This is a continuation of this post (Part 1), which was an expansion of this post, and part of a series of posts about SIGGRAPH and the Student Volunteer Program. You can read Part 3 here.

A few months after returning from SIGGRAPH Asia in Yokohama I received a phone call asking me to join the SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles Student Volunteer Committee. My job would be Industry Relations and Outreach. I was stoked.

Jason Jerald was the chair of the 2010 program, and had been on the committee in 2007 and 2009 when I was an SV and TL. He was working on his PhD in Computer Science at the time, while also developing technology for Digital Artforms, and I was excited to work with him. His attention to detail and perfection impressed the gunslinger style in me, and I knew I could learn a lot from him. (and I did)

Also on the committee that year was Maya Karp, the 2011 SV Chair and someone who I had first met back in 2008 while I was a first time Team Leader in LA. Maya has one of those personalities that just makes her shine. She can be goofy as all get out but sharp as a tack. She’s a task master and a gun slinger. A good balance, that one has.

Also part of the committee that year were 2 former TL’s I had worked with in Los Angeles in 2008, Christian Wittorf and someone I said I’d mention again later, Gracie Arenas Strittmatter. Christian is the guy who builds crazy tools to do jobs nobody wants to do, and with his tools he can usually do them faster than the rest of us. He pretty much single handedly wrote our entire review process so accepting our students would be as hassle free as possible. Imagine reading 1500 paper applications… Yeah, that’s how they used to do it. Now we can distribute the load and better yet, assess the applications in better detail and be sure we are getting some _really_ awesome students. The guy is awesomely ridiculous though in personal and social life too. He’s the funniest person you’ll ever meet and he always has a huge grin on his face. The dude’s got presence. It’s awesome to be around. Although I think he does still owe me a cab fare. Not sure if we settled that one or not Christian. Gracie is the one who saved my butt in 2008 in Registration. When I had a line of 20 attendees who wanted to ring my neck for a computer system I had no control over crashing, Gracie was there to help diffuse situations and let me come up for air. Unfortunately for Gracie, this wouldn’t be the last time she would be saving me from something. More about that soon.

The final 2 additions to the team were Mary Nesnay and myself. Mary handled Communications and .H.O.L.Y.C.R.A.P. was she good at it. I swear she would respond to inquiries and questions before they even arrived in her inbox. Modern day nostradomous, she was.

As for me – I had once again managed to make people believe I could do something. This in itself is a great skill and I hope it will take me far. I don’t have much of a fall back. I’d say they kept me around because I can tell really good jokes… but I think that would be giving myself wayyy too much credit. As part of Industry Relations and Outreach I had 2 major jobs.

1) Organize, Promote, and Manage what we called “Special Sessions” – these are times when we invite speakers from the industry to come and spend time with the students in the program. They talk to them about their experiences in the industry, how they got where they wanted to go, etc. They are extremely intimate and often students build mentorships, internships, or even jobs out of these encounters.

2) Handle all donations to the SV program. This includes Luncheons, Meal Vouchers, iPads (thanks Autodesk!), books, money, and other shwag different companies are interested in donating to the program.

In addition to these jobs, I was also the mastermind behind the Student Volunteers Forums, a forum system that all the SV’s use to communicate before/during/after the conference. Keep an eye on those by the way, I’ve got some crazy ideas for them going forward.

So in February 2010 I took a Friday off work and flew down to beautiful Orlando, Florida, Gracie’s home where we were having our 2010 SV Committee calibration meeting. The 6 of us worked hard Friday and Saturday, and Electronic Arts was nice enough to lend us some meeting space in their Tiburon facility (Gracie’s 9-5). We worked hard, spent wayyyyy too long deciding between walkie talkies and cell phones, and then drew the Team Leaders out of a hat.

Just kidding.

Maybe.

In addition to the work, we did a whole-lotta bonding. We ate every meal together, traveled in a small van that we couldn’t really fit in, and quoted bad movies (and by bad I mean awesome). That night we played Guitar Hero and OMG Jason Jerald is a BEAST on Guitar Hero. Seriously, ask him to play sometime. I’d say Scorpion’s watch out, but I don’t think Jason would ever try to dethrone his idols. He’s a huge Scorpion’s fan.

After we thought we had everything planned, we tried to catch the last Endeavor shuttle launch out of the Cape. It happened to fall on that Sunday morning, so we drove out to at 1AM to check it out. It was cold and wet, and were all really tired. Our flights were leaving in around 8 hours so we knew it would be a long day. We waited for a few hours on the shore where we could see the launch site, but eventually they canceled the launch due to cloud cover. We were bummed. And tired. So we went to the airport. Actually we freakin’ flew to the airport. If memory serves, Christian missed his flight and Mary almost missed hers. All in all though – a great constructive weekend. We had finished a lot of work.

