoped, but didn't dare dream, the proposal was accepted whole-heatedly and they've grated us the full sum we asked for. This will ensure we are able to have a paid organizer and some promotion for the events. Now the 'easy' part, we make some creative things happen. Great work everyone, and thank you City of Regina and Chrystene and Berny. Stay tuned. 

An An and her storyboards

The last week of classes is officially underway. An presented the storyboard for her entire film. It is at the point that she can do some concrete estimates of the pacing and can start creating/animating it. I'm feeling very confident in her, she's really put a lot of hard work into this. 

End of month deadlines

The last day of November: had to get films uploaded for $100 Film Festival as well as for Berny Hi's Saskatchewan project. I have some very cool music from Andrew Wenaus who was introduced to me by Johnathan Dyck. I've stoked about the way it goes with the images. 

Baking begins

This is my first weekend in ages without a heavy deadline hanging over me. I began my baking - made seven types of cookies. 

Sonia Bonspille Boileau and Jason Brennan with "Le Dep"

Sonia Bonspille Boileau and Jason Brennan were in town, guests of the department, and presented their micro-budget feature Le Dep. I took my animation students to it on Thursday (even though it wasn't animation, I figured that film students need to see professional filmmakers - this is sometimes more important than another of the regular lessons). We had lunch on Friday and they spoke with the film on Friday night. 

Magic lantern show

With Jesse's help, I cut heat resistant parchment paper into narrow strips and mounted them onto dowels so that in class today we could create new semi-animated images configured to my magic lantern I got from Carle Steele a few years ago. I'd tried to do a bit of this with wax paper last year but I didn't have the entire structure and I was also worried that by rigging a 150 watt light to the projector, I might set it on fire. Today worked well, although the paper remained too thick. 

SIFA awards

Fun at the SIFA awards last night. The hosts, Colby Richardson and Judy Wensel (in their nutty personas as low budget newscasters) were amusing while keeping things moving forward. Big winner was Rhys Pugh who won audience choice (that's what it's really all about) and Logan Vanghel, both for the student film "Queeny", which is an amazingly funny work. 

Congratulations Saqib Noman, MFA

Saqib successfully defended his MFA project and paper this morning with John Greyson as his external examiner. Everything went very well. 

Jesse helps me with magic lantern

I want to try to create new magic lantern rolls for the projector that Carle Steel gave me a few years ago. I bought some materials including parchment paper (which will withstand the heat better than wax paper and is better to draw on). Jesse Goddard helped me by cutting the paper into strips  and figuring out how to best cut and drill my dowels. Now I can finally do the workshop with the grad students I've been thinking about for two years. Thank you Jesse. 

Cabinet forces us to contend with the dust from hell

Margaret and William found a table/cabinet on sale (as is, a couple scratches) at Canadian Tire the other day and picked it up for a work/project table for William downstairs. Getting it down required moving the fridge and a number of other things, revealing messes we were not prepared for including Sylvie's secrets under the stairs, a poorly installed outlet behind the fridge, and dust.... oh so much dust!!!

Collage collective hard at work

Margaret, Gerda, Sharon, Gerri Ann, and Sheila booked a room at the Balkwill this weekend and worked collaboratively as well as independently on some new works. William and I were trying to find some ancient relics so didn't stick around to contribute to an exquisite corpse, but the work was looking fresh and fun.

Fresh new ancient runes

William went overboard on another school project today, hand copying his assignment, which he'd translated into Norse runes, with a quill by candlelight. I don't know if I was ever this committed.

Patrick Jenkins in Regina

Art for Lunch today was a Toronto animator Patrick Jenkins whom I am embarrassed to admit I had not heard of before. He does excellent animation using paint on glass techniques, top lit, with watercolour. His content for three of his films is based on a very surreal take on film noir with jazz and inexplicable mysteries, people being shot, and ghosts and spirits flying in and out of the scenes. Magical in both form and content. I told my animation students to come and am disappointed at their absences. I got a chance to talk with Patrick after his talk (I was late and wasn't sure what I missed so I held back asking stupid questions). He was really nice and very generous with sharing his techniques.