I started going to New Frontier on Main before it was called that, when it was just a warm, dark basement full of chilly festivalgoers and digital cameras and editing software. There were some classes, panel discussions, and no cell phone reception unless you went out the door and into the mall atrium (which now has signage announcing it as the “Cell Phone Atrium”).

Inside, it’s slicked up too—veering away from any trade show booth vibe and towards nightclub/art installation. One of the first big developments was to bring in the online shorts a few years ago; one of the most fun ways to warm up is to sit at one of the computers in the moody lighting and browse the shorts. From there you can move on to the video art installations, check out the irresistable “Artists and Scientists” segments, play with the “editing gloves”, and then choose from the Microcinema panels; some from Sony, Avid, and Panavision on technie stuff, plus issues-based panels with a timely focus on distribution. Oh, and you can see the entire Sony XDCAM lineup in one place. more

Shooting I Love You Phillip Morrs for Bad Santa directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Xavier Perez’s biggest problem was the Louisiana rain and the summer light. In fact his toughest challenge never made it to the screen—a big shoot in Shreveport in the tank that conjured the storm in The Guardian. “It was pretty impressive,” says Perez of the tank and the logistics, “maybe it will be on the DVD.”

Two stocks: Kodak 5218 and 5229—one for the gentle colors at the beginning of the story and then a much more contrasty look as the true story of a love-crazed con (Jim Carrey) grows increasingly improbably in behalf of the beloved Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).

As the light gets more contrasty, the camera movement gets increatingly dynamic, “frantic” is the word Perez uses for the feeling. But the angst was apparently all on screen. Perez credits the perfect collaboration with the directors; “we all had the same kind of mind and sense of humor.”

Premiered yesterday, continues Tues 9p.m. in Salt Lake at the Tower and at the Sundance Resort 6p.m. Saturday.

Many of the reviews of Thriller in Manila (which premiered in World Documentary Competition last Friday) mention the fact that it transcends expectations for a sports documentary (it revolves around the third Ali-Frazier right in Manila in 1975).

The credit for this of course goes to director John Dower, editor Nicholas Packer, DP Stephen Sanden and the team. But it also goes to Andrew MacKenzie, the producer at UK’s Channel 4 who provided the money. At least that’s how Dower explains it with a kind of wonder in his voice, as if still can’t believe he got to make a documentary with enough money. Money that bought a precious thing: pre-production.

Actually calling it pre-production doesn’t really describe it. Dower talks about going to the north Broad Street neighborhood in Philly, with no set plan, hanging out at Frazier’s boxing gym with the fragile, ferocious and mistrustful fighter. Dower walked the streets, met the now-gray-haired friends and witnesses, interviewed the fight participants including Ali’s acerbic doctor. He moved into the story. This is of course not unheard of in documentaries—but it is rarely budgeted for. more

Somehow the tiny budget for Paper Heart paid for trips to Toronto, Paris, and about 12 states including—to the best of DP Jay Hunter’s recollection—California, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and New York, where the man shot 300 hours of Varicam footage in ten weeks. Not surprisingly he thinks Paper Heart’s lone editor Ryan Brown is a hero.

The film is in Dramatic Competition and premiered last night at the Racquet Club. Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec it tells a fictional story of Charlene Yi (the actress’/co-producer’s real name) through both a narrative thread and a documentary one. (The picture at right shows Jasenovec, Yi, and Brown). While Charlene’s story of skeptical love is fictional, her co-stars are not. Hunter says he shot the many interviews with non-actors—friends and acquaintances talking about love–in a narrative style using primes and very deliberate compositions, but that he also tried to shoot the narrative segments with the frankness of a documentary, “obeying the laws of reality.” more

Director Ryan Shiraki and I are patrolling the very gracious lobby of the Park City hotel looking for exactly what we found: two high backed Chesterfield-esque chairs in a quiet corner next to a high window near a tasteful fern. We settle in.

Shiraki is here (again) with Spring Breakdown, a “Girls Gone Wild” story with heart staring Amy Poehler, Parker Posey, and Rachel Dratch, who co-wrote with Shiraki.

Shiraki’s DP Frank DeMarco shot Hedwig and the Angry Inch a film Shiraki loved for its extravagant and pointed use of color—something he wanted for his own film. “I love the way that in certain scenes these isolated bright colors would pop out of the sea of gray and blue,” he says of DeMarco’s work on Hedwig. He explains that his movie deliberately kicks off with his three heroines singing a campy version of Cindy Lauper’s “True Colors” and that each has an hero color (Amy: yellow; Parker: red: Rachel: blue) that travels with them from morose to magnificent as they bust out with the college kids on Los Padres Island at Spring Break. more

Towards the end of our conversation at Filmmaker’s Lodge, editor Jason Stewart happened to mention that he was hyper-organized. I’d already figured that out.

