Today at the New Frontier center at 333 Main St., entertainment technology strategy adviser Phil Lelyveld (formerly with Disney) moderated a panel with five very different filmmakers. Mark Randall, now of Adobe, is probably best known to our readers as the creator of Serious Magic DV Rack on-set monitoring software (now owned by Adobe, renamed OnLocation & bundled with many Adobe CS3 packages).

He’s also an independent filmmaker–he says that he created DV Rack for himself as a way to avoid renting an expensive 35lb. CRT monitor for shoots. Randall described a preproduction workflow on a recent project that sounds just as innovative as any Serious Magic software program. Essentially, he gets all the principal actors together, some of the crew, and goes through the script as a dry run with DV cameras. The lighting might be terrible, there might be stand-ins for some of the actors, but the goal is to get the pacing down. The DP can play with camera angles to help firm up the final shot list. “I’ve seen it build team sync,” Randall adds.

Alex Buono wrote and served as DP for a film that’s got possibly the strongest kiosk presence at this year’s festival: Bigger, Stronger, Faster, about the use of steroids and other performance enhancements in sports. more

The Wall Street Journal is hosting a venue two floors above the New Frontier on Main which slates panel discussions by filmmakers, acoustic jam sessions, and free food. So, while enjoying a pizza lunch on the WSJ dime, Train lead singer Pat Monahan performed hits from his popular band, as well as tunes from his first solo album Last of Seven.

The venue called the “Point of View” is a cozy lounge with a small stage surrounded by cushy furniture situated in front of a long bar where the complimentary refreshments are served. Hear a clip of Pat Monohan’s intimate performance by clicking the link below.

Listen here.

Today is the first day of Sundance’s 10 Shorts 10 Days, and the first short film to stream for free for a day is Director Spencer Susser’s darkly funny charmer, I Love Sarah Jane. Tomorrow there will be another short will be streaming for free, so head there now to check it out.

The zombie movie has thrived in recent years, with re-imaginings from 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead, and is still being successfully tweaked—as this Australian import shows. Shot digitally using the Thomson HD Viper Camera, I Love Sarah Jane is set in a parent-free neighborhood where the adults are either dead or undead. Without anyone to tell the kids to clean up the house, it just isn’t going to happen.

I joke, but what makes Susser’s film so effective is the matter-of-fact way that the kids deal with their bleak situation. It’s nothing special to anyone to be carrying a bow with a quiver of arrows on your back like 13-year old Jimbo does. That’s just survival. Dark clouds loom—literally—overhead as he rides his bike around a trash-strewn, smoldering street. Amidst this awful backdrop blooms a chance for love—at least in Jimbo’s head. As a bored Sarah Jane watches a newscaster on TV describe the proper way to handle undead body disposal (incineration, of course), Jimbo sits down to make his move. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

Related news from The Briefing Room

Throughout the opening of the Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker-hopefuls are pitching their movie ideas to the world at the Avid Technology booth in the New Frontier (333 Main St.).

In the contest, your 60-second pitch could result in a range of prizes including consulting time with Hollywood execs, a spot in the Sundance Independent Producers Conference, and Avid product packages. Stop by between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Jan. 18-22 to get your pitch into the mix or upload a 60-second pitch clip of your own to the Perfect Pitch website.

Just today, Park City local John Servoss (pictured) threw his hat into the ring with a “race for the money” idea staged in the Utah mountains.

For full rules and regulations, as well as the list of prizes visit avid.com/pitch.

By Michael Goldman

One of the earliest adopters of the Arriflex D-20 film-style digital camera for a major feature film this past year was cinematographer Reinhart Peschke, who shot a film debuting at Sundance called Captain Abu Raed, which was produced and filmed entirely in the nation of Jordan using the D-20 for writer-director Amin Matalqa. Peschke worked with Arriflex Munich and GigaPix Studios of Chatsworth, Calif., to develop a workflow for recording images from three D-20s directly to hard drives, and in the process, overcame a number of technical challenges while shooting in Jordan. Peschke recently spoke with millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman about those challenges. Listen to part of their conversation by clicking the link below and be sure to check out the September/October 2007 issue of millimeter for a detailed story on the making of the movie. Millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman asks the questions.

To listen to the podcast interview click here.
(To download: Right Click, Save As)

Check out our entire Sundance Podcast Archive.

