There’s something about the weather this time of year. When it starts to get a little cooler I get excited about movies. The nip in the air indicates the arrival of the Savannah Film Festival! 

This is my favorite week of the academic year. Students, faculty, staff, locals, out of town guests, industry professionals, and celebrities all convene to celebrate what we love most about cinema. I’ve been to a lot of festivals, from Sundance, to SXSW, to Cannes, and I’ve never experienced a festival atmosphere quite as special as the one here. We’re all here for the same reason, to celebrate the movies and explore how to make better ones.

Academy-Award winning actor Jeremy Irons, left, with Savannah College of Art and Design professor Michael Chaney during a Q-and-A at the 2013 Savannah Film Festival.

This was evident on Saturday morning when things kicked off with a master class with Alexander Payne. Assuaging concerns about staying on schedule, the Oscar-winning director insisted on taking more questions from students. “This is why I’m here!” he told us. This is why we’re all here. 

This week promises much to be explored. Great films, great discussions, and great workshops and panels. I’ve already identified one of my favorite moments from this year’s festival: seeing Alexander Payne’s Nebraska on opening night. I’ve followed Alexander’s career since his first film, Citizen Ruth, and have reveled in every one of his directorial efforts including Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, and The Descendants. 

There are a ton of opportunities this week for film lovers. I’m particularly interested in the not-so-documentary documentary Seduced and Abandoned by James Toback and Alec Baldwin, screening tonight at Trustees Theater. Toback and Baldwin were here at the festival a couple of years ago presenting a riff on Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. I’m excited to see how their Vaudeville-esque relationship translates to the screen as they tromp around Cannes trying to talk A-listers into being a part of their political-erotic re-make of Last Tango in Paris (Last Tango in Tikrit?). I’m pretty sure the Q-and-A after the screening will be full of treasures about their experience. There’s so much more to come!

Michael Chaney will host coffee talks with filmmakers and industry professionals in the lobby of the Marshall House at 8:15 a.m. each day this week.

“…riiiight, I’m supposed to be interjecting.”

That’s what I had to keep reminding myself as I sat on a panel at New York Comic Con 2013 listening to the other panelists speak. I couldn’t help but get lost in what they had to say since, just like the audience, I’m a fan of their work. I love comics, always have, always will. So to be a panelist at the conference was thrilling.

One of the panels I participated in was called “Page 1 – Panel 1,” a discussion about the process of making comics. As a professor of sequential art, I do this every day in one way or another, so I should have been able to handle this, right?

Comics writer Buddy Scalera moderated and told me in advance what the panel was about and who else would be there. Of course, once I sat there with comic industry super stars like Marc Silvestri, Jamal Igle and Jerry Ordway, it became a completely different thing. I was star struck.

Photo courtesy of Buddy Scalera

Worry not, dear reader, my brain kicked in to gear and I was able to contribute to the discussion and break process down to basics for the crowd, whose goal was to grasp a better understanding of how comics are made. Whew.

I feel lucky to be in a position where I get to talk about the medium that I love and to find myself in situations like this. I get a charge from the “who” and the “what” of comics, and especially from knowing that the people I shared the stage with feel the exact same way.

That’s the beauty of going to a comic convention: immersing yourself in the community and culture. Like hearing Professor Shawn Crystal speak on Marvel’s “Breaking into Comics” panel, or seeing Professor Tom Lyle talk to alumni while drawing for fans. Picking up an advanced copy of student Luigi Anderson’s first coloring job for Oni Press was another highlight, as was catching up with dozens of successful alumni, like Nick Dragotta and Andrew Robinson.

I’m sure next year’s convention will be just as exciting. Hopefully, I won’t be as star struck on the panel but, then again, I kinda hope that I will be.

Pat Quinn is an associate dean of Academic Services at Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. His work has appeared in Marvel Comics and DC comics, among others. You can see Pat’s art on his blog, Deviant Art page and on Twitter.

If you haven’t noticed, cable television is awash with channels dedicated to wildlife. Discovery, Nat Geo Wild, Animal Planet, all of them rely on the unique craft of environmental filmmaking and, in many cases, the bravery of the crew behind the camera. Despite the often harrowing field conditions, the genre is exploding.

The work of several emerging environmental filmmakers was on display recently at the annual Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary Ocean Film Festival. A team of student filmmakers from Savannah College of Art and Design showed their short film “Ocearch” (Oh-search), a documentary about the king of the underwater jungle, the great white shark.

OCEARCH: Documentary Teaser from Shea Lord on Vimeo.

“Ocearch,” which tells the story of a team of dedicated researchers that track and tag great white sharks, took the top prize of the festival’s 2013 Dr. Robert O. Levitt Emerging Filmmakers Competition. The occasion marks the first award and festival acceptance for the crew.

The 14-minute film was one of 11 student documentaries shown at the festival and judged by leading environmental filmmakers, such as Emmy Award-winning documentarian Keenan Smart of National Geographic.

