The most interesting keynote speech was given by Scott Ross, CEO, President and Co-Founder of Digital Domain, a special effects company in Hollywood that worked on scenes in the movies "Titanic", "X-Men", and "The Day After Tomorrow". This isn’t him. His talk was so interesting that I forgot to take pictures. It was full of visuals of how they constructed scenes, layer by layer, such as the tidal wave swamping New York in "The Day After Tomorrow."

Ross didn't outright say that James Cameron, the director of "Titanic," was a bastard to work for but he certainly led you to that conclusion. Digital Domain would work on its scenes in California all day, then upload its work on the Internet so that Cameron could view it in the morning in Mexico, where he was working on the big wet set with a full size Titanic deck. It was contentious.

One morning, the seagulls set Cameron off. Digital Domain added seagulls flying around the Titanic but Cameron shouted that they were too big. Ross assured him that they had looked up the size of seagulls in books and put them in the proper perspective with regard to the ship. They were only five pixels across anyway. Cameron dismissed the claim. They were using Pacific seagulls, he said, when he needed North Atlantic seagulls.

Digital Domain did the sweeping shot in "Titanic" where the camera flies by the Titanic steaming across the open ocean on a sunny day. Ross says that almost all the men you see walking around the ship are his company's financial officer, filmed in different clothes and dropped electronically all over the digital ship. If you look closely, there are two men fighting on an aft deck of the Titanic. That's Ross and James Cameron.

Ross says that they are getting better at making virtual actors, or vactors. The bodies were fairly easy to digitize but it was hard to put clothes on them. Hair was the next challenge, then facial gestures. They are working on eyes, now. All these effects are captured in computer subroutines. Part of the contractual struggle between his special effects company and the studios which hire him is who owns the software after the movie is finished. Both want to build up their libraries of software for reuse in future movies.

Ross says some studio executives like the idea of spending twenty million on creating vactors rather than human actors who may be temperamental and difficult with which to deal. Ross says those executives have never met the developers who program the vactors.

Ross said that all the special effects in the world are no substitute for a good story, which is just as scarce now as they were in the golden days of Hollywood. In fact, Ross says there has been a general decline in plot and story-telling in Hollywood because nobody really knows how to make a good movie. Anyone who says they do, lies.

Ross visited Howard Koch, a famous screenwriter, in his office which featured posters of some of his work, such as "Sergeant York" and "Casablanca." Ross asked him how he wrote all these classic movies, what was the secret? Koch said, "Kid, I threw a lot of shit at the wall. Some of it stuck."