Leitner's Cinematography Corner

Wait-list line in front of the Eccles Theatre.
Photo D.W. Leitner

Sundance remains the preeminent festival for independent filmmaking anywhere. I ought to know. I’ve attended virtually every one since 1987.

In past years I’ve written daily blogs from Sundance for Millimeter, but this year, with a dramatic feature in the New Frontier section (my sixth Sundance premiere as producer), reporting wasn’t in the cards. So I’ve decided to dedicate the next four columns to a look in the rear view mirror at Sundance 2010.

In these paragraphs I’ll note tech trends and shifts in the culture of indie filmmaking, last-minute techniques invoked to finish our own super low-budget film, differences between cinema and video as elaborated by legendary editor Walter Murch before a packed morning session at the Filmmakers’ Lounge, and a brunch on Main Street I had with Illya Friedman of Hot Rod Cameras, for a sneak-peek at his Canon EOS 5D Mark II mod for PL-mount lenses.

Sundance was once a laid-back gathering of the indie film tribe in a declining 19th Century silver mining town. Then came Miramax, Hollywood, a dot-com bubble, the 2002 Winter Olympics, major corporate sponsorship. As quaint Main Street was doubled in length, development exploded in the surrounding Wasatch Mountains. A local library, a high school, a hotel, a racquet club, even a synagogue were pressed into service as screening venues for the ballooning festival.

This year, brakes were applied. Younger management led by new festival director John Cooper took charge. Features screened dropped from 120 to 113.

Fewer films is a good thing, since the greater the number of films, the easier it is for any single film to get overlooked (especially those without $10K in loose change for festival publicists). This year, in addition to five screenings of my film, Memories of Overdevelopment, I attended 12 others (and failed to get into two more, sold out). My personal best for the 10-day event is a cool 30 films. A mere quarter of all films programmed however. Which is why I say that no two people ever experience the same Sundance.

What wasn’t much reported this year, but inescapable if you were there, is that attendance was way, way down. (I have yet to see published attendance figures…) Although popular films were packed as usual, Main Street was eerily empty, devoid of the madding crowds Sundance is famous for. Even the overpriced taxis that cruise Main Street were plentiful. Thinking back, I’m not sure I saw a single stretch limo this year. Or Blackberry.

Swag was minimal to none. No free copies of the New York Times, no daily print version of indieWIRE. Free WiFi was as scarce as ostentatious parties. Even Charlie’s Place, the indispensable Sundance watering hole at the Yarrow Hotel, was shuttered mid-fest because, it was explained, of a change in management. In the middle of Park City’s biggest annual revenue-producing event?

Inside the Eccles, an on-screen crawl incites the well-heeled audience with slogans like “This is the recharged fight against the establishment of the expected,� and “This is cinematic rebellion.�
Photo D.W. Leitner

Watching festival shuttle buses disgorge passengers one day, I noticed that many if not most festival attendees now sport gray hair (like me). I couldn’t decide if it were a matter of the $750 weekend festival passes and $15 tickets—hardly recession prices—or a sign that the heyday of film festivals is behind us.

As a hedge perhaps, Sundance, in partnership with Google-owned YouTube, experimented with placing five films online for ten days concurrent with the festival. As reported in the New York Times, even the superb The Cove, nominated for an Oscar as best documentary feature, drew hardly more than 1,000 views from the Internet’s infinite viewership. The other four drew only a third of that.

Just another reason I think indie filmmaking should be categorized as not-for-profit activity. I’m not kidding.

As for industry participation at Sundance, each year I try to keep an informal tab on which manufacturers and rental and post houses attend. This was once a robust scene, but like festival attendance, the trend is downward. The New Frontier lounge, a past showcase for Panavision, Canon, and Sony, was vacant of production gear this year, save for the Sony products I used in a presentation on the creative use of small handheld camcorders.

A contingent from New York rental house LVR (Liman Video Rental) was on hand, as were reps from Arri, although for the first time in several years Arri declined to demonstrate cameras in the New York Lounge on Main Street. JVC did however, showcasing indie-friendly flash-memory camcorders—their handheld GY-HM100 and shoulder-mount GY-HM700 with HZ-CA13U PL-mount adapter—along with LCD monitors and an intriguing Blu-Ray/Hard Disk Drive combo recorder that inputs HDV, AVCHD, and 25Mbps XDCAM EX.

