Saket Vora

Avatar is making it’s way through the country, and a number of you have already seen experienced it. As a film enthusiastic who is fascinated with the creation process, I thought I’d add a few of my thoughts to a much-hyped film that has already seen many yards of newsprint. (For those who haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil plot details.)

I admit, I’ve got a soft spot for epics. The grandeur, the archetypal narratives, and the scale of emotion. And with a film, the vision and sheer force of will needed to convey an epic story through the screen is deeply intriguing to me. Avatar was not a film whose production I actively followed; I only learned what James Cameron was cooking up when I saw the first teaser trailer. My expectation were low. The consensus of most people I’ve talked about Avatar with is that a) the story is cliched to just ‘alright’ and b) the visual experience is stunning. On part b, I wholly agree but I’ll play defense to part a. I’ll argue that the underlying narrative of Avatar is a recurring, archetypal one that we have seen played out many times before, both in cinematic and literary history. I can look back at many films and stories and find elements that match particular beats and sequences in Avatar. The spectre of Joseph Campbell’s famous hero’s journey is present here, I think. Each viewer will likely think back to different sources when comparing Avatar; Fern Gully for it’s environmental theme, Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai for the “gone-native” theme, and (for me) Dune for the growth and maturation of Jake Sully’s avatar character within the Na’vi society. For these reasons, I don’t go as far as to dock points from Avatar due to its story.

The visual experience is truly stunning. I saw the film twice in IMAX 3D, and I give major credit to Cameron’s immersive use of the 3D effect, rather than just ‘gotcha’ moments. This isn’t a 3D film as much as the visuals hover in front of your face, but that there is greater depth and substance to the visuals on the screen. Beyond the technical effect, there is Cameron’s world of Pandora. Lush, grand, detailed, with sweeping vistas and wonders. And of course, the Na’vi — the ten foot tall, blue-skinned, at-peace-with-nature inhabitants of Pandora. Cameron developed critical advances in motion-capture technology, both in the capture process and rendering process such that Avatar presents to me the first time an alien ecosystem is fully realized. Peter Jackson’s Gollum was the first, followed by the tentacle-faced pirate captain Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean. But Avatar showcases a whole array of immediately believable creatures. The picture of Neytiri at the top of this post shows a moment that I insisted was either a prothestic-wearing actor or a sophisticated animatronic. It simply looked too good in the film to be entirely computer generated. But no…none of the actors ever put on blue makeup and all the Na’vi are entirely CG.

One of the things I marveled at while sitting through the credits was the sheer force of will it took to make this picture. I’m the kind of film geek who has watched all the dozens hours of behind-the-scenes material of The Lord of the Rings…twice. The credits for Avatar read likes a who’s who: Joe Letteri and Weta Digital, John Knoll and Industrial Light & Magic, Richard Taylor and Weta Workshop, Stan Winston Studios, Skywalker Sound, plus a half dozen other smaller visual f/x houses (though no DigitalDomain? hmm). I joked to Dan that it was as if Cameron had opened his rolodex and just started asking who had free computer clusters to render some scenes for him. Regardless, the outcome is simply staggering. The 3D effect aside, there so much visually going on in just the background of some scenes, let alone the technical mastery of creatures, vehicles, and the main characters. I am eagerly looking forward to the behind-the-scenes story of how Cameron and his team accomplished this extraordinary feat.

The one real criticism I have of Avatar is that its musical score does not rise to the occasion. I think back to some classic ‘big’ films — Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Lion King, Jaws — and they all share incredibly memorable scores and musical motifs. Play five seconds of the main melody from any of these films and recognition is instant. For a cinematic feat such as Avatar, this absence is a bit disappointing. Was I too focused on the visual spectacle? My friend Dale observed that the fairly rudimentary score was perhaps a reflection of the Na’vi culture and place within nature. This could be plausible; Howard Shore’s monumental score to The Lord of the Rings builds its motifs around races and cultures that have developed for thousands of years. We just don’t know enough of the Na’vi’s background and context in the Pandoran world. I’d love to see this explored in future films.

I enjoyed Avatar and I’m excited to see the effect it’s had on cinema. I think it breaks new ground on what filmmakers can satisfyingly convey to an audience, and just wait until these techniques are employed in telling more original, daring, and challenging stories.

Eat, drink, and be merry!

Just had an amazing night in downtown Raleigh with some of my closest friends to celebrate the birthday. I feel like i’m the luckiest guy in the world to call these people my friends. I love them all. To all those I didn’t see tonight, you know who you are and we need to catch up soon.

thank you all for everything

While skimming through some “top N” lists of favorite music of 2009, I saw a band called Fanfarlo pop up a few times and the description of their music was enough to warrant a listen. I used Lala and its 25 free credits for new users to check out their album Reservoir. And ended up buying it soon after.

