This morning, Variety gave the Steve Buscemi/Sienna Miller vehicle Interview a good review, but incorrectly identified the shooting format as HD. That’s a compliment to the SD Sony XDCAM 510 (PAL) that DP Thomas Kist actually used to shoot the film. Actually he used three XDCAMs simultaneously, a technique he developed while working with the late Theo Van Gogh on the original version of the film. more

Digital Content Producer‘s and Millimeter‘s coverage of past and present award nominees/winners
Park City, UT-A number of films that premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival were included in the list of Oscar nominations announced today by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“It is refreshing that the Academy is recognizing both the quality of the storytelling and the talent of the actors in independent films that originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival,” said Geoffrey Gilmore, Director of the Sundance Film Festival. “We are also pleased that three of the five documentary films – An Inconvenient Truth, Iraq in Fragments and My Country My Country – premiered at the Festival and/or were supported by the Sundance Documentary Fund.” more

Avid‘s senior product manager Matt Feury always gives me the impression that technology can never move fast enough. He’s thinking about solving all the problems and fulfilling all the wishlists out there. I can imagine him thinking that he’s trying to lay down track before the artists run out of rail.

So he said one thing at Sundance that really stuck with me. We were talking about what artists want–especially remote collaboration and easy movement of content. We’ve both seen that struggle play out over a very long time. more

Through Friday at New Frontier on Main, you can do two things: learn about storytelling from Norm Hollyn of the USC School of Cinematic Arts (reprising his popular sessions). And/or you can learn about tapeless workflow for XDCAM and P2.

Both run multiple times daily, so check the schedule at sundance.org/workshops or in personal at Workshop Area B in New Frontier.

noon: Rights Liscensing in the New Era of Distribution.

I’m just going to quote Sundance; “Internet platforms, video-on-demand, mobile devices and indie film pay-per-view are no longer a dream–they are the reality of the new world of distribution. But complexities abound, creating a need to make sense of revenue models, developing technologies, and evolving methods of exhibition. Hear major players, service providers and filmmakers tackle the issues that surround today’s liscensing/distribution opportunities. Moderated by Scott Kirsner of Variety.

It’s a start.

Sundance wasn‘t even a day old when The Sundance Channel bought Jennifer Fox‘s six-hour film Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. Shot all over the world across 8 years, the cinematography is a conversation among Fox and the women she meets along the way; they pass a Sony PDX10 back and forth as they circle around and through the subjects of life: survival, freedom, gratitude, loss, power and fear, diminishment and emergence. And gossip.

“Film is thin,” Fox suggests, “it doesn‘t allow you to do the width of human life or female conversations. This was a way to get to some of the thickness of female conversation. Passing the camera replicates the way we speak as women.” more

Not every filmmaker I talk to at Sundance has a film in the festival. Jacob Rosenberg is here doing the work he so often does for Adobe, teaching desktop workflow to all kinds of filmmakers, many of them his own peers.

Jacob‘s generation is the first to be able to truly just “make a movie.” Like, make it at home the way you make a painting or a piece of furniture. A bit more expensive, but certainly doable. You may have to spend for film out or a good digital print–that‘s not going desktop anytime soon. You may want to pay for advice, and everyone has to pay for marketing (even Blair Witch). You may need an expensive camera–though less so all the time, and you may dearly want a speedy workstation (also more affordable than before, at least for what you get). more

At Stein Erikson with Alex Weil, writer director of One Rat Short. You might have seen it at Siggraph this year (where it won best of show) or at one of a number of venues worldwide. Now it‘s in competition here in the shorts program and just missed an Oscar nomination this morning.

I‘ll be rooting for this film. I don‘t normally get involved with assessing content, but in this case the film is so smart about the things I do cover–cinematography, editing, and other tricks of the production trade that I feel a bit more qualified. Weil has for years honed his skills at Charlex, the shop he co-founded and one of NY‘s longstanding, premier post facilities. So Weil is savvy without being cynical and his film has the same canny humor. more

Sterlin Harjo‘s Four Sheets to the Wind is David Michael Maurer‘s first feature. Now it‘s in dramatic competition at Sundance. As he sits down in the Park City Marriott to talk about the film and his transition from years of reality TV (The Apprentice, American Idol, Big Brother…) he looks to be in his twenties, but talks with the understated conviction of a veteran editor.

Maurer cut the show on Avid Xpress Pro, finished on Symphony Nitris and went to 35. This was a best of both worlds workflow, Maurer explains, because the team needed portability on four-month location in Oklahoma as well as the ability to see detail, hence the Nitris. “This was just before the software-only Media Composer came out,” Maurer says of his decision to load his laptop with Xpress Pro. (This was also just before SDI Mojo, so Maurer was quick to point out that the workflow was a product of the April 2006 timeframe.) more