Sundance Film Festival

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.) Halpern says that aspiring filmmakers need to have at least three basic elements in order before they can hope to gain his attention and win this grant: a script, a shooting schedule, and a budget. Then of course, there’s passion - he wants to meet prospective grant winners in person and wants good answers to his questions.

Halpern and the other members of the panel all spoke at length about the options available to first-time filmmakers trying to tell their story; i.e., shooting film vs. going digital. The general consensus seems to be that in production, of course, shooting video is cheaper, but if there’s any hope of a film distribution, shooting 16mm would often be a more economical choice. (Bayle of Kodak mentioned that Hollywood studios are “not stupid,” and there’s a reason the vast majority of features are still shot on film.)

Hays, Tudzin, and Steve-O of the postproduction facilities all emphasized the need to plan the way you’re finishing your movie before you even start.