Weblog February, 14th, 2007 I have a new blog and it can be found at http://blog.raffael3d.com December, 3rd, 2006 Last week I started working at Marvel on an upcoming film. It has been an interesting but intense week. The difference is that I no longer can walk to work in 5 minutes, instead I have to get up at like 7 and drive there 30 to 40 minutes in the morning...Welcome to LA traffic! I just came back from attending HDFest, a small film festival. It took place at Dolby Labs. It was very interesting to see the headquarters of Dolby, which equips pretty much every cinema in the world with audio systems. Last week I also started my first time Ice Hockyey practice! Yes, its true. A friend pointed out to me "so you live by the bach and you play ice hockey?"... erm, yes, it is true. .-) November, 21st, 2006 My DVD which I did a while back was relesed! You can find it here click here November, 20th, 2006 I actually found here a floorball hockey club, took some time! This weekend we went to play a tournament in Fresno, wich is located between LA and SF. November, 4th, 2006 Here some recent updates. I went to an Iron Maiden concert down in Irvine. The concert started over an hour too late, because Iron Maiden was "stuck in traffic". That is something I found intersting here, no matter how famous you are, there is NO way around the traffic. In traffic everybody is equal. Next I experienced my first American Halloween and went to a private party with some friends. I wore a white suit, a Scarface outfit. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of drunk people in funny costumes. Last wednesday I went to an NHL hockey game. LA Kings vs Pittsburgh Penguins. At that night a historic event happened. Russian Rookie Evgeny Malkin scroed his sixth goal in hist first six games, last time that happened was 89 years ago... Last Thursday I organized an XSI user group meeting, it was the biggest so far, with a bit less than 200 people attending. October, 20th, 2006 Finally received my drivers license, yupiee, took so long till they would ship that thing to me. Just found out today that the movie "Snakes on a plane" was started in my apartement! the guy who wrote it lived exactly here and left a few months before I moved in. He started the script here. Wow...erm...still.. crazy, I wonder why he came to write that SCARY thing here... October, 18th, 2006 25 Signs That, Sadly, You've Grown Up October, 17th, 2006 Check out some new showreels my company put online, espcailly Sky Captain and the PrevisPostvis reel. Those two illustrate maybe best what the company does. Visual Effects and Previs. See showreels. October, 14th, 2006 Check out this Los Angeles HighRes photo. Smog included. October, 15th, 2006 Did quite some updated to the company website recently and also feel proud to be listed as company staff. Check out the here. October, 14th, 2006 I am sorry, it has been a while since I posted here. Have been working a lot and just tried to stay as much as possible away from the computer. A recent story I want to share tough is about the weirdest co-worker I have ever seen. So a couple of weeks ago a well dressed, fine lady entered to office and our 3d department. She looked very well versed and professional. After a few hours passed the image of her changed more and more. She would end up making tons of weird comments how great she was, how men are all the same (image this being the only woman in that department and you say it to all the guys in the room at work). She even went on to claim it was biologically proven, that there was less diversity because of the XY chromosome. Which started a heated debate. There are some really smart guys there who ripped this totally appart. This stuff went on and on for days. And on friday when my boss was sitting next to me and it was her last day of evaluation if they should keep her on or not. Shen then met the CD for the first time and said "I tell her why you should hire me. I will ask everybody what kind of cookies they like and I will bake them for christmas". that was not all, my favourite was "from all the people I have ever worked with only one did not like me". Of course she was let go after that week. September, 25th, 2006 Went today to Pasadena, which has definitely a European flavour to it. They just opened there the first H&M store in California... the result, a 1 hour line to get in! We didnt go, but saw the line, insane. A note on fast food. Any real fast food restaurant has a drive thru, which in Switzerland is called drive in. You either pick it up and drive home with it, or my favourite. They pick it up with the car, and then just park in the parking lot and eat the food there. So they dont have to move their asses out of the car to pick it up, but eat it at the lot. I still do it the weird Swiss way and actually go inside... September, 24th, 2006 A thing that would be super weird in Switzerland can be here a common thing. As it happened yesterday you walk down the street. a guy walking in the back of you might just start talking to you. And you wonder is he talking to me? if so, why???? WTF!! So he goes and and you start talking to, so you walk the same way for like 5 minutes and talk about whatever topic sort of came up and then once you go in another direction it ends quickly and you just say