Flash Forward 2000
August 7, 2000
|
Right now (the night before the opening day of FlashForward2000 in NYC) when
the Flash community is humming with excitement about the approaching release
of Flash version 5, I am looking at the itinerary for the Flash Forward 2000
conference; and it just now hit me how far version 4 advanced the medium.
Veteran Flashers remember when the mainstream was "animations"
straight off the lined notebooks of junior high study halls, delivered
through a plugin shunned by suit types because of compatibility issues.
|
Night in the Big City
Now, after years of forging through the frontier - displacing the indigenous
gif89a and foraging for the elusive idea - it looks like Flash is building
permanent settlements. Just looking down the FF2K schedule, it is apparent
that specialized disciplines - and, more importantly, widespread recognition
of them - are forming.
Among the items on the conference schedule:
- Advanced Actionscripting
- Backend
- 3D
- Character Development
- Animation Techniques
- Generator
- Live Motion
- Flash Film Festival
I'm excited when I think about how Flash is going to look in another couple
of years, after all the kids who are stumbling around the Flash landscape
now find their niche and start teaming up with other Flashers possessing
complementary skillsets. (This is the way the serious multimedia design
companies have been doing it since the stone age - and this is how people
just naturally organize themselves; but Flash has been slow to come around
to this realization).
A note about New York City:
New York City is like CCR tunes: the portable record (i.e. the New Yorker
magazine or a CD of "Born on the Bayou") doesn't make any sense;
but the live performance just blows you away.
No matter how ridiculous NYC is (Mary Tyler Moore-type women still walk twin
Lhaso-Apso's down Park Ave. to show the world how privileged they are - I
swear it's still 1945 here), there is an undeniable energy that surges
through everyone and every thing. It's like a cult, where every single
member, cut off from the outside world, (New York has its own media empire;
and the empire is about as out-of-date and irrelevant as the idea of empires
- i.e. most New Yorkers don't know that audiences of entertainment like
"The Matrix" or "American Beauty" don't get giddy over
"Kiss Me Kate"), renders the same blank stare and mutters
matter-of-factly to any inquiry, "This is New Yak", as if the idea
of NYC being the hot pants of the world were an unutterable holy truth on
the order of the Jews' "Jehovah".
I think when I retire I will make a documentary film for people in the city,
showing them how the "World" (places outside NYC), at some time
between 1920 and 1950, just went on without them. I could really touch a lot
of lives in a positive way.
Anyway, I do love New York, as crazy as it is. It's like smoking - you know
it's wrong; but dammit - it feels so gooooood!
Contents:
Day One
3D - Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest
Hey CoolAid! -- Oh Yeeeeeeah!
Couldn't Stand the Rain
Day One
|
