THE END OF A JOURNEY

late last week, carlos a i hopped in my car and once again made the trek down to southern california. this time, our attendance was required at shane's graduation/final show on the art center campus. the drive was actually quite enjoyable this time out as it afforded me the time to listen to a bunch of music... tons of stuff from the shins, interpol's "antics," patrick wolf's record "lycanthropy," autolux's "future perfect", and elliott smith's "from a basement on the hill," were amongst the chosen records on the playlist. this is a luxury i simply do not often have, as sound construction plays an important role in video production.

once at the show, i once again felt the usual tinge of jealousy that seems to be sparked everytime i set foot on that campus. not only is it home to amazing facilities and tons of current equipment/gallery space, but it also houses what i would deem an overly gorgeous student body. of course, this jealousy quickly fades when i realize the amount of work necessary to excel at that particular educational establishment... it would've been tough to work and study while enrolled for sure. that and it would have been very difficult for me to get accepted in the first place.

the first night was highly enjoyable, mostly due to the wonderful company. in addition to carlos and shane, chris, nick, ricky, oli, song, morten, & ryan were in attendance. i was especially excited to see dawn and rachel, friends and fellow ucsd media alumni, at the show. dawn has been without constant internet access for some time, it seems. she has mentioned that she'll be back online soon. so if you're reading this, dawn, it was really wonderful to see you again. due to an inquiry from the lovely cinematographer extrodinaire, some of my older video work will likely appear on this site sometime in the near future. shane's family was looking wonderful as well, and i would once again like to thank them for the fabulous lunch they treated a group of us to following the graduation ceremony.

but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself. the show was quite enjoyable, as you'd imagine, likely due to the fact that the work on display was the best of what each student had to offer compiling years of work into a sort of "best-of" type event. though i don't have much of it photographed, the majority of what was on display was quite professional; it is clear that an art center education is worth the hefty sum it costs. either that or these were some truly talented bastards to begin with. i suppose both are the case.

shane had been spending the last several months cutting up all his work and slapping it onto a couple dvds. the work looked great, of course, and it was played surprisingly loud as well, drowning out nearly all other sounds in the room at times. lovely. and most importantly, it seemed to draw a crowd, especially when a bunch of us decided to camp out on the small raised platform covered with astroturf in fronnt of the main video displays. shane has also constructed a sort of "robut" that allowed users to control the sound and image coming from a third display. though it was acting a bit funky on the show floor, it was still fun to play with. what more can you ask for, really?

after a few days of chillin', soul calibur, and catching up with friends, carlos and i made a quick stop in huntington to pick up our friend jason, stopped at taco mesa for molé, (carlos's is better) and grabbed nick for the trek back up to the bay area. all in all it was a pretty good trip... though once again, i'm glad san francisco is my home rather than la or oc.

i'm just now completing a rather awesome (and hilarious) interview ray conducted with epic's cliffyb at atari university in cabo. hopefully it'll be available to watch for free, with no wait whatsoever, on gamespy.com today in the next couple of hours. i'm kinda rushing as i have to catch a flight to san diego for a midway event very, very soon. then i'm back on friday for the weekend. monday = london for the egn show. it's gonna be a crazy few weeks. keep it here. i'll try not to lull as i did last month.

and now, the photos.

Posted by ryan at August 25, 2004 02:05 PM