a sort of "allright take care!" and it ends as quickly as it ended. it can be weird but fun too. It shows how VERY laid back people can be, but just into the moment too, and superficial in a way also. In the evening I was at a club called Highlands. It is right next to the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. Nice, solid, with a cool view on the outside. They are super proud and said it like 20 times during the evening that they are open till 3am. Many clubs close at 2... So people are impressed. Well this is still nothing compared to Switzerland where clubs are open till 4 or 5. but hey...where are you from again? Sweden? Swaziland? ah...never mind. September, 17th, 2006 I am getting more and more adjusted to the LA way of living again, which is good. Also met quite a fair amount of new people from all over the place. Yesterday when I just drove home a small truck had stopped in front our apartement, and they were digging through all our trash and packed it into their van. Compared to regular homeless people that do this to look for food they were after paper trash. So they will go through all thrown away paper and try to find credit card numbers, etc, I guess all stuff for identity theft, money etc. I had caught them in the act, yelled at them and they took off, still they had probably a fair amount of our and other paper trash in their van already. scary. September, 10th, 2006 The last two nights were a lot of fun. A suprise birthday party and a Japanese BBQ. I met a lot of Make up artists and Japanese people, and even picked up some Japanese. September, 5th, 2006 XSIItalia put online an interview with me, it is about the 3d industry and such. Link to interview. September, 3rd, 2006 Watch the movie trailer for This film is not yet rated. September, 2nd, 2006 Just came back from seeing the documentary movie "This film is not yet rated" and it reveals the problems and weirdnesses of the MPAA, the motion picutre association that is rating all the films. There are no official rules, no guidelines and all secret members, yet they rate the movies and decide about their fate. It was a premiere and the producer was present who answered questions to the film. Also after the movie they filmed some visior opinions that will be screened on TV. I said my opinion on there and pointed out how this movie sort of explains why sex on film is such a big deal and violence is not, especially compared to Europe. More info about the film. August, 31st, 2006 After that I also visited the guitar center, as you can see in the photos, a very large guitar shop, prerry awesome on Sunset Blvd. There also a lot of famous guitar players left their handprints. Among them some of my vafourites, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. Btw there is a webcam of the Hollywood Sign. Tomorrow will be my first day at work. August, 31st, 2006 Today I did some hiking. I climed up on the Mount Hollywood trail, which brings you close to the sign and is supposed to give you a great look over the city. total crap, there is so much smog, you cant see anything. try to guess the silhouette of the skyscrapers...See the photos and judge yourself. August, 28th, 2006 Just got notice that friend and Bernaise animator Simon Christen got hired at Pixar! congrats mate! Bern, Kurt Wasserfallen, Saemi Schmid and all other others are very proud of you mate! August, 28th, 2006 I just got back from a pretty long and intense morning and afternoon. This morning I went to the car office to seal the deal with a verified check, so I was basically buying cash. it seemed all to go along pretty well, till suddenly the wanted to put an additional 3000 dollars on top of the price, for reasons like security if my cheque bounces and that this was standard practice etc. I fought this like for an hour, but after a while you become really insecure, as a foreigner you just dont know it, what is standard what is not. So I went along with it, bought the car, drove off, having a bad feeling in my stomach with this. Altough I didnt pay anything more than we had agreed, it seemed that this would get me into interest paying over upcoming months. After driving around for a while I just had this weird gut feeling inside me, I hoped it would go away. But after looking at this contract many many times I just couldnt help it that this must be bullshit. I stepped into the car, drove back there and walked in there in the most determined way I had ever done I guess. I sat down there and said that I just had shown this contract to a lawyer and that is was total bullshit and screwup. They looked all shocked and fondled around and said it was standard , but very quickly the changed the contract, let me sign a new one and I got the contract I wanted this time. I then went on and showed the stuff to some friends who also found it could be a total screwup, but had to admit it was hard to tell and it actually COULD be standard practice, nevertheless it seemed all right to have this thing fixed. I hope now I can to more enjoy having actually bought a car. Welcome to the USA. August, 27th, 2006 Came home from spending an entire, long day at looking around for a used car, test driving it, bargaining etc. I was on the road with Mike, and later also with Brad, wich was a great help as I the car dealers try