At times it feels like a less extravagant Arcade Fire (but not in a bad way), but also notes of Eisley or The National (ok, maybe a stretch there). Lyrically the songs have a lot of depth as well.

Fanfarlo – The Walls Are Coming Down

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The Walls Are Coming Down

They swallowed it whole, they went for the gold for the gold
We fall for the same lies, we all have the same shoes to fit
The preachers and books of your empire will fight here alone
Some day they will be forgotten and die one by one

The walls the walls are coming down, the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in, the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

For atoms have gone as far as atoms will go
Your books write themselves, they line up in row after row

The walls the walls are coming down, the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in, the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

Recently, my colleagues Dan and Dave went on a weekend snowboarding trip to the Kirkwood mountain resort in Lake Tahoe. They brought along some of the new iPod nanos, and used the video cameras in them to record some of their runs down the slopes. The nanos are small enough to make this rather easy and the video quality is actually quite decent, in that good-enough-for-Youtube way. Dan sent over the footage and I broke out the video editing tool to put together a montage. Check it out:

After a final dash at work to winter break, I was on my way home to North Carolina for the holidays. Figuring I didn’t have to be home for Christmas morning, I decided to fly out the 25th morning. Started the day at 4:30am because I had to take a Super Shuttle to SFO airport, but the morning was made bright when I ran into my friend Evan at the airport. He was headed home to Wisconsin, and we killed over an hour talking and catching up. He’s one of my favorite people to talk tech with — smart, perceptive, and both thinks and speaks quickly.

Despite arriving to Dulles on time, we spent 45 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up. This was a bit problematic, because some of us had connections with under 20 minutes to make them. The good news for me was that there was 25 of us on-board intending to continue on to Raleigh, so they called ahead and held the plane. On that flight, I ended up sitting next to a Brit who was  a screenwriter. We ended talking about scripts and film for the entire flight, even all the way to the baggage claim. It was great.

Enjoying the time back so far, especially seeing Mom and the sisters. Did some light shopping yesterday (got some new kicks) and watched Pitt beat UNC in football (haha). Looking forward to catching up on things (like movies), seeing my friends, and eating more of Mom’s delicious delicious food.

Back on Thanksgiving day, I found an article exploring NPR listener’s best music picks of 2009 at the year’s halfway point. I recognized several names on the list and laughed a little, remarking to Michael, Karla, and Troy how we sorta fit right into the NPR demographic. They saw the list, and agreed. We made our way through the list while cooking that evening’s dishes, but later two songs remained lodged in my head: No Intention by the Dirty Projectors and Blood Bank by Bon Iver. I’ve found myself playing these two a lot these past few days as we’ve entered the last stretch towards winter closure. They certainly elicit different moods, but there is something to Dave Longstreth’s wandering voice and lyrics in No Intention and Justin Vernon’s striving vocals and vivid narrative in Blood Bank that I can’t get enough of.

Dirty Projectors – No Intention

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Bon Iver – Blood Bank

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Now, I can just see Jordan’s eyes roll at my very mention of Dirty Projectors — a band he’s been namedropping for months now — but I listened to the rest of Bitte Orca and didn’t find the others as memorable. Bon Iver is a band that I’ve been wanting to explore, and this seems like a good entry point.

No Intention

The renegade feeling satisfied
You blinked and closed your eyes
You like the feeling of Saturday
You love the danger in the night
The restless corpse is collapsed wind
The breath is daffodil
What not become what is lapsing
Into the universal fill
Or maybe just

No intention
Or maybe just
No intention

When I am full with endeavor
Nothing can stop gestalt
The freshness of my reality
Makes me feel tingly and hot
When you wake up shouting “Idea!”
Is that a punishment?
You represent saying, “I’m real,”
But is that what you meant
Maybe you meant

No intention
Maybe you meant
No intention

Blood Bank

Well I met you at the blood bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any of the colors
Matched any of the names we knew on the tags
You said “see look, that’s yours!
Stacked on top with your brother’s
See how the resemble one another
Even in their plastic little covers”

And I said I know it well

That secret that you know
But don’t know how to tell
It f$@!s with your honor
And it teases your head
But you know that it’s good girl
’cause it’s running you with red

Then the snow started falling
We were stuck out in your car
You were rubbing both of my hands
Chewing on a candy bar

You said “ain’t this just like the present
To be showing up like this”
As the moon waned to crescent
We started to kiss

And I said I know it well

That secret that we know
That we don’t know how to tell
I’m in love with your honor
I’m in love with your cheeks
What’s that noise up the stairs, babe?
Is that Christmas morning creaks?

