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.
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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

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

Up front I have to set some context, though you’ll read more about this part of the story in the general press.Writer/director/actor Matthew Stanton is one of those Sundance Cinderella stories: theater guy from Loyola Marymount graduates with a story to tell, chases it for seven years, lives in his car to fund it, submits it to Sundance—no connections–a needle in a record-breaking haystack of submissions. North Starr’s unanimous selection for the Dramatic Competition is proof, Stanton says, that Sundance looks at every submission, no matter where it comes from. Proof that a Sundance film can come from nowhere.

Now, sitting in the lobby of the Yarrow, Stanton and his DP/Edtor Peter Levermann start to spin the tale of their collaboration, passing the story back and forth as their adventure together takes shape in words. more

I find Post Logic colorist Doug Delaney at 5pm, almost exactly 12 hours after he put the last flourish on Adventures of Power and pushed send on the print. He’s multi-tasking coffee and laundry; he’s had plenty of the one and run out of the other. Most of the people who work on the films here spend months if not years (even decades) of their lives on the projects. The DI colorist gets a few intense weeks in that special antechamber to reality where everyone shares the stressful truth: the movie will be finished, and soon. more

By Darroch Greer
Listen in on an exclusive interview with Anywhere USA Director Chusy Haney-Jardine as he talks about the creation of his Sundance film. Digital Content Producer Contributor Darroch Greer asks the questions.

To listen to the podcast interview click here.
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Check out our entire Sundance Podcast Archive.

With so much attention focused on feature-length films at the Sundance Film Festival, it is easy for the short films to get lost in the shuffle. This year, however, Sundance is pushing the short film programs pretty heavily. Starting tomorrow, the “10 Shorts 10 Days� feature appears at sundance.org/festival/shorts, where one short from the festival will appear for free for an entire day, with nine more to follow consecutively. In addition, 45 of the 83 short films in the festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox. The entries this year span a wide array of subject matter and themes, from straight-ahead comedy to action/thrillers and gripping drama. Entries have come from all over the world as well—from as far away as China, Iceland, and Denmark.

If you have a Netflix account, the entire animated film program is now streaming there for free. If not, just wait until Wednesday Jan. 23 to watch Director Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s multi-layered experimental short Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People when it appears on the “10 Shorts 10 Days� site. This rapid-fire cutout animation piece, shot with a Sony HD CAM, is a biting satire of world politics and the public’s endless fascination with facile celebrity news. The effect of Tin-Kin Hung’s quickly moving and surrealistically adorned, flat images produces a film that’s very modern in its subject matter, but not too dissimilar from Terry Gilliam’s early work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

By Michael Goldman
French director Michel Gondry, the force behind 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, offers Sundance Film Festival-goers a much differently offbeat piece this year with Be Kind, Rewind. Gondry collaborated with cinematographer Ellen Kuras and others to manufacture the story of some well-intentioned goofballs trying to help a dying urban video rental store survive by simplistically remaking onto VHS tape many of the movies in the store’s library. The aesthetic approach to making those faux movies, and the technical challenges involved were quite extensive. Gondry recently discussed these issues with millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman. Check out the January/February issue of millimeter for a feature article on the making of Be Kind, Rewind.

To listen to the podcast interview click here.
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