Festival of Visual Effects: Day 2 - Part 2

Well, another day, and part of last Saturdays extravaganza. In the following two panels which rounded out night, we got a chance to hear about some of the moral and ethical problems with visual effects, as well as hear about some films which are just horrible, but also ones that are just so cult, that they're yours to enjoy.. Read on!

6:00-7:00pm VFX Manipulation: With Great Power comes Great Responsibility
Moderated by Van Ling

This panel was one of the better panels this evening, covering the moral and ethical aspects of visual effects, from commercial product placement and deplacement, to digital augmentation of characters for financial gain or art. There was some excellent commmentary by Ron Brinkman, John Knoll, Ray McIntyre and Patrick Davenport. Ron delved into the history of photo manipulation, which isn't new, and segued into the manipulation of video. In it, there were a significant showcase of commercials, from Gene Kelly and Dirt Devil, Cary Grant and VW, and Steve McQueen and Ford. Of course, their estate bought off on the rights to use these people in their films, but is this an ethical question if everyone is happy? Some may say that we, as viewers, are disgusted that the family of Steve would bow down to financial pressure to put him posthumously into a Ford commercial. What do you think? Where do you cross the line with augmenting reality for personal or political or financial gain? We've seen it time and time again. One of the members of the audience asked of John Knoll about the rerelease of Star Wars, why? why do it? Knoll responded that he was the best qualified to do the job, and he was following orders, pretty much.. If he didn't do it, someone else would that was less qualified, and it would have been a worse job. There's always that, and I agree with it.

8:30-10:00pm VFX Guilty Pleasures
Moderated by Gene Kozicki

This exciting panel was much shorter than I anticipated! Most of the really interesting panels ended before one could get really into it.. This was a roundtable discussion of some of the guilty pleasures of visual effects. Bad, bad, bad movies that everyone hates but you. Films like Eight Legged Freaks, Flash Gordon, Flesh Gordon, Land of the Lost, Pirahna, and so forth. It was an interesting panel, even if I I haven't heard of any of these films, and there's a reason that most of these films faded into obscurity. Gene mentioned that before the days of late night infomercials, they would show these second rate movies, with classic effects, and this was how you'd be able to get introduced to these films.. Unfortunately, nowadays you have to actively seek out these films or get recommended them by a friend, which makes it much harder to apppreciate some of the finer effects done in these horrendous films.

Overall, this was an excellent day.. Very long, but very interesting! It was also one of the first days that I braved the LA traffic on a bus! The venue they were holding this years VES Festival was at the Writers Guild Theatre, with almost no parking in the area.. On Friday I mistakenly parked in the festival lot, and it was 14 dollars! On Saturday I took the bus, and it cost me 2 bucks round trip, and it took about the same amount of time. It's not too bad if you know where you want to go!