Visions6 Response

This year, Visions was interesting and especially for me because I was actually a part of the staff last year, so I thought it would be interesting to see the festival as a spectator once again. I attended the entire festival (with the exception of the video race and dessert reception), and from what I witness everything was organized very professionally. This year’s short films and lectures were all very interesting, but compared to last year I think that Vision’s Six wasn’t too concerned with their proclaimed theme of the festival, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some of the films that stood out to me were the animations, especially Still the Animation. I’m not going to describe what happens in still, but I did want to quote on the fact that it described the overall theme almost perfectly. In an age where animation is primarily target who younger (occasionally older) viewers, Still takes a concept and uses this to not only exploit a format for its backdrop, but also exit the screen with a great open ending. After film block one was the keynote address/Q&A featuring Jaclyn Gramigna, who did an excellent job with her presentation; this addition to the festival was interesting (and nostalgic), especially since Jaclyn was the first to win the Visionary Award a few years ago. After her presentation, I briefly left the festival because I wasn’t participating in the video race, however I did return to see the video race screening which was surprisingly fantastic. Skipping ahead to the conference block, I found my friend Travis’ paper intriguing, and also Garrett Spake’s presentation to be somewhat interesting as well. I think Garrett did a good job addressing some of the merchandising/rebranding issues that Hollywood has done in the past. Film block two was fantastic. I think that the highlight of the block (just in my opinion) was Pirouette. I feel like this animation, judging from the consensus of thoughts that people gave whom I had spoken to, thought that the Red Witch was astronomically better than any of the other animated films showcased this year. Pirouette is probably the most underrated animation/film that Visions Six had to offer this year. Overall, the festival was epic and it only keeps getting better every year.