Day 152: Opening Night SBIFF!!!

I haven't updated the blog in about ten days for a couple reasons. 1.) The Santa Barbara Film Festival has been going down and I have barely had time to shower and eat. 2.) DSLR's are not allowed unless you have a press pass so I have mostly been taking shitty pictures with my camera phone. And 3.) Many of the photos that I am using for the festival were provided by Ryan Turner (pretty much every picture that wasn't taken on my phone was taken by Ryan). But I assure you, I have kept my at least one picture a day promise and am ready to unleash the awesomeness that was the 26th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Literally everywhere you walk there are SBIFF posters, staffers working the event, or other filmmakers enjoying beautiful state street. Today Ryan, Kyle, and I went to go get our filmmaker passes from the Santa Barbara Hotel aka Filmmaker central.

Here is the entire schedule for the eleven days of the film festival. The first ones start at 8:00am and the last ones get out past midnight. Some days you can go all day without seeing sunlight.

Our films are playing Saturday at the Lobero Theatre at 4:30pm

There was a "Filmmaker Lounge" all week at the hotel that was strictly VIP. They had free drinks, some dope couches, and computers to kill time on.

We all got a bag full of goodies but it you had to carry it like a purse. So when three young guys are walking down state street with man purses and huge smiles, it might send some mixed signals.

Ahh Samy's sand bags and C stands.

So legit. $1700 round your neck.

Felt like Wayne and Garth at Alice Cooper.

Later in the night they had the opening night ceremony. All the big events are held at the Arlington which is a great, old-school theatre. The opening night film was Sarah's Key which was a holocaust film that was alright. But we were all waiting for the after party.

The after party was held at Paseo Nuevo. They took over the entire shopping center and filled it with DJ's, alcohol, and food from like 25 local food establishments.

This kid, Harry Bossert, made a stop-animation of some legos that play in front of every film at the festival. He is from London. He is 16.

There were three alcohol sponsors: Santa Barbara Wine Collection, Chopin Vodka, and Stella. After finding out the vodka tastes worse than Heritage, I mostly stuck to red wine and Stella. It was fun getting hammered with UCSB Professors. For one night, we were equals.