Reassuringly, Kodak’s annual party was jammed and Technicolor held its usual cocktail on Main Street. (Indie mainstay DuArt Film & Video as an original presenting sponsor—or whatever it was called back then—seems so 1980s. These days it’s corporate blue chips like HP, Honda, and Entertainment Weekly.)

Which brings up the perennial topic of film vs. digital at Sundance. My sample of twelve films viewed at Sundance is too small to draw overarching conclusions but I’ll share informal observations.

Film and digital projectors operate side by side in most Sundance venues.
Photo D.W. Leitner

Digital projection at Sundance, provided by sponsor Digital Projection since 1998, is so effective that I, having set up many film and digital projectors over the years, can no longer easily tell the difference in many of Sundance’s venues. I mean this as a compliment to the quality of Sundance’s platter film projection too, since clean, rock-solid titles—a typical clue to digital projection—now typify both types of projection at Sundance.

The upshot, however, is that many films shot on color negative, having undergone a D.I. post, are skipping the step of being recorded back to film. They’re being premiered at Sundance via plain-vanilla HDCAM, the only HD format Sundance accepts. And on screen, they all look better than terrific.

Examples include actor Diego Luna’s touching Abel (further info about Sundance films here), Lisa Cholodenko’s affectionate and bittersweet The Kids Are All Right, and if memory serves, the World Cinema Jury Prize winner, The Animal Kingdom, a stunning Martin Scorcese-like debut for Aussie director David Michôd. (I wish I’d kept better notes.)

A reverse example—shooting digitally and projecting 35mm—is Argentina’s The Man Next Door. I was at least halfway through this dark film, a class tale of neighbors at odds—one decides to add a house window in full view of the other, a snob who happens to occupy the only house Le Corbusier designed in this hemisphere—before I realized that it had to have originated digitally. The give-away was microscopic stair-step aliasing, which I caught for an instant in a highlight. It confused me, because I had already guessed it to be a film shot mostly on 500 E.I. color negative in a solid, journeyman style.

The Man Next Door co-directors Mariano Cohn, foreground with Sony EX1, and Gastón Duprat.

Imagine my surprise at learning the directors, Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, shot the film chronologically over twenty days in Le Corbusier’s landmarked Curutchet House in La Plata, Argentina, using a Sony EX1. Digital-to-film was completed in Buenos Aires under Cohn’s supervision.

The Man Next Door won the Sundance World Cinema Cinematography Award. You can see it March-April at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, since it has been invited to participate in New Directors/New Films 2010, co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Given the radical corner-cutting necessary to produce indie films at all, it should come as no surprise that RED was well represented this year. And having watched a substantial number of RED-originated films, I came to a realization during Sundance that there is no RED signature “look.� No two RED films appear the same.

Take Obselidia, director Diane Bell’s maiden voyage, shot by New York DP Zak Mulligan. A boy-meets-girl projectionist, boy-loses-girl projectionist story with a twist—he’s a shy recluse writing the Obselidia, the Encyclopedia of Obsolete Things—shot in and around Death Valley. It’s gorgeous, sensuous and lyrical, with stylish picture-postcard scenes of dusty sunbeams, romantic bike rides in slo-mo, and impossibly luminous desert landscapes.

Looks nothing whatsoever like Cyrus, the latest risible mumblecore caper from the brothers Duplass, Jay and Mark, this time featuring Hollywood talents John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, and Jonah Hill. Sure enough, despite the IATSE bug at the end, scenes appear as if shot with a DV camcorder circa 1998, all shaky, juddery, and muddily exposed. How do you do that with a RED One, anyway? (Better question, why bother? There are still plenty of worn PD-150s around.)

Both captured with RED One. Both projected digitally. Both visually from different planets.

Just wait until HDSLRs hit the Sundance beachhead! Around next year, I’d say.

Next: Sundancing Part 2, A Squeaker. Cheap tricks to a photo finish, delivering an HDCAM screening master in the nick of time to Sundance.