With the recent popularity of free, user-generated content on websites like YouTube, where video is most often viewed in short bursts, original short films have been able to find a new and eager audience. No longer confined to being seen one theater and one festival at a time, shorts can be uploaded by the filmmakers and watched by anyone in the world who has a fast enough internet connection.

This trend seems to favor comedic shorts more than anything else, and Dan Beers’ short film FCU: Fact Checkers Unit definitely falls into that category. To show at Sundance 2008 is prestigious for sure, but at this point, it seems like almost an afterthought. This short is something of an internet sensation, having appeared on Will Ferrell’s FunnyorDie.com site, and now on YouTube and virtually everywhere else with embeddable video. It doesn’t hurt, of course, to have Bill Murray in your movie.

In addition to directing, Beers also co-wrote the short with its two stars, Peter Karinen and Brian Sacca. The set-up is simple. Two guys who work as fact checkers and take their job very seriously (way more seriously than their half-awake, banana-chomping editor) are assigned to check whether or not Bill Murray has a glass of milk right before he goes to bed at night. Read On and watch the entire short at Scene-Stealers.com

An afternoon session at the New Frontier center brought together representatives from some of the biggest behind-the-scenes companies in the film industry to discuss “How to Talk to the Big Guys when You’re a Little Guy.” The Big Guys were Lorette Bayle of Kodak, David Hays of Efilm, Allan Tudzin of Fotokem, Steve-O of Deluxe Laboratories, and Ric Halpern of Panavision. The little guys, of course, were the audience members.

Halpern spoke at length about Panavision’s New Filmmaker Program, under which a budding filmmaker might be lucky enough to score a free rental of a 35mm camera for their project. (Napoleon Dynamite, for instance, might not have been possible without this grant.) more

So, as I hoofed it five blocks from one end of Park City’s Main Street to the other, various camera crews shooting various footage pieces for various networks websites, corporations, or syndicated news oultets sported the slew of professional and prosumer camcorders. In the normally 10-minute walk I saw 7 Panasonic HVX200s, 3 Sony Z1s, a handful of Sony XDCAMs, 1 itty-bitty Sony A1, 1 Canon XL-H1, and even a Red One Digital Cinema camera at the Slamdance HQ. In the SD category, 1 Panasonic DVX100b and 1 Canon XL2.

Also encountered along the path: Slamdance ‘08 Real Time star (the bearded) Randy Quaid, Danny Glover and accompanying insatiable crowd, Jack Black and accompanying insatiable crowd, Alan Rickman (Die Hard’s Hans Gruber) with shouting onlookers, a group of Obama ralliers, various turquoise jeweler storefronts, and a long line of anti-fur protesters.

The trek took me just over a half hour.

Just attended a panel on one of today’s seriously hot topics–the evolution and monetization of content over the internet. The panel fielded industry big-hitters Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Veoh.com’s Dmitry Shapiro, Joost.com’s Mike Volpi, and the NBC Universal/NewsCorp private beta venture Hulu.com’s Jason Kilar, as well as MPAA’s Dan Glickman, Phil Lelyveld formerly with Disney, and MTV Networks/Comedy Central/South Park Studios Digital Media representative Erik Flanagan.

The discussion was moderated in a humorous, yet no-holds-barred manner by Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal and AllThingsD.com–attendees included Quincy Smith of CBS Digital, a retired exec of AOL, a major Facebook investor, and actress Jane Lynch from The 40 Year Old Virgin and Best in Show and Sundance ‘08 film Adventures of Power.

The entire discussion was highly insightful, but here are some of the highlights (in no particular order): more

Bobby Bukowski couldn’t say no to Prague and the chance to shoot the Bavarian forest (for The Crown of Vysehrad). But the opportunity came at a price. The DP wouldn’t be able to join his first-time director Dainel Barnz and colorist Doug Delaney in the color suite for Phoebe in Wonderland. This was a harrowing compromise for a DP; Bukowski had planned to be there and the film counts on color as a narrative point: it’s a story about a young girl living in two worlds—one real, one imagined. And that’s not all: Barnz had his heart set on autumn and the film was shot (with a lot of exteriors) in the full force of Queens summer. Autumn would come in the DI suite. And there had been no film dailies. more

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”
-Mum

Next Sunday is a long time to wait to watch the short film Spider, which will be streaming for free on the Sundance 10 Shorts 10 Days page on Jan. 27. If you’re like me and you want to open all your presents early, the entire movie is embedded at the end of this post, courtesy Director Nash Edgerton and the millionaire boy geniuses who invented YouTube.

Something must be in the water Down Under because this is the second shocking black comedy from Australia in as many days. (Spencer Susser’s I Love Sarah Jane was covered yesterday.) Shot on location in Sydney, Spider was filmed on 16mm stock in 1:2.35, and later transferred to 35mm. Edgerton himself plays Jack, who is in the midst of a pretty serious fight with his girlfriend while she’s driving them both around the city.

The camera’s POV stays with Jack as he heads into a convenience store to buy some things in hopes of placating her. Watching him scan the shop quickly is like actually seeing the thought processes of a typical male (not that I would know anything about that). Since this is a short film and we don’t want to ruin the ending, we’ll just stop any mention of plot right there. Read On and see the entire film at Scene-Stealers.com

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SCREEN MEDIA FILMS AND THE CREATIVE COALITION LAUNCH THE SPOTLIGHT INITIATIVE

PARK CITY, UT (January 19, 2008) - The Creative Coalition, the leading social and public advocacy organization of the arts and entertainment community, will host cocktails, dining and entertainment to launch its Spotlight Initiative with Screen Media Films, a distributor of independent films. Read on at The Briefing Room

More news from Sundance 2008

Again for 2008 the Sundance Film Festival is posting clips reviewing each day’s activities in Park City. To view their ongoing video blog and see the archives of past years’ musings check out Live @ Sundance.

By Darroch Greer

Clark Gregg attended the Sundance Film Festival in 1999 as an actor, playing a transsexual.

“I’d been there as an actor a couple of times,” Gregg recalls. “Once with a movie called The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, the first feature by Tod Williams, who did Door in the Floor, and I found it tremendously moving. Watching the way his voice was supported there, and the way they helped him find a niche as a filmmaker. I said then – and I think it was eight or nine years ago – that somehow or another I want to have a story that I can bring back and share. So, it was quite moving to me to find that result at the end of all this.”

You might also know Gregg on television as the ex-husband, Richard Campbell, in The New Adventures of Old Christine. In addition to a long list of television and film roles, Gregg also wrote the screenplay for the Robert Zemeckis film What Lies Beneath. He has now adapted the novel Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, and has directed it for the big screen. Choke is in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance this year. more

I just caught up with Mike Seymour, executive producer and visual effects supervisor on I Love Sarah Jane, one of the shorts screening here at Sundance. (Read Eric Melin’s review here.) Seymour told us about his use of the Thomson Viper FilmStream camera on Sarah Jane, including his data-capture scheme, and a little bit about FX PhD, the online visual effects school he’s involved with, which helped postproduce the effects-heavy short. Click here for my interview with Mike Seymour live at the Filmmaker’s Lodge at Sundance.