Rain, and More Guests, with Talk of Hollywood

Yesterday we were privileged to welcome more guests to our house in FountainHills, this time in the person of Red's cousin and his girlfriend, who live in the Los Angeles County community of Glendale, which if you know anything about the geography of the area, is a municipality of rather small size but which is located near the opening between the Los Angeles Valley proper and both the San Fernando Valley to the Northwest as well as Pasadena to the East. This makes it readily accessible to a great many locales in the region. Not surprisingly its also the nexus of a several of the major freeways that serve as arterials.

Both of our guests work in animation. They are both originally from Ohio, where they went to art school before relocating to Southern California.  Red's cousin works at a large and well-known movie animation studio that is not far from their residence. His girlfriend works at a large and well-known online game studio, the name of which I had not known but which I am told would be readily familiar to anyone who engages in gaming on a regular basis.

We had a very pleasant dinner last night at Flower Child in Scottsdale, which is one of our favorite casual places where one can be served a meal that suits just about any healthy dietary restriction. At home we sat around the propane fire pit where we the current state of Hollywood and moviemaking.

Red's cousin opined how so much of the work in animation is now being driven away from Southern California towards other locales. I remarked that I had recently read an article in Vanity Fair about the "End of Hollywood" based partly on that idea.

Later on, I took over the conversation, describing my interest in Hollywood history.

"To the lay person, a movie is all about the actors. In the case of film students, one learns about auteurship and it's all about directors. But from watching TCM for so long, I learned that for real movie buffs, the history of Hollywood is all about the studios."

Our guests brought the rain with them. It came in overnight and we woke the patio was soaked. We had coffee out on the patio again, with water replacing fire as the dominant element of the moment.

By that time I'd realized that there was a fourth level of appreciation of the history of moviemaking, beyond studios and producers, which is the technologies.  Real movie buffs can tell you about the various systems of sound that were invented in the late 1920s, and about the history of Technicolor.

Behold my second Youtube video of this series (made with iPad), a very short short in the style of the Edison studio c. 1898.