So last night? EEEEE. The Pixar thing was exactly what I would have dreamed it would be. Rather than talking about the too-often-rehashed pipeline process of making a 3D animated movie, he talked about the art of storytelling, and structuring scenes. How to set up an audience and pay them off or surprise them with a twist. In true Pixar fashion, he emphasized the value of storytelling over technical skills.

His first examples were in the structure of music and jokes--the power of an introduction, and how to subvert an audience's expectations--, then he showed us examples of Fred Astaire dance sequences and a Jackie Chan fight scene, in which the characters creatively make use the objects in an environment. He then showed examples of different ways of animating the same line reading and adding your own mannerisms to the script, linking it to his own animation work on Pixar movies. Something inside my head clicked. It was like a divine revelation, coming at me through heavenly chorus, "THIS IS HOW YOU ANIMATE." Thank you, Jesus!

It ended up being about two and a half hours, twice as long as I thought it would be. The Little Shop folks were cool, though. They were finished with the ensemble by the time I got back (I hitched a ride on the Drexel bus, as public transportation was majorly sketchy), so I had time to watch most of Veronica Mars (God bless Timeshifting) before heading down to the Production Meeting at 11.

Life is good.