Ham-Daddy

On the way back from San Diego, I made arrangements with Mike Hamler to hang out for a little while. Apparently he's busy working on a new movie, and we still had lots of miles to travel after a disappointing first leg of our trip... so the visit was short and sweet. We headed up to his apartment to check out the pad. Andrea was 'ooo'ing at all his Dreamworks memorabilia.

We had lunch at a 'fancy' Americana joint called the Granville Cafe downtown Glendale. Mike specifically recommended the Mac'n'cheese and Andrea ordered it. I was impressed that I could stomach it when I tried a taste (not a fan of the mac).

After lunch, Mike asked if we'd like a tour of the Dreamworks studio. It was a tough sell, let me tell you. The grounds were impressive. They had pictures of all the voice actors from the various Dreamworks films as well as several cases with awards (including 2 Oscars... but Mike said those were probably replicas). The halls were lined with artwork of various forms, all focused around Dreamworks films. In the middle of the campus, there was a large outdoor eating area with a large Koi pond & fountain at the center of everything. There was a fancy outdoor grill, which apparently gets use daily for all the employees free food (*jealous*). It was all very cool to see, and it really didn't feel like a place one comes to 'work'.

Mike's work-space was a pretty normal cubical except for 1 thing. He works on lighting, which means everyone around him is concentrating on subtle variations in light on a computer screen. Everything they do is very sensitive to ambient light, so they do pretty much everything in the dark. Mike said the only time the overhead lights get turned on is when someone needs to install a new computer or something of that nature.

While we were at Mike's cube, he showed us a fair amount of footage from the movie he's currently working on: How to Train Your Dragon. It looks like another great movie, hopefully on the same scale of success as Kung Fu Panda.

Thanks so much to Mike for the awesome tour. I enjoyed it, and I know Andrea appreciated it immensely.