The panel put on by Slamdance actually featured mostly Sundance filmakers, seating American Son director Neil Abramson, The Wackness and Wind and the Water DP Petra Korner, The Wackness co-producer Brian Udovich, Real Time director Randall Cole (the only Slamdance film represented), and Sundance short Adventures of Baxter & McGuire: The Boss director Mike Blum.

The panel mostly focused on distribution and how the individuals came to be filmmakers–most participants stating Sundance is the biggest boom on the path towards distribution. No surprise there.

The most interesting story of how a filmmaker came to be was the evolution of Neil Abramson, a South African native who found his love for the art by sneakily snapping photos of police brutality during Apartheid.

However, as expected with Kodak being the presenting sponsor, the discussion did turn toward film versus HD/video acquisition. Below are some notes on each panelist’s take on the issue: more

Up Main Street a bit is the Microsoft House, which is devoted to various forms of home entertainment. They’ve got several “entertainment center” PCs from Toshiba (Qosmio G45) and HP (their HDX series) that are designed for optimal viewing of HD DVDs. There’s also an Xbox 360 showcase.

Upstairs and toward the back is a sophisticated home theater, where a Samsung SP-A800B projector, a $7,000 single-DLP model with 1920×1080 resolution, shows HD DVD content from a Toshiba HD A35 (third-generation) player.

I spoke with Kevin Collins, director of HD DVD evangelism at Microsoft, about why the company is at Sundance. Collins’ title explains quite a bit of it, and as the competing Blu-ray standard continues to make headway against its rival, HD DVD would seem to need all the push it can get. more

By Darroch Greer

Sundance wouldn’t be Sundance without firmly keeping its foot in independent cinema. When the festival is literally overrun by Hollywood each January, and mainstream fare such as a Barry Levinson film has its premiere there, it is gratifying to see a film shot on video with no actors (save a 10-year-old) and edited in a garage competing in the Dramatic Competition.

Such is the case with Anthony (Chusy) Haney-Jardine’s Anywhere, USA, co-written with his wife, Jennifer MacDonald, starring their daughter, and shot in their hometown. Chusy, who is Venezuelan-American (his name rhymes with juicy), set out to make a subjective portrait of what he saw as his America.

“The presumption was that that take on America would somehow hold water, or at least other people would find entertainment in that portraiture,” Chusy says. “It’s not to me an all-encompassing portrait, it’s just a very personal portrait.” more

“You can’t untell a tale…you can’t outslow a snail.”
- Bobby Bird, Chonto

This year, 45 of the 83 short films in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox.com.

Carson Mell follows last year’s Sundance-featured short film Bobby Bird: The Devil in Denim with another adventure of the aging former rock star. The 2008 animation short program features Chonto, a relatively somber yet bizarrely amusing film, shot on Sony HD CAM, about Bobby’s search for a true friend. An obnoxious roadie named Rufus forces the rocker, in a flashback to his younger days, to consider something other than human companionship. A dog is too common, and a big shot like Bobby needs a “big-shot dog,” so he goes to a South American zoo to adopt a monkey.

Mell’s animation style is an interesting mix of photo-real backgrounds and stark, crisply drawn cartoon images that have very little mobility. Deep colors enrich the surrounding photos, but the characters themselves are flat images with barely any shading. Camera movement is mostly limited to slowly zooming in or out, and it makes for a very deliberate tone. Ironically, it is this approach, juxtaposed against Bobby’s homespun seen-it-all rocker mentality and his Southern drawl, that makes Chonto so charming. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

Longtime New Zealand documentary filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly was in Sudan for her documentary on landmine fallout when she met an unusual woman on a quest to adopt Sudanese twins Madit and Mongor Akit. Over a period of months, the two women reconnected in Sudan, as journeys intertwined and a film process began. Brettkelly’s subject, Vanessa Beecroft, would turn out to be a famed international contemporary art star, iconoclastic and controversial. Brettkelly and DP Jake Bryant would follow her emotional, sometimes infuriating march towards imagined motherhood with their Sony Z1 kit and an open mind. Brettkelley’s interest in revealing the contradictions of international adoption came together with Beecroft’s extraordinary story of art and life and the result was, as documentaries often are, unexpected.

In a coffee shop at the Yarrow, Pietra recounts the remarkable evolution of her film’s visual style. more