ASIFA Board Agenda and Meeting - February 4, 2019, a Conference Call Collossus!
Chatting up a storm, after a storm, waiting for the thermal inversions to make a mockery of Monday moodiness and frigid fiasca. Bleary-eyed participants dialed in at 8pm, Monday, February 4.
A proper communion of puppetry began the celebration of new home ownership, knotty pines, radiation survival, and film stripping.
Present: Deanna, Gretchen, Julie (her first time as setting up!), Chuck, Chris, Brad, Bob S, and some half-blind pharmacist in Battle Creek
Topics:
ASIFA IAD Central Review
From 50 attendants in 2017 to 125 in 2018; from 2 screening sites in 2017 to 7 in 2018. 26 chapters participated in the IAD, and 15 chapters exchanged film reels for the occasion. By 2020, ASIFA Central will spread animation to all corners of the globe! Well, a globe by definition doesn’t really have any corners, does it? That would be squaring the circle, which ignores pi, and a culture that ignores pi can only find culture in yogurt, which is not an ideal animation medium.
President Brad has been musing on the timing for future IAD showings, namely by pulling submission deadlines to the first of June, with this first challenge representing a best of compilation from the hours of material on the 15 programs already exchanged by the international chapters. Then, by 2020, the reset schedule should allow for plenty of programming without the current concerns about last minute arrangements, which can contribute to a low level of animator and audience participation.
The new! Improving! ASIFA Website has some needs, mainly technical, with challenges on viewing the site based on the browser used (clipping on Firefox, trimming on Opera, and who knows what Netscape thinks of it). Julie is working on links, Jim is prepping some mp3s to flood the fields of public domain (1924 - “Rhapsody in Blue” is up for grabs, and how one can salivate...), until then, some nice Edison masters of Felix Arndt. Brad is working on the main header for the site.
And an earlier release of the IAD poster can improve participation (and again, reduce the rushed sense of wrapping up rapt contributions). This year, Saturday February 23 begins ANI-JAM 19! The Grand Rapids Community Media Center will host, or members can participate via SKYPE at 1:00 EST.
Brad offered the following notes for the ANI-JAM:
Crazy idea 1: Proliferation and exuberance of life!
Pitch: The landscape constantly scrolls belching out strange bugs till the last bug (the one on the poster appears)
Rules ideas:
One person creates the rolling landscape (it just scrolls)
The amount of landscape depends on the number of participants.
Each person gets a copy of their portion of the rolling landscape. The landscape scrolls 3 sec per person
Each person can make the animated belching bug volcanos act as they desire but the must keep moving at the same pace and match up with the next segment of the scroll. In other words during the 3 seconds, much can happen but the landscape must move consistently to the pace that you were given, and your end volcanos and holes must match the start of the next volcanos and holes.
You can interpret the scrolling landscape in other mediums keeping consistent colors and basic shapes. (stop-motion, 3D, paint, etc.)
Within your 3 seconds you can go wild with creative insects
animators can combine their segments to make larger segments and have interaction between their bugs and interpretations of the world
Specifics will be worked out before the 23rd day of February gets nibbled away.
Deanna Morse also let slip that she is one of four new ASIFA International vice presidents. She discussed her projects for the newly repurposed website, with US chapter profiles, overviews of ASIFA prize recipients for the past 20 years, and a celebration of ASIFA’s 60th anniversary. Deanna wants writers to sharpen their pencils on behalf of the projects, offering prize money to stimulate the process. April submissions with September deadlines for those projects. Deanna and Brad will continue discussions between ASIFA Central conference calls.
Here is her official "release" -
Elected (re-elected) as a V.P. for ASIFA International, 3 year term. Working with Sayoko Kinoshita (President, Japan), VPs: Johnchill Li (China), Mohamed Ghazala (Egypt), Thomas Rendolder (Austria), and the many ASIFA chapter representatives around the globe. Working for peace and mutual understanding, connecting through our shared love of the art of animation. Celebrating 60 years in 2020 for this organization.
And a preliminary discussion for this year’s ASIFA Central retreat focused on St. Louis, Missouri for the location, with details being sent “to committee” for the next meeting. A July 20 weekend is being proposed for the retreat, to allow for scheduling access to other summer events. We understand St. Louis in July is a specialized treat for those who enjoy heat and humidity on a professional scale. RETREAT Committee: Chris, Gretchen, Bob; with details by next meeting
ASIFA Central is a non-profit group, and as a non-profit, members may be able to take advantage of certain special considerations for software access and promotional partnerships. Nina Paley’s creative-commons “Seder Masochism” is certainly worthy of an afternoon showing and discussion in its own right.
The Ann Arbor film festival is also slated for March 26-31, with at least one major session concentrating on animation, with other films being scattered among the competitors. Other local retreats were discussed, based on availability of material, topics, and creators. Those, too, went into a committee for consideration.
Jim Middleton
ASFIA Central Secretary
No comments:
Post a Comment