SIGGRAPH 2022 has announced the award winners and lineup of 25 short films, cinematics, scientific visualizations, visual effects breakdowns, and more set to appear in the first hybrid edition of the Computer Animation Festival Electronic Theater this August. Highlighting the best in computer graphics storytelling, the Electronic Theater will premiere in-person at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Monday, August 8, and is available via separate ticket. Virtual access to the show will open on Tuesday, August 9.
A qualifying festival for the Academy Awards®, the SIGGRAPH 2022 Electronic Theater received over 325 submissions, which the expert jury whittled down to a lineup that spotlights work from 10 countries–including Sweden, Taiwan, France, the United States, and China. For the first time ever, the show will premiere in person and also offer a separate virtual ticket. In addition to juried selections, the festival will showcase a mixture of curated bonus content.
“The Electronic Theater is back,” exclaimed SIGGRAPH 2022 Electronic Theater director Darin Kyoichi Grant, of Animal Logic. “I am thrilled to be bringing back the in-person show this year and am even more thrilled to introduce the jury’s incredible selections to our global audience, which offer an incredibly diverse array of content types and storytelling perspectives. For virtual viewers, don’t worry: We have not forgotten about you and are committed to upgrading the virtual viewing experience with more ways to watch and more time to watch.”
SIGGRAPH 2022 Electronic Theater juror Michela Ledwidge, of Mod, added, “The variety of submissions my fellow jurors and I reviewed was awe-inspiring, whether that was pandemic-era visualizations or deep, heartfelt stories. It was extremely difficult to make our final decisions–all who submitted should be proud of what they presented.”
From a pool of nine student and 16 professional studio productions, including world premiere short films from Marza Animation Planet Inc. and Tsinghua University, the 2022 award winners are:
Best in Show
“The Seine’s Tears”
Pôle 3D
Yanis Belaid
(France)
Jury’s Choice
“The end of war”
Tsinghua University
Lei Chen
(China)
Best Student Project
“Yallah!”
Rubika
Nayla Nassar
(France)
For more on the Computer Animation Festival Electronic Theater lineup, click here.
ESPN and other channels return to DirecTV with a new Disney deal after a nearly 2-week blackout
DirecTV announced Saturday it had reached a deal with Walt Disney Co. that will restore ESPN and ABC-owned stations to its service after a nearly 2-week dispute that blacked out those networks for millions of viewers across the U.S.
The end of the impasse came in time for sports fans to watch ESPN's slate of college football games on DirecTV. It also will ensure that ABC's telecast of the Emmy Awards on Sunday night will be available in more major markets where viewers subscribe to DirecTV's pay service.
ABC had been unavailable since Sept. 1 on DirecTV in several markets where the station is owned by Disney. Those were located in the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
DirecTV's 11 million subscribers abruptly lost access to ESPN, the ABC-owned stations and other Disney-owned channels such as FX and National Geographic during the Labor Day weekend in a dispute over carriage fees and programming flexibility.
Some viewers were watching the fourth round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament when ESPN suddenly went dark and others were getting ready to watch a college football showdown between LSU and Southern California.
The impasse also kept the NFL's opening game of Monday Night Football off of DirecTV's service.
Financial details of Disney's new deal with DirecTV weren't disclosed as part of Saturday's announcement. DirecTV's payments to Disney will be based on "market-based" pricing, according to the announcement about the deal.
The agreement also will give DirecTV the ability to offer Disney's video streaming services a la carte as well as in its own bundled packages. DirecTV won the right to include ESPN's forthcoming direct-to-consumer... Read More