This is Andrew Stanton's Oscar for Wall-e. The other day, the day after the Oscars, we had a big celebration and toast (the drink kind not the bread kind). Afterward Andrew stuck around so we could get pictures taken with him and the Oscar. I didn't feel like getting my picture taken because I didn't work on the film, but you can bet I will next year when "Up" wins!
The other day the "Up" character team (the people who worked on all the characters)had a 'We're done!' celebration. We went to Skywalker Ranch. If you know what that is, you know how cool a thing it is to go there. If you don't know what it is, I'll forgive you and give you a clue. Skywalker Ranch is located on Lucas Valley Road. Still don't know? Fine. It's George Lucas's place. By 'place' I mean the huge plot of land where much of his production studios reside.(For those who are still in the dark - he made (cough - and ruined - cough) Star Wars! This is the main house (Where George hangs out).
It's a gorgeous area! Our main goal was to visit Skywalker Sound, where they record/create all the sound for our movies. We saw them mixing the sound for a trailer, but the highlight was playing with foley. Foley is all the natural sound effects. Things like footsteps, the sound of doors opening/closing, etc. In a live action film they record most of those sounds while filming, but nothing exists for animated film so every single sound has to be created by a Foley artist. You've probably seen it on a DVD or at Disneyland. They assigned each of us a sound effect, then they played a clip of the movie and we tried to time our sound effect to fit. The recorded it and played it back - It was soooo fun!
The other day Mia came in my room with a baby doll under her shirt. She said "I'm going to have a baby!" Then made this face and a weird grunting sound and flipped her shirt inside out plopping the baby out.
The other day we had a family Guitar Hero match. While the girls played, Xander, feeling left out grabbed the girl's Barbie guitar and copied them. Eventaually he figured out that his was different, so we gave him a chance. He Rocked! It was so sweet, he had to brush his teeth afterward.
One last thing. They don't teach Art in the schools out here (I mean money is short you know - and how could they afford to pay for Art without cutting the important curriculum that only our schools can teach, like "Gay and Lesbian acceptance") Anyway, in an effort to keep our children from becoming uncultured hippies (rather than cultured hippies), they have (usually untrained) parents volunteer once a month to teach art to the kids.
Valerie is this volunteer in CJ's class. Today Val taught the kids about "Surrealism" (like Salvadore Dali). CJ was excited about it ad told me that they learned "Cerealism".
I'm sorry about the long, political, set-up to that punchline. No I'm Not.
