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I've seen 2 independent movies set in Tokyo in the past week, without leaving campus or paying a dime. How? The USC School of Cinematic Arts' Outside the Box Office Series!

Every Wednesday night, since the beginning of this semester, the cinema school (with which I have an affair) has been pre-screening upcoming foreign, independent, and documentary films at its new George Lucas Building (which apparently was designed by Lucas himself). The place is quite breathtaking...pretty pretentious, but still breathtaking. I can make fun of the fake windows all I want, but come on, 8 screening rooms? That is just awesome.

And the best part is, all the screenings in the OBO Series are FREE for USC students, alumni, faculty, staff, and guests. Last Wednesday, I saw Tokyo!, and last night I watched Tokyo Sonata for a special Tuesday screening (it was followed by a cool translated Q&A with acclaimed director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who was in LA for only 2 days). Both films were incredible...unsurprisingly so, since both won awards at the Cannes Film Festival. I highly recommend them.

Ahhhh, watching a good film in a theater is such a great way to celebrate the end of the day's classes before walking home and starting on homework. I'm looking forward to Adventureland next.

Troy Philippines' 17th Annual Philippine American Culture Night (PACN) is coming up soon! TP members (me included) have been practicing every day of the week for the past month at Heritage Hall, learning different cultural dances, modern dances, a cappella songs, and more--many of them choreographed/arranged by TP members themselves. PACN is going to be on April 4 at Bovard Auditorium, so...one month down, one to go!

PACN season is always an amazing time. I've participated in every PACN since freshman year, and it's a BLAST. Everyone in TP becomes more like family, and you learn some new dancing/singing/acting skills at the same time. Of course, the challenge is to balance it with your other commitments, but if you do it right you're just absolutely grateful to have been part of the biggest TP event of the year.

Right now, I'm participating in a cultural dance (called Kalapati, Tagalog for "pigeon"), Troy Phi Voices (our in-house a cappella group), and the skit. If you're free April 4, you should come see our PACN (it's FREE)...should be a good ol' time!

...because you get your Computer Science project grades in e-mails like these.

Subject: CSCI 201 V3 Skeleton Grade

Score: 30
Notes: Hova in the hizzy yall! Good job. Everything seems like it's working fine.

Click to download!

Time for some shameless promotion! If you haven't already, please do check out Furballs, the game that my team of 6 made for the Global Game Jam in Los Angeles (as described in previous posts). You can download Furballs by clicking on the screenshot above and following the instructions provided in the "Installation Notes" here.

Unfortunately it works only on Windows, and you might need to download some XNA and .NET stuff, but other than that it should be smooth sailing. If your heart so desires, please give us a high vote as well! It doesn't affect our placement in the overall global competition (whose winner is still TBA) but high ratings do encourage other people to check out our game.

By the way, Furballs has gotten a wee bit of press coverage. Cool!

(Before I start, I'd just like to say: things that happened last week feel like they happened 3 weeks ago. That's how long these 48 hours were.)

So, Global Game Jam! GGJ is the first game developing competition of its kind, in that it's a 48-hour event where teams around the world (we're talking Turkey, Israel, New York, Netherlands, Brazil, and more) develop games based on a theme. This year's was, "As long as we have each other, we will never run out of problems."

Luckily, the Los Angeles GGJ was hosted by USC MEGA (Makers of Entertaining Games Association), and thus took place on campus in the Interactive Media Lab at the cinema school, from Jan 31 at 5 pm till Feb 1 at 3 pm.

photo courtesy of USC MEGA

We had an assortment of participants: game designers, programmers, artists, and composers. Most were USC Interactive Media students, but we did have a few industry professionals, and of course my team (Team Dino Nuggets, remember) helped rep Viterbi. Here are some highlights!

• Chocolate chip waffles, syrup, bread, PB&J, an assortment of fruit, Capri Sun, plastic utensils and paper plates, corn dogs, dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, ketchup, Oreo Cakesters, Pringles, and a toaster oven. My team bought and brought all of the above to the lab. Pre-meditated, my friends.
• GGJ launched with a video keynote from entertainment programmer Kyle Gabler, most famous for his game World of Goo.
• All the GGJ locations could be witnessed via live online video streaming provided on the GGJ website during the competition. Epic.
• I slept in the lab when I needed to ('bout 5 hours total), using only 2 chairs. My fellow team member Justin, who is 6'7", took up 5.
• A lot of people actually stayed in the lab to sleep...everyone was constantly tired. See?

photo courtesy of USC MEGA



• Some people from BoingBoing came and interviewed us, but at the time we had no idea who they were. They were a bit in-your-face for some participants though.
• After the code freeze, everyone presented their finished games, and judges from EA deemed my team's game, Furballs, to be the winner for Los Angeles! We got XBOX 360 and Wii games as prizes, and some pretty cool pins.
• 2/3 of my team celebrated with 50% off Japanese BBQ beef at Gyu-Kaku in Beverly Hills. Quite pricy, but pretty darn good...even the cow tongue, and especially the black sesame ice cream.