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Visiting artist series inspires students at Acalanes High School

By Sandy Mouat
CORRESPONDENT

The Lafayette Arts and Sciences Foundation's Artists in Residence program brings fascinating and exciting guest speakers to the students of Acalanes High School. This year, the program included water color workshops given by Christine Messer, Master Portrait and Life Drawing workshops given by award winning artist Sherry Kwint-Cattoche, paper-making classes given by San Jose State University School of Art instructor Leroy Parker, and digital photography lessons given by Bill Delaney, of Reed's Cameras. These professionals entertain and inspire the students through engaging presentations of their unique talents.
       Culminating this very successful year of the program, was a presentation to Susan Lane's Graphic Design class by Joel Hynek, Academy Award winner in Special Effects for the movie, "What Dreams May Come".
        Hynek began by explaining the process used by his company, Manex Visual Effects, in which special effects are first "pre-visualized" on computer storyboards, where all of the details are determined and the shots designed, before any physical work begins. In the case of the movie "Eraser", for instance, he showed a video and explained how the airplane, a 727, was first a CAD drawing, from which a computerized pattern was created. Using this pattern, the computer then controlled the physical manufacture of the scale model by guiding a 3D milling machine to create the model from high density foam.
        The process by which the filmed scenes in "What Dreams May Come" were digitally painted over in layers, in order to make them appear to be created in brilliantly colored brush strokes, inspired many interested questions. The students were fascinated by the specialized software that allows paint strokes to adhere to individual pixels within the film, as well as by the software used to intelligently "see" as the human eye sees, to separate the background colors from those in the foreground of the shot. They were amazed that those incredible scenes were created on computers very much like the desktop Macintosh computers bought through an LASF grant, that they use every day in their Graphic Design class.
        Hynek's work on the recently released film "The Matrix", was particularly engrossing because the project involved creating effects that had never been accomplished before. In order to create speed that would seem too fast to be seen by the naked eye, 122 still cameras were set up to take shots of the action in a full 360° circle. The cameras were placed behind an encircling green screen facade, onto which still pictures of the intended background would be digitally pasted.
        Upon opening the floor to questions, the students eagerly asked about everything they had just heard and witnessed on video. Their intelligent questions about particular points were evidence of how involved they had been in the presentation.
        During his second presentation of the day, Hynek brought his Academy Award, and all of the students got a chance to hold an actual "Oscar". One of the students had the rare privilege of getting tips from Hynek about special effects for his amateur movie project. Hynek appeared to enjoy the exchange as much as the very excited student.
        Hynek tried to stress that special effects work is very grueling, and not at all glamorous, but to those of us who love the magic of movies, there was little that could be said to change our fantasy of being "in the business".

6/23/99 Reprinted with permission. Visit the Contra Costa Times on the web at www.contracostatimes.com.

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