#4 - Round Two

Craig Church
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An Annie Award voter revealing his choice for film of the year.

As predicted, it seemed everyone around the studio was buzzing about Kung Fu Panda's total domination of Pixar's Wall-E at last Friday's Annie Awards. Today's Daily Variety even bore a cover ad congratulating the studio (as well as giving a not-so-subtle nudge to Academy voters). Monday afternoon, CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg brought the entire studio outside for a few moments cake, champagne, and toasts to celebrate the recognition (calm yourselves and change your pants, my dear Adventist readers - for I did not partake in the boozing portion of the festivities). I know a lot of people are very excited, as an Annie is voted on and awarded by our peers, unlike the Academy Awards, for which most voters have no idea and therefore a solid appreciation of every element of craftsmanship that has to fall into place correctly for a great animated film to happen.

Aside from that, it was business as usual back inside Dragon HQ. I'm constantly flustered whenever I post here because so much cool stuff happens that I can't talk about. I can say, however, that I am having the opportunity to sit in and be a fly on the wall during a lot of the meetings that take place. It's a fantastic time for me to use my stunning power of observation and soak up the knowledge, in addition to the occasional slightly confused glance from people in the meeting who have no idea who I am or why I'm there. In all seriousness, though, my supervisors and others I work with have been great on exposing me to the entire process of their filmmaking whenever I have some downtime.

Not that I wasn't before, but now I'm really beginning to miss PUC. It's beginning to dawn on me that many of the people I know and love the most only have a few months left in Angwin, and I'm going to be MIA for a good chunk of them. It's thoughts like those that get me even more weepy and lonely than I already am (I'm thinking about auditioning for the next Nicholas Sparks movie). That's life, I suppose.

All hankie-inducing thoughts aside, I still really am having a great time learning down here. I'm excited to think that one day I'll hopefully be working in this kind of environment, with friends and loved ones close by when I clock out. That'd be all kinds of nice.

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