The next several months I spent trying to get companies to come present to our Student Volunteers. It’s harder than it seems, especially when it’s something you have never done before and you don’t really know what to expect. Lucky for me I had this magic wand called Gracie. She had done it the year before and had everything ridiculously well organized and even had quite a few contacts I could get in touch with. She had some letters written up that I was able to adapt for the year. It worked out well.

We were able to put together some great presentations with speakers from Electronic Arts, The Walt Disney Company, Animation Mentor, Dreamworks Animation SKG, Pixar Animation Studios, The Mill, and many others. Working with these people was awesome. I had the opportunity to be in touch with and meet some of the people who either A) had jobs I had always wanted when I was in school, or B) were in charge of hiring for jobs I had always wanted when I was in school. I also knew if I was going to do this job any justice I couldn’t be a fanboy. It was hard.

In addition to our Special Sessions we also hosted a lunch with some great people over at The Walt Disney Company. They served our 400+ Student Volunteers a variety of lunches that were actually really good. (I took 2). They had speakers from all different areas of the company from ABC to Disney Animation and everywhere in between. Dayna Meltzer, my contact at Disney and their Outreach Coordinator jumped through countless hoops to finance this lunch for us, and get our students lots of cool swag. Their donations to our program that year totaled in the 5 digits. I was ok with that. If you’re ever walking around the expo floor stalking people’s name badges and you see one that says Dayna Meltzer, be sure to thank her. She’s a wonderful giver and I’m not sure how Disney got so lucky to have her.

At this point I’m not sure what it is about our business – but it seems like they all get one thing REALLY right. And that’s who their outreach people are. We ended up organizing a fantastic studio tour of Dreamworks Animation SKG in Glendale, in addition to the Special Sessions they presented throughout the week. Jim Conrads gave us a wonderful tour and explained all the perks of working at a place like Dreamworks. I wonder when Geomedia is getting a Starbucks in our office…. hmm, I’ll have to ask about that. They’ve also got a beautiful campus there, and although I’ve heard stories about the hidden pub I didn’t get to see it. Maybe next time. Then, in addition to alllll of this, Dreamworks also threw down a lot of money to sponsor our Student Volunteer Hats in 2010, a staple of the SV program and uniform. The hat designs were SEXY as can be (yes, I designed them) and the quality Dreamworks was able to source was perfect.

Our raffle that year ended up being completely stupendous. We hold the raffle based on which students were best performing and didn’t miss shifts. Part of it is also random and luck of the draw! We had a company on the show floor donate the monitors from their booth. We had Autodesk’s Jennifer Goldfinch give away a freakin’ awesome iPad and case along with several FULL licenses of Autodesk Maya and other products. Pixar gave us some teapots and posters, along with several other companies donating some really awesome shwag.

All in all 2010 ended up being a wonderful conference for me. I had learned a lot about SIGGRAPH, the inner workings of our industry, and better ways to network with people. One of the best things you can do when trying to “get to know” people, is simply that – just get to know people. Those are the relationships, networks, and connections that last. I remember the people who’s names I’ve scribbled on the back of my badge because we had an interesting conversation much better than the names on the piles of business cards I have back at home.

Next up, SIGGRAPH 2010 Asia, in Seoul, South Korea.

The next few posts are a bit more personal – they will try to explain my involvement with SIGGRAPH, and the people I’ve met along the way. They are an expansion of this post. Read it first if you haven’t. If you don’t know these people or me, the next few posts might be a bit boring. You’ve been warned. If nothing else, be inspired by the power of SIGGRAPH and the friendships it has helped build. I will be publishing these slowly as I finish them. -J
Link to Part 2.
Link to Part 3.

SIGGRAPH 2011 marked the 38th SIGGRAPH conference since its inception in 1974. SIGGRAPH stands for Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques. I’d love to think that in 1974 they just called it Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and when people asked about the long name they simply responded, “Yeah, we’re working on it.” /Agent Coulson Voice. You can read more about SIGGRAPH 2011 in the blog post I’ve authored here.

So, as part of the annual SIGGRAPH conference, there is a group of particularly awesome and dedicated students and industry professionals called the Student Volunteer Program. This is a highly prestigious program where only a few hundred students are accepted from a field of over 1500+. They are asked to volunteer to help run the conference and get some valuable face time with their future industry peers. There is a lengthy and intense application process determining need, want, dedication, and other traits necessary of a SIGGRAPH Student Volunteer. Once accepted, students enter into a very elite fraternity… of assassins… and get to meet Angelina Jolie… and bend bullets. Ok only part of that is true.