And I said I know it well
I know it well …

In a marked departure from the past many weeks, not a sound of ping pong was heard at our yellow house in the Alameda. Yeah, it’s been that kind of week. Troy is working his poor fingers raw pounding out chapters to his book (deadline: Sunday night), and Michael has been grinding it out at Box while all the Stanford folks hunkered down for finals week. Rishabh was taking some much deserved time off to India, but Joseph was back in the office this week so that helped a lot. On Wednesday we had our going away lunch for Dustin and Sara, our group’s interns for the past six months. We’ll have a new batch of interns (two from NC State!) in January.

On Wednesday I caught up with Brent over drinks at the Wine Bar in downtown Palo Alto, and Amit joined us later after attending  a conference in Mountain View earlier that evening. On Thursday, Lux sent out a note saying that to celebrate his last final of the quarter he was headed to the Nuthouse. I ended up getting there at 11:30pm (looong day at the office, yeah) and had a good time with him and some classmates, plus Saumya from Econetix with whom Lux is working on some cool stuff. On Friday, Dan invited me to his “Hanukkah” party, which I put in air quotes because in addition to latkes and dreidals there was also plenty of bacon, pork ribs, and shrimp to go around. Dan was wearing this giant dreidal on a chain, a watermelon yarmulka, and a bathrobe with a menora stitched on the back. Hehe.

So I was getting home after 1am the last three nights, which is a little late (even for us) for ping pong. Taking it easy today, then will go up for brunch and maybe apartment hunting up in the City tomorrow. It finally started raining over here, so we’ll see how long I end up staying up. Heisman Trophy ceremony tonight, hoping for a Toby Gerhart win but will be fine if Ingram gets it (he’s in the championship game after all) and it’d be a just world if Suh gets it instead.

This past Saturday, Melih and Matt came over to Palo Alto. We met at the Stanford driving range, where Melih was to show off the tricks he learned during his golf lessons at Harding Park (what a nice present by Micky). I really needed to brush off the cobwebs a bit too. We spent an hour there, and Matt apparently almost killed me shanking a shot off with a driver. I was just practicing my own swing when I look up and see a horrified expression on both their faces before they burst out laughing. Hehe.

We then headed over to the Old Pro, my go-to sports bar in Palo Alto. It’s the same place that Amit and I went to for March Madness when Donny and Mike were both in town. Nader and I were also there last weekend to watch the NCSU vs Carolina game….at 9am. Yes, they had coffee. The place wasn’t too crowded, and we found a table in front of the soon-to-start Florida vs Alabama game. I love watching football with Melih and Matt — these guys know so much about it and are really passionate about the sport. Matt is from Oklahoma and is an OU alum, and so I was very excited when we later found out that Stanford would be playing Oklahoma in the Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve.

After eating way too much junk food at the Old Pro, I headed back to the apartment and caught the the tantalizing end of the Texas-Nebraska game. It was madness; 1:44 min away from BCS chaos, and Nebraska then completely self-destructs.

On Sunday, I headed back up to SF (I know, been visiting a lot lately) to drop off an application for an apartment in Noe Valley. I picked up a sandwich at Whole Foods and strolled over to Dolores Park where I hoped to get some sun and reading done. But alas, the weather didn’t cooperate; the sun never broke out from the clouds, and the wind picked up. I killed some time in coffee shops and looked at some DSLR cameras in stores along Market Street. Melih was free so I dropped by their apartment where he and Micky were babysitting little Ben, whom I saw in an adorable monkey outfit at Melih’s halloween party. Later that night, his friend David came over and the four of us had dinner at Kezar’s Pub in Cole Valley (not too far from Zazie, the incredible brunch place that Terrell, Tim, and I went to during the weekend of Outside Lands back in 2008). By this time it was cold and raining, but Melih was kind enough to drop me off near by car down by Dolores Park. Though the weather wasn’t stellar, when you got great friends to laugh and chat with, everything turns out ok.

I got an email from Chrissy earlier this week inviting me to a small gig that a band she knows (ie, she knows the lead singer as a friend-of-a-friend) would be playing at Stanford on Friday. I had never heard of the band before — Shaimus — but they would be playing just a stone’s throw away from my Stanford apartment and it would be a fun way to end this busy week. It also turns out that an early Shaimus song is on Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the video games.

