The Beverly Hills Film Festival
On April 18th my wife and I drove up from San Diego to Los Angeles for the premiere of my short animated film "Eight Uncomfortable Robots" at the Beverly Hills Film Festival. It's a nice drive. Along the way you can see the ocean and the huge, bulbous military equipment of Camp Pendleton. We got lucky and there wasn't much traffic.
I used to live in LA but typically stayed in Venice or near USC. I'd go to Hollywood for Amoeba Music, but preferred the beach to the concrete handprints and guys dressed up like Spiderman. In Venice, the buskers played guitar.
We arrived a little early, which was good, because it gave me time to set up my poster in the lobby. For the "Eight Uncomfortable Robots" poster I used a still frame from the Sentient Toilet sequence. I found an appropriate space for it by the restrooms.
TCL 6 is tucked away from the noise of Hollywood Boulevard on the third floor of the Ovation shopping complex. They have good popcorn. At 11:30AM in Theater 3 the other animators and I introduced our works and then the lights lowered. The show started.
I really enjoyed all the films in my block. In particular: the beautiful sadness of "Forget Me Not", the visuals and humor of "Beyond Measure", and the innovation/rawness of "Fruckus". It was incredible to see the diversity of both form (hand drawn, CGI, stop motion) and content (drama, horror comedy, documentary) in the festival's selections. Animation really is a beautiful artform - to me it fels like a way to transcribe the imagination into a DCP file. As for my own short, it was fun (and instructive) to see and hear how the audience reacted. The Catbot 9000 and Failed Prototype segments seemed to elicit the strongest response.
When the animation block ended K and I went to the 1:00PM showing (block 3). This screening was all live action films, mostly dramas, each about 15 minutes long with solid production values. My favorite was "Little Manly" (a quirky slice-of-life that felt like a live action Bluey episode).
After the 1PM showing we decided to take a break and explore Hollywood. I had lunch at The Window and checked out Larry's Bookstore. When we got back the streets were closed off because Eddie Murphy was receiving a lifetime achievement award.
The shorts at the 7:10PM block were either horror films or Tarrantino-ish thriller comedies. It was fun stuff to watch late at night with good special effects. My favorite of this lot was "Salvador," which had a strong sense of style that paired well with the film's content.
Afterwards was the afterparty. I enjoyed meeting the other filmmakers, the tequila, and the music. The air was cool on the balcony.