I started as a Student Volunteer back in 2007 when I was still in college. I worked various jobs in E-Tech trying to translate for some Japanese wind-vision presenters, or checking membership ID numbers at the membership booth. I also got to meet the inventor of the original Nintendo Power Glove. He was working on stereoscopic microscopes. Live germs in 3D! Heck yes. By the way, did I mention I _don’t_ speak Japanese? One of the first people I met that year was a guy from Singapore named Tan Wei Keong. He and I worked various shifts in E-Tech together, and I’ll talk more about him later.

The following year I applied to be a Team Leader, one of 20-ish students selected to lead the other 400. As a Team Leader you are selected to run certain venues at the conference, and you are the first level of questions/problems/conflicts/explosions that happen at that venue. So as a first time Team Leader and only a second year SV, I was given the Registration Hall, and we were in Los Angeles. Typically TL’s have partners so they can cover for each other and help out when things start to get crazy. But not me. For whatever reason I didn’t have a partner. Awesome.

On day 1 I showed up to Registration and was greeted by a line of 15,000 strong. I had 3 SV’s on shift that were supposed to serve a mob of 15k. Stubbornness took the better of me and I wasn’t going down without a fight. I strapped into my blue vest (the signature uniform of a Team Leader) and put on my SV Hat and got to work. Ten hours later I was wondering when I might get lunch. The day had flown by. At some point I reported to the office how ridiculously small my team was, and they sent me some backup. I also had help from a very dear friend who had run Registration before. I’ll also talk more about her later – her name is Gracie and as it turns out we went to highschool some 5 miles away from each other. (Small world huh?) By the end of the week SIGGRAPH had totally changed my life. I had met some amazing people in Los Angeles and totally made friends I knew I’d never forget. I also think I had earned my metaphorical stripes, as the sole Team Leader in charge of a Registration Hall that signed up 28,000+ attendees, not all of whom were always the most pleasant to help.

It was also at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles that I had heard about a new SIGGRAPH conference that was coming in a few months – SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. I wanted to know more, but unfortunately I found out that the time to sign up for volunteering for this program had passed. Unacceptable. I figured at this point I had tricked enough people into thinking I was semi useful – surely there was someone else who might take the bait again.

His name was Jim Kilmer. Jim is one of those super high level thinkers who sees everything from the 30,000 foot view, but also knows how many blades of grass are in each square mile. It’s kind of scary really. Anyway, I had been told that my only chance to attend SIGGRAPH Asia was to talk to this person, and I had no idea what he looked like or where to find him. To be honest, by the end of the week I had almost given up – a mixture of exhaustion from my stint in Registration that week and the little bit of sleep the Team Leaders were getting because of parties and working so early day after day.

By the end of the week we had been invited to the wrap party the organizing committees throw for all the important people at SIGGRAPH. Note when I say invited I really mean “crashed”. And when I say important people I didn’t mean me. So if you’re wondering what I was doing there, join the club. Anyway, I’m standing in line with my one and only holy free drink ticket the chair of the Student Volunteer Program (Josh Grow) had given to all the Team Leaders, and there are two people in front of me talking about SIGGRAPH Asia. I happened to catch a glance of one of their badges. Jim Kilmer. Schweet. Poor guy. Long story short, I harassed him for a good 20 minutes about SIGGRAPH Asia and how much I had enjoyed being a Team Leader this year in Los Angeles. I told him I’d love to attend the conference in Singapore, so he gave me his email address.

Within a few weeks of arriving home I sent him an email – a shot in the dark I figured. Somehow he remembered me, and in a few months I was setting sail for Singapore to join the Student Volunteer Program there as a Committee Member. I helped with logistical support during the conference there, mostly manning the office and making sure to put out fires when they arose. It’s not typical for an undergraduate student to be sitting on a conference sub committee, but it was quite an honor that my ambition refused to pass up. I think I learned an important lesson in that whole experience. You don’t get what you never ask for, and you’d be surprised what you DO get if you’d just ask. So you know that annoying guy who puts his nose everywhere and asks all those questions? Yeah, that’s me now.

SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore was pretty small – and I think ultimately a bit of a loss for the organization. At least in real dollars. Anyone who attended knows the strength of the friendships that were formed there, and the bond cemented between existing ones. Many of my very best friends today were people I met in SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. In fact, many of us have traveled the world together since. We’ll get to that later, but here’s some of us on the Great Wall of China just because I like to brag.

The following year SIGGRAPH was held in New Orleans. I was chosen again as a Team Leader, and again was chosen to run Registration. Lucky for me they had given me a partner this time (Melissa you are awesome), and on the first day I had 18 SV’s to run my venue. Apparently my whining the year before had paid off. Things went incredibly smooth, and with the exception of the NOLA plague everyone caught on the last day, New Orleans was full of fun memories.

