Zoe Cassavetes, a multi-talented artist, has worked in many facets of filmmaking. Zoe‘s first film, Broken English, will premiere in the Dramatic competition at 2007 Sundance Film Festival. She has also just completed directing an in-house video for hotel mogul Andre Balazs, as well as three-minute short advertisement for French handbag company Lamarthe in the Nouvelle Vauge style starring Elletra Rosselini.

She began her career by creating and hosting the experimental digital video show High Octane with longtime friend Sofia Coppola. Airing in 1993 on Comedy Central, the show mixed cultural commentary with humorous skits and featured Martin Scorsese, The Beastie Boys, and Keanu Reeves and experimental artists such as painter Robert Williams and stunt driver Buddy Joe Hooker. more

I met Satjiv Chahil (pictured at right with Sundance’s Ian Calderon), when he was at Apple (he founded the New Media division). At that time, he and his colleagues were talking about things that seemed a long way off–digital networks that allowed you to use desktop computers to make and move content, whether around a facility or to remote collaborators. At that time people could only just begin to envision that network extending to audiences–this was before digital cinema and before video sharing on the web. But the “what if,” was there even then. Now Chahil is SVP, Global Marketing, Personal Systems Group at HP. Now he and other Apple/HP colleagues like HP CTO Shane Robison are in the thick of that vision coming true.

“For people in technology it seems these things take much longer than we expect,” he says wryly, as we talk at New Frontier on Main, . Yet at the same time Chahil marvels that HP is now at the center of what gets called an ecosystem by many people these days. The word is awkward but evocative. more

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The Sundance Film Festival‘s longstanding commitment to documentary has been driven by the personal connection Founder and President Robert Redford feels for the form. Leading up to the premiere of Chicago 10, the second doc to ever open the Festival, The Insider talked to Redford about the past, present, and possible future of documentaries.

Insider: You made an early commitment to documentary. Why was that?

Redford: A lot of what Sundance is today has to do with my early impressions as a kid. I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Los Angeles and our main entertainment was going to the movie theatre on Saturday night. I remember being impressed by the Pathe newsreels, which were really an early form of documentaries. They brought you information, including images of the Second World War that was going on, and if you had relatives in the war there was a personal connection that probably hooked me. There was also something about the grainy sense of reality that really stood out against the feature presentations of narrative films and animation. So the early genesis of this goes back to being very impressed with those newsreels. Read more

Two very different projects for DP Tim Orr at this year’s Sundance. See previous posting for his account of shooting still, composed frames for Mike White, using older Fuji stocks that provided the retro grain structure and contrast that the director was looking for in his gentle comedy.

Snow Angels was a very different story. Orr frequently collaborates with director David Green (Snow Angels is their best work he thinks). In that project–shot in a dark and frigid Nova Scotia February–Orr executed what he described as a kind of dance with the actors, trusted by his director to essentially edit with his camera. more

Remarkable conversation with DP Tim Orr who‘s here with Mike White‘s Year of the Dog and David Green‘s Snow Angels. Two very different jobs.

Year of the Dog: Otto Nemenz Movicam compacts, Cooke S4 lenses with Optimo zooms. Fuji 8563 daylight and what Orr thinks was probably the last remaining Fuji 8573 tungsten on the planet.

“One of Mike‘s biggest references on the film was the Errol Morris documentary Gates of Heaven. He wanted his movie to feel a lot like the portraiture in that film. He didn‘t want it to feel contemporary in the physical texture of the film, he didn‘t want it to look like every other modern movie mde. I tested a lot of stocks for him and he decided to shoot these older Fuji stocks. The grain structure was definitely apparent and had a tangible nature to it. Today, with the new Kodak and Fuji stocks it‘s hard to see grain in them anywhere. The older Fuji stocks also had a little bit lower contrast. more

Remarkable conversation with DP Tim Orr who‘s here with Mike White‘s Year of the Dog and David Green‘s Snow Angels. Two very different jobs.

Year of the Dog: Otto Nemenz Movicam compacts, Cooke S4 lenses with Optimo zooms. Fuji 8563 daylight and what Orr thinks was probably the last remaining Fuji 8573 tungsten on the planet.

“One of Mike‘s biggest references on the film was the Errol Morris documentary Gates of Heaven. He wanted his movie to feel a lot like the portraiture in that film. He didn‘t want it to feel contemporary in the physical texture of the film, he didn‘t want it to look like every other modern movie mde. I tested a lot of stocks for him and he decided to shoot these older Fuji stocks. The grain structure was definitely apparent and had a tangible nature to it. Today, with the new Kodak and Fuji stocks it‘s hard to see grain in them anywhere. The older Fuji stocks also had a little bit lower contrast. more

HP is displaying their Digital Content Creation Workstations in the New Frontier on Main. Here is a collection of photos of the ongoings over the past couple of days.

You can also keep up with HP managers and their experiences at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in their Backstage at Sundance 2007 Blog. more

Caught a quick moment with King of California director Mike Cahill. We talked a lot about trees which we both love (everything but palms), and about California light which we both grew up with. Capturing that light–at least in a way that looked real to Cahill turned out to be a big task for DP Jimmy Whitaker, both in camera and in the DI suite at Matchframe DI.

Factors in the shoot: three Kodak stocks and lantern light. “Everyone told us not to do it,” Cahill says. “It made the actors their own grips since they were acting and holding the light. We‘d say, ‘turn this way, now turn the light‘. After a painstaking DI it all ended up looking like real California. “Or my definition of it, anyway,” Cahill says.

Oh and there‘s one shot with an unavoidable palm tree. Can‘t win ‘em all.

Listen in on an exclusive interview with Year of the Fish Director David Kaplan as he talks about the creation of his Sundance film. Millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman asks the questions.

To listen to the podcast interview click here.

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