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February 2, 2006 - On With The Show!
Today's Feature Article: Opening Night
Yesterday was Day One of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and the dedicated staff of edhat.com rose early, packed up our brand new bags with clipboards, buttons, pens and clickers, and headed downtown to the Hotel Santa Barbara to pick up our press passes and check out the scene.
The lobby of the hotel was buzzing with anticipation and people just arriving from LA and beyond, but the pressroom lived up to its name (get it –the press room?). Mo, Roberta, Carol, Alanna and their dedicated volunteers were busily issuing passes and signing media people up for events.
There was a bowl of strange fruit on the table – we passed. The press passes are exceptionally large this year – a situation that actually proved helpful later in the day.
While the dedicated staff was signing up to cover ALL the events, we met our first real live filmmaker of the festival. Her name is Maroussia Morgan, and her film, A Barge Called Hope, is opening the Santa Barbara Shorts program today. Our conversation with Maroussia helped us to realize the seriousness of this festival for some of the participants. Sometimes we forget that it’s business, not just lights, cameras, and action.
Our next stop was Opening Night itself – we parked the green car down by Paseo Nuevo, and sauntered up State Street toward the Arlington, soaking up the glamour and checking out people’s shoes. Along the way, we caught up with Nicole Friere, our guest Edhat journalist for the evening.
We found the Arlington behind a wall of searchlights, news trucks, and people jockeying for position along the velvet ropes of the Red Carpet. We started snapping pictures – it was just like riding a bike – festival staff, shoes, great outfits, the curb (the curb? We deleted that one). Our random picture taking style almost got us in trouble as we found ourselves, inadvertently trapped on the red carpet just ahead of “the Talent”. Eek – Ed’s not gonna like this, we thought, and scurried under a security guard’s outstretched arm. Let’s just go in and sit down, we decided. Be sure to check out Nicole’s article for a full run down on the evening.
After the movie, we joined the crowd of partygoers walking down State Street to Paseo Nuevo, which had been transformed into the Moulin Rouge for the night.
At the gate, we took out our cameras and counters, and started clicking. Yesterday’s contest was to guess the percentage of women wearing open toed shoes at the Opening Night Party. Yes, we know it’s a repeat, but you should have seen some of these shoes! Our in-house statistician, who spent the night at home playing catch with the Edhat dog, tells us that 37.2% of the women we counted were wearing open-toed shoes – higher than our November 2003 State Street count (25.6%), but lower than our June 2004 State Street count (67.8%). And the winner is … Dave, with a guess of 37%. Dave wins an Edhat t-shirt.
Make sure you see the Opening Day Photo Gallery,
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