Nico Gonzalez, who was the SV Chair that year and is now part of SIGGRAPH Student Services (S3) had ordered these psychological evaluations for everyone. They were awesome. We each took these series of tests and questionnaires to determine our personality traits. We were then paired with people we might or might not get along with during the conference. It was pretty cool. I thought my psycho evaluation was pretty accurate. There was a list for, “What to do when speaking to Jeremy,” and it said, “Thank him for his time.” That one was probably my favorite.

New Orleans was my last chance to become a Team Leader, as I had been a student already for 4 years. I had the chance to move up to a Committee position, so I applied and was hopeful. If I didn’t get it, I would probably be an attendee again, or find another way to contribute. As far as the Student Volunteer Program was concerned though, the buck stopped here.

In the meantime, I attended SIGGRAPH Asia in Japan where I also helped the committee with various logistics both pre-conference and on site. Japan was an amazing place, and after the conference I went backpacking from Yokohama to Tokyo to Mt Fuji on to Osaka, Kobe, Nara, and Kyoto with a friend I had met in Singapore, Eugene Harng. We spent Christmas on a rooftop in Kyoto with an Englishman and 2 Australians we had met, and to be honest I’m not quite sure how we made it home alive. But that’s a whole-nother story. By now though real friendships had taken hold, and I was meeting people from all over the world, from Eastern Asia to Northern Europe, and from India to South America.

Stay tuned.

We recently wrapped up a 6-spot television and web campaign for University Health System, through agency Creative Civilization, highlighting “Living Proof” of the medical miracles occurring every day at University Hospital

This years’ production featured live action with testimonials and personal accounts from the hospital’s patient, doctors, and staff. Through extensive research and hard work, agency Executive Creative Producer Joseph Guerra and senior Creative Director JC Cody felt all the stories were unified in that each of the patients’ testimonies were stories of survival, real-life examples of “Living Proof”.


The project presented challenging logistics from a production standpoint, but our talented team conquered each situation along the way. With only 8 days to prep the project we were able to successfully complete a three-day shoot on a schedule that more realistically should have required four or five days.

Our filming location was an ever busy city hospital so plans were often redirected as the next scene might included a doctor that would be unexpectedly unavailable “saving someone’s life” or our location needed to move since a surgery took longer than anticipated. Needless to say, our set wasn’t always a controlled environment and our AD team worked the schedule constantly to ensure that our shoot was successful.

We completed over 37 live action scenes with uncompromised blocking and lighting setups. ER’s, OR’s, research labs, MRI Labs, heli-pads, hospital exteriors, common areas, hallways, waiting rooms, limbo interview sets, designed home interior sets… You name it we shot it all at the University Hospital.

In addition to production, and integral to the success of the campaign, we also handled HD post production in-house. Creative editorial, color grading and subtle visual FX heighten the emotion of the poignant narratives, which culminate with “living proof” of each story’s happy conclusion.

So this one goes out to the entire production crew, AD, agency CD’s AE’s, etc. post production artists and the marketing team at University Hospital, who all made it possible.

Hope you like these commercials. Watch the the rest of them here.

When teams broke training camp this spring, the Hooks, Corpus Christi’s minor league baseball team and Double-A affiliate of the Astros , had visions of a competitive season and a new creative approach for their broadcast ad campaign.

Teaming up with Creative Director and Principal, Stephen Rybak of mdr, Geomedia produced a 30 second photography-in-motion spot that captures the atmosphere and excitement of a day at the ballpark.

Drawing inspiration from a storyboard concept and subsequent animatic designed by Geo’s Art Director, Martin Jaeger, we traveled to beautiful Corpus Christi and Whataburger Field where Director of Photography, Zach Nasits, and crew captured still sequence scenes of players, fans and stadium details to be incorporated in the final spot.

Geomedia Motion Graphics Designer and Editor, Joe Schartel, blended together  2D and 3D animation elements, composting techniques and organic transitions to take the viewer on a fast-paced journey of the sights and sounds of a Hooks game.

It was the agency’s vision to highlight the many areas of interest found in and around Whataburger Field.  The spot is filled with an abundance of iconic ballpark imagery, like Hook’s mascot Sammy Seagull, the swimming pool just beyond the right field fence, the majestic Harbor Bridge and many other unique amenities that make a Hooks game a fun family destination.

Related link: Corpus Christ Hooks Facebook Page

Client: American State Bank
Agency: Creative Civilization
Project: “ASB Goodcents” Broadcast :30
Director: Murray Breit
DP: Zach Nasits
Editor: Jeff Chesnut
Visual Effects: Martin Jaeger