Synopsis:
“OCEARCH is an organization dedicated to finding a sustainable path forward for ocean life by leading unprecedented white shark research expeditions around the world. This documentary follows their struggle to stay mission based and all inclusive in the search for answers to the ocean’s greatest mysteries.”

This weekend “Ocearch” will play at the Riverfront Film Festival in Apalachicola, Florida. Look for it soon at a festival near you.

Credits:
Producer: Courtney Roth, B.F.A., Film and Television
Director of Photography: Leah March, B.F.A., Film and Television
Director: Shea Lord, B.F.A., Film and Television
Editor: Jane Gray, B.F.A., Film and Television
Sound Supervisor: Preston Goodson, M.F.A., Sound Design
Graphic Designer: Alex Krohn, B.F.A., Graphic Design

Savannah College of Art and Design is no stranger to the movie industry. Every year, filmmakers flock to the historic Trustees Theater for the annual Savannah Film Festival (Oct. 26-Nov. 2). In the case of “SpongeBob SquarePants 2,” though, SCAD’s not showing the movie, it’s in it.

Paramount location manager Laura Bryant approached SCAD in August about shooting the sequel to 2004’s “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” at Jen Library and Trustees, a landmark situated on Broughton Street in downtown Savannah.

Once SCAD gave the green light, the studio’s art department transformed Jen and Trustees into staples of the fictional beach town of Salty Shoals, where SpongeBob – the eternally optimistic animated sea sponge - will make his debut on land through a mix of animation and live action. For shooting, which will continue for several weeks, the marquee at Trustees advertises the Salty Shoals Ocean Reef Festival and Jen serves as the Salty Shoals Museum.

Jen is still open to students during filming and offers a front row seat to the action: SpongeBob and friends using their powers to battle a menacing pirate, played by actor Antonio Banderas.

The enduring “SCAD” letters atop Trustees remain untouched. So look for a cameo when the movie premieres in February 2015.

In the meantime, rumor has it that SpongeBob is looking for a new pineapple to rent in the historic district.

Over the years, Chris Mennuto (B.F.A., Motion Media) watched his dad struggle to tell the story of how he escaped Tower 2 during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While interning in New York last year, Chris visited the 9/11 Memorial for the first time. Touching the names of his dad's fallen co-workers he was inspired to create a visual presentation of his father's escape. And so was born “18 Minutes,” a powerful two-minute short, which brought his father and his professor tears.

Chris's hand-drawn sketches capture his father’s ordeal with such precision and imbue seemingly cold and impersonal technical tools with a vibrant breadth of emotion. "18 Minutes," the amount of time it took Stan Mennuto to exit the burning building, is a testament to a son's love for his father and to the fact that digital art and storytelling are as evocative as traditional mediums.

To memorialize 9/11, Chris and his dad will show “I8 minutes” today at Indian River State College in Florida. Winner of several awards, “18 Minutes” has also been shown at animation and film festivals around the country.

What if I told you that you could use your vacation to Disney or LEGOLAND to build notions of career planning in your child’s little noggin?

Here’s how. Take Johnny’s favorite attraction and point out all of the things that make it work. Notice the queue and how it’s engineered to entertain while moving hundreds of bodies efficiently. Call his attention to the overall story being told and how that tale made him want to buy a hotdog at the seamlessly integrated snack kiosk.

These bells and whistles are not just the result of someone’s imagination. (Walt Disney’s Imagineers didn’t throw fun and color into a pot, chant bibbidi-boppidi-boo, and pull out Pirates of the Caribbean.) Theme park attractions require intricate planning and design.

Enter SCAD’s M.F.A in themed entertainment. The first in the U.S., this program gives students the fuel with which to design the experiences we plunk cash down for at zoos, parks, resorts, restaurants, museums, you name it.

There are two reasons why this expertise is in demand. One, with Imagineers retiring in droves, the theme park industry is facing a sea change in its workforce and, two, it’s experiencing unprecedented growth.

Consider: DreamWorks’ 3.1 billion dollar Dream Center in Shanghai, opening 2016; Universal’s Wizardry World of Harry Potter in Japan, opening 2014; Disney Shanghai, opening in 2015.

Sprinkled worldwide among the big studios are smaller companies, like Tribe, Inc., which keep the industry humming with major jobs like producing the Super Bowl half-time show, the Democratic National Convention, and more. All told, the theme park and attraction business is a multi-billion dollar industry with 350 million people visiting the world’s top ten parks in 2012, alone.

The professionals who engineer these spectacles want to make room for more. That’s why the Themed Entertainment Association will bring the SATE Conference all the way to Savannah this week, so participants can see what SCAD’s academic program is all about, and recruit fresh talent.

So there’s some food for thought while you sweat it out in the long amusement park lines or tour a museum. All hope is not lost if your 16-year-old wants to major in drawing. Your starving artist might end up feeding the fantasies of a generation addicted to ceaseless entertainment and in so doing feed himself, too.

#SCAD hosts TEA's experience design conference SATE 2013 this week in #Savannah. @TEA_Connect @SCADdotedu http://t.co/BSzQywOFO7

— Gokhan Ozaysin (@gozaysin) September 30, 2013