Shaimus rocks out at Stanford University

And boy am I glad I went! The graduate student council brought the (free) beer, and Shaimus brought the rock. The music was great and the band performed admirably playing to a bunch of grad students in a hall where yoga lessons are usually held. During the mid-show break, we spoke to the guitarist and he said that some of the band members knew Harmonix, the makers of Guitar Hero, back when they were in Boston and heard about the call for local indie acts to include in the game. They submitted a song they had recently finished, and it was included in the game. Shaimus isn’t signed to a record label yet, but they have a publisher to get their stuff featured in various medium. Genre is indie alt rock, and I’m not sure if it was just the result of seeing them perform up close in a small room, but honestly they sounded better and more polished than more semi-famous acts I’ve seen featured on late night shows.

They played up the crowd too, with the guitarist shouting “#@% the Bears!” and “Toby for Heisman!”, and then some of the students even started a mosh pit (not sure it was really warranted though…) near the end. They came back for one more song, doing a cover of the Beatles’ “Something” by George Harrison that got the whole room singing along to.

I picked up their two CDs to show my support, and a big tip of the hat to Chrissy for the heads up on this fun show.

Saw an intriguing Mark Bittman article in the New York Times last weekend about risotto style pasta with types other than orzo. The idea is to cook the pasta in a skillet slowly, in small amounts of liquid until it’s ready, versus straight up boiling the pasta al dente in a pot of water separately.

The recipe is simple, but does need some attention. Chop a small onion and some fresh garlic, saute in a large skillet with sliced mushrooms (I just used a whole carton) over medium heat in some oil. After mushrooms start to brown in ~10 minutes, add in 1/2 pound of dry penne pasta and stir to coat evenly. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add a bit of salt and pepper and 1/2 cup of white wine. Let the liquid bubble away. Then, add in 1/2 cup of vegetable (or chicken) stock and stir. Let the pasta cook over medium heat until the stock has been incorporated, then add 1/2 cup more stock. Repeat for about 10 to 15 minutes, and taste the pasta after the second 1/2 cup to test if done. You want to keep the mixture wet, but never soupy. I ended up using just over one can of stock before I thought the pasta was done. Season to your liking, and serve. Freshly grated parmesan goes really well.

I felt like the pasta retained more of its starch and overall flavor, and the whole dish felt moist without ever appearing dressed in a lot of sauce. Give it a try!

Gotta run, I think the banana bread with walnuts and chocolate chips is getting a little toasty inside the oven….

Over last weekend Mike showed me an insanely addictive interactive music tool called the ToneMatrix. While it isn’t hot off the press, it was the first time I had seen it and immediately loved what I saw. I have no real innate musical talent, so tools where I can put together nice sounding things is of great appeal to me. Higher pitch tones are at the top, lower pitch tones are at the bottom. The audio is on a loop, so the time sweeps left to right.

What’s great about the ToneMatrix is that you can copy and paste your tone patterns to share with others. To see the following samples live, open up ToneMatrix in a new window, copy the numeric codes in the post below, then paste (crtl+v) them into the ToneMatrix square. It’s a nice visualization.

Mike showed me some base templates, and I experimented in adding new melodies to them. When I was showing it to Karla and Mike, I just doodled in the following blocks to see what it would do:

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0,0,0,0,0,2048,0,512,0,512,131070,0,0,0,0,17476

Starting from this, I broke up the vertical bar and spaced out some tones.

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0,0,0,0,0,2080,0,512,0,512,6690,0,0,32,512,50244

Then added some rhythm to it, in the bottom left.

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8192,49152,16384,33152,0,18464,16384,512,0,512,6690,0,0,32,512,50244

I then added just a couple of squares in the upper left side to change the tempo of the melody.

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8192,49154,16386,33152,0,18464,16384,512,0,512,6690,0,0,32,512,50244

Building upon that, I add several more squares in that area to further define the melody.

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8192,49154,16390,33156,8,18480,16392,512,32,560,6658,0,0,32,512,50244

And then just a few more tweaks to the melody and I was happy with it.

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8192,49156,16386,33154,4,18480,16392,544,16,520,6690,0,2,4,544,50248

I listened to this loop for 3 minutes straight and what I found is that my brain would switch between focusing on the melody (the top half of the square) and the underlying beat (the bottom half of the square).

Seeing my excitement with the ToneMatrix, Troy showed me a project that a student in the iPhone development class had done (Troy was a TA for it) where a ToneMatrix was made for the iPhone. Troy then played for us a song he had made in GarageBand over last winter break, and it was really good! Karla and Mike got interested, so I envision some GarageBand experiment evenings in the near future.