BSFFF Day 8: The Final Day ... for me

  That coughing you heard during the Saturday program was me. I apologize for the flu I passed on to each and every one of you who got it. At the time I though it was just the remnants of a cold I had a couple weeks earlier but it ended up being a full blown flu. This week after the events were over I ran a temperature of 101+ for two days before finally kicking it.  So needless to say I had to miss the Marathon not wanting to spread the plague any further. A sort of sad ending to what has been a really decent week of science fiction. This seems to be the cost of interacting with people for the last couple years I end up sick from whatever bug is going around the community.

Shorts...
One More Day (2014) - Touching little fantasy about a future where euthanasia is required at eighty years old. Sometimes though there is more living to be done and fighting the system is necessary. The short does a really nice job at creating a world where all the choice is removed from character's lives while showing a mask of caring. It also has the cutest golf cart escape you could have. The script is efficient and the emotions of the characters very connectable.
Hemera (2015) - For a 5 minute short this tells a complete story, creates a future and then tells of the interpersonal story of a couple trying to leave earth for the new planet Hemera. Some nice space shots also make this a fine little short.
Love and Other Devices (2014) - Artificial Intelligence avatar the Sirina S-2000--is being unveiled and the designer is having all kinds of issues getting it to work correctly. A commentary on male, female  relationship view points it missed with me although it was a bit funny at times. 15m;
As You Were (2014) - Could have been an advertisement for treating or injured war veterans better. In a not distant future where soldiers returning home with prosthetic limbs need support and understanding but instead are not accepted in society where a anti robotics movement is flourishing. Heavy on the value the wounded warrior and short on stop the wars that created them. Did have Actress Christine Woods who recently appeared on the Walking Dead. 22m;
One Day Some Day (2013) A very interesting scifi premise, what if everyday you woke up in the body of another person. For a day you had to live their life?  Then the next day you move onto another body for a day. The short wonders about the lessons the human race could learn focusing more to the positive ramifications instead of the drawbacks. Writer Director Arthur Cartwright has a very good idea he explores. 21m.

I was a Teenage Superhero Sidekick (2013) - I thought that  I was going to dislike this film more than I did. Not strong praise I know but whenever a title is so long that it is a sentence I become weary of the film that follows it. Hell the title could have been the tagline, but still the film was not as tongue in cheek as I worried and ended up being a nice little relationship film.

An Evening with Douglas Trumbull  - What seemed like a long advertisement for a new theatrical product Trumbull brought a bunch of ideas together in a presentation that was reasonably entertaining. Having worked on some really wonderful science fiction films in his time Trumbull has the gravitas to talk special effects all night. From the unmatched practically produced effects of 2001: A Space Oddyssey (1968) alone he could have spoken the entire night on how they executed the remarkable space effects. He worked also on Silent Running, Close Encounters of the Third Kind,   Blade Runner and most recently The Tree Of Life. Special effects though were just a small part of the nights conversation.
  A few other themes came from the presentation, one a new form of recording and projection that he and his team have been working on. Designed around high frame rates in both filming and projecting it is supposed to be an more natural way to view a film. His western Massachusetts farm, studio is the place to go to see this new process in action, and I sort of want to see it. The application of this new technology is not quite so clear cut. Since theaters and the movie industry have a structure for filming and showing films in place it seems unlikely that asking them to change equipment for the new system will ever go anywhere. Trumbull has that covered too. He is proposing modular theaters that can be constructed inside existing museums, malls etc. as a way to show films made in his new process. Certainly leaving it as a novelty this idea could at least get the process some exposure and thus giving the value a chance to be seen. There is still the problem of churn, where the proposed modular theaters are slated to have 40 or so seats this will effectively limit the length of the films produced for those theaters because the churn necessary to maximize the space will probably be somewhere around 20 minutes.
  Another theme for the night was the Overview Effect a documentary that has people who have been in space talking about the effect of seeing earth from space.

Trumbull who feels the need for us all to look at the Earth as a very small fragile thing floating in the vast darkness of space, showed the video to reenforce idea that this planet is close to a tipping point. We as a people need to start understanding just how little stands between us and the empty death of space.
  Another less enjoyable aspect of the night was the conversation that focused on his team building a mobile UFO hunting machine. I always loose just a bit of respect when people start talking about finding UFOs. So when this part of the talk came up I cringed just a bit. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I will allow that he may be just choosing a course so he can sell a television show, probably to SyFy.
  Overall the presentation showed a man following his interests in his later years. With resources Trumbull can certainly explore more thoroughly than most of us. He is still a smart man with ideas that could be relevant with some backing. The night was entertaining and I look forward to a trip out to see an example of his new filming process.