Stewart cut the Robin Williams’ picture World’s Greatest Dad for Bobcat Goldthwait premiering today at the Library. Look at this photo on the right: it’s the meticulous storyboard that earned Stewart an initial look of bewildered suspicion from Goldthwait (“who wastes this kind of time?”). But Stewart says Goldthwait caught on after about five minutes and was soon converted to the Way of The Wall.

The idea is directly stolen from Walter Murch’s book “Blink of an Eye” (which Stewart read last summer), and other people do it. But as a 10-year-veteran editor it was Stewart’s first time and that’s what matters. He describes a modern twist on Murch’s process: he assembled about 350 still frames in the Avid to represent all the scenes and printed them out at Kinko’s; he built a wood and canvas frame to hold them and bought a jumbo box of bullnose clips to hang them up. When he gets to the part about using the Avid titling tool to label each still, I flash on those people who label all the stuff in their garage with P-touch machines (me). more

When I sit down with Adam Elliot and Melanie Coombs, director and producer of Sundance’s ingenious opening film Mary and Max, I want to talk about their cinematographer Gerald Thompson. Which is handy, because they do too. (Note the vignetting in the photo at right).

Much has been deservedly made of the film’s detailed claymation animation and of its dark, taboo-pushing story of two unlikely and lonely pen pals. Elliot had previously won an Academy Award (Harvie Krumpet) and found acclaim as a storyteller and animator, but for him something was missing cinematically. That something arrived in the unlikely form of motion control expert Thompson. Like Prometheus brought fire, Thompson brought camera moves. more

DP Patrick Murguia is touristing around Main Street recovering from the long journey from Mexico City; he’s enroute to the Eccles to be very early for the premiere of the independent film he shot for Antoine Fuqua. We grab a corner of the cramped lobby at the Marriott Summit Watch and as he talks the many distractions fade away.

Murguia recalls standing in the streets of New York, while Fuqua laid out a shot plan. From his gestures I’m seeing a dynamic, nearly 360-degree lighting extravaganza, the kind of muscular, operatic command of space and action that Fuqua does so distinctively. “He actually wanted to make something very simple,” Murguia says of Brooklyn’s Finest, which stars Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, and Don Cheadle. “Most of the time he got that, but sometimes it’s in his nature to go a little over the top,” the DP says with a little grin. I think it’s an understatement. Why else would Trevor Goth, writing in the program notes, talk about the “roving cinematography,” the “intensity and complexity,” the “complete command of the cinematic language,” and the “visceral and emotional punch” of a master at work. Simple I suppose for Fuqua.

Murguia is a sought-after commercials director and has shot features for his friend Rodrigo Prieto; he started working with Fuqua when Oliver Stone suggested him for Escobar. That project stalled in pre-production so when Fuqua went to work on Brooklyn’s Finest the relationship continued on that film. more

By day Alicia Conway is a producer, so…persuasive. Here at Sundance she’s the writer/director of the dramatic short film “Rite” which kicked off Park City at Midnight last night at the Egyptian in front of Paul Solet’s “Grace”.

The persuasive thing is relevant here because key to making this Red-shot film work was the involvement of DP Stephanie Martin and Red owner and technique expert Tims Johnson (you know him from the Red message boards). Martin was a film DP who didn’t really need to do Conway’s short film, except for the chance to get her hands on a Red with the able guidance of Johnson. more

I’m having Asia flashbacks as DP Brent Huffman talks about the big white elephant mall in Guangzhou, the largest mall in the world and an unaccepted failure of surreal proportions. For face-saving reasons, the Chinese government cannot abandon the unfinished (and nearly unoccupied) mall/amusement park with its construction hazards, enormous indoor rollercoaster (dubiously welded), oversized Teletubbies, and population of semi-employed workers and moms looking for something (unsafe) to do with bored toddlers. Which apparently includes launching them onto a river inside human-sized balloons filled with about two minutes of oxygen, to cavort to the point of mild asphyxia before they’re towed back in

How could this not be the subject for a documentary short? Utopia, Part 3: The World’s Largest Shopping Mall premiered last night in the Documentary Shorts program; as the title suggests, it is one segment of Sam Green and Carrie Lozano’s envisioned series on global expressions of utopia. more