constantly trick you into some bullshit how to finance a car, even if you just want to pay cash! So this all ended up with walking out many times to hillarious bargaining conversations, where if you get into the mood you come with lines such as "you are the big Empire, and I am just the poor foreigner here". Fingers crossed how things will proceed now. I found a car and brought the price down a lot, a Ford Focus X3. To be continued. August, 27th, 2006 The last few days werent too hectic, but still quite some stuff happened. I took sort a day off, went to Universal Studios, started looking for a car, sorting out bank stuff etc. Yesterday I was a private party up in the Woodland Hills. It was great and had very interesting people among them too. So there you would meet the guy who did the special suits for Fantastic Foru, a veteran who worked on George Lucas Howard the Duck, yes indeed! and many other people from mostly visual effects and practical makeup. A highlight was also talking to a Narc! A narc is a narcothics agent from LAPD, as seen in the movie Training Day with Denzel Washington. He gave me many tips, including how to always claim you are innocent! hehe August, 22nd, 2006 Today in the morning I had a couple of vide chat session via skype, which was a lot of fun. Video chatting with Tanja from here to Shanghai, my grandma to Thun and Christoph to London. Skype is truly a blessing. Suddenly with a shock I realzed that I had parked the car on a street where there was street cleaning, if you dont move your car you get a bill of 50 dollars! So I ran off down the street to the car. Then I saw the parking enforcement police car already near my car, but it was busy putting a bill on some other cars. So I ran past it, jumped into the car and drove off before they got there...phew. it was very close. In the afternoon I went to a store called Target, a huge store where you can buy stuff for your home. I was looking for additional bed sheets. While I was looking I met a guy who had the same problem as me> figuring out american sizes calles twin, king, queen and california king sizes. Turned out he was a French director, no wonder he had the same difficulties as me. August, 21st, 2006 In the morning the IKEA transpotert arrived who brought my desk and table, but also a sofa we had bought for the living room. So for a few hours I was busy putting pieces together. Next was going to the back and reactivating my ATM card and also applying for a credit card. However the system was down, so the lady there could not submit the data. Even hours later when I returned. not to compare with a swiss back I guess. Next stop was the DMV, the department of motor vehicles. I finally wanted to get my drivers license, as I only had the temporary one as I left the country last year before receiving the final one. So I had to fill out a form, they took a fingerprint and a photo. Now the most incredible part was the eye sight test. She asked If I would wear contact lenses to drive I said yes, but didnt wear them in that moment. So she told me to look at a sign that was right behind her and read the letters. then she quickly covered one of my eyes using a paper sheet and I had to read again...That was it, the test, Done. After all done she said I should receive the drivers license within a year...couldnt beleive it and asked several times, she stuck with that time frame. Later I dropped by at PLFy, my former and new employer. It was good to see old and also new faces there. Looking forward to work there again. August, 20th, 2006 I had spent one night at the hotel, because my room was still empty. When I woke up in the morning and wanted to check out many people were furious at the registration desk. The hotel guy had towed 8 cars, because they didn-t have a mark that they were hotel guests, altough all of them were. They were all close to freak out. Luckily I had put the paper in the car, so my rental car was still there. However it was blocked by another car. So I asked the lady at the entrance to unpark that car. She worked for the hotel and came with me to that car. She opened the door of that nice new car. Then she saw that it was a manual and not an automatic. She said "oh my god" but moved in. She was very nervous and had no idea how to do that with a manual gear. So I tried to teach her in 10 seconds how to do it, but she was terrified as she noticed how little control she had. So eventually she begged me to do it, but "not tell anybody about this, as she could get fired". I met again Chris, the screenswriter who had moved out of the apartemtn and in the afternoon Thomas and I went to IKEA to buy a bed, table, some furnited for the living room etc. It took quite a while becuase the waiting time after we actually had bough the stuff was so long, as they worked all so slowly. August, 19th, 2006 Today I arrived in Los Angeles. It was long a flight with Lufthansa, and I actually flew from litlee Belp airport to Munich, and from there to L.A. Security checks where no problem. Aapart from a body inspection nothing changed, and of course no fluids, but the whole process didnt really take much longer. Afte arriving I went staright to Venice to visit my former and future roommates as I would go back to the same apartement I had been in during my internship in 2005.