Press Release

Festival Panels Discuss the History and Future of Independent Cinema with Panelists Including Steven Soderbergh, James Schamus, Barbara Kopple and Gregg Araki

The 2009 Sundance Film Festival announced the panel discussions at the Festival, which runs January 15-25, 2009 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. Festival panels offer in-depth conversation, lively debate, and critical insight into a broad range of issues important to the independent filmmaking community. more

On Saturday at the Outerspace Cinema, I caught the session “Sharing a Vision,” moderated by Avid. Director/producer Doug Liman (Swingers, The Bourne Identity, and the upcoming Jumper) sat down with editor Saar Klein and spoke to an overflowing audience about “the importance of finding the right editor.” The two first collaborated on The Bourne Identity, when both were newcomers to the action genre. (Klein had previously worked in The Thin Red Line and Almost Famous.) They recently collaborated on the upcoming sci-fi flick Jumper, undertaking yet another foray into unknown territory: effects-heavy science fiction.

They described an interesting relationship. Apparently their first phone conversation charitably can be labeled “curt,” after Klein told Liman that he hated the original Bourne script past the first 15 pages. But soon, Liman came to respect Klein’s honesty and independence of vision as an editor. They both found themselves fighting the studio as they tried to avoid adding to the film action cliches such as loud scoring during action sequences.

On their collaborations, Liman said that Klein had become as involved as a screenwriter for the simple reason that he was always around during preproduction. By the same token, Klein describes Liman as a good editor - he always has his own Media Composer for every project (which, of course, allows Klein to tell Liman to find “that one shot he’s looking for” himself). more

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

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

An interesting film project was the subject of a session on Creating a Low-Budget Film with High Production Value at the New Frontier center today. To create a horror/psychological thriller for under $250,000, Michael Phillips of Avid teamed up with Norm Hollyn, associate professor at the USC Film School and head of the editing track there.

The 89-minute feature, titled Jack in the Box, involved an 11-day shoot with a small crew. A single location, a creepy basement room where all the action happens, kept the budget manageable. As did a heavy dose of pre-planning. During the session, Phillips projected a chart that listed off all the video and audio formats that might ensue, such as a 1080p/23.976fps HDCAM-SR program master, and RGB 2K files on LTO tape in case a film version is needed. The chart listed postproduction processes that would affect the shooting, such as pan-and-scan for a 3:2 version. (The producers aren’t ready to say what cameras they used.) All this pre-planning on deliverables, Phillips said, would make it easier for a distributor to decide to pick up the project.

For editing, Phillips worked in Media Composer (big surprise there), in SD for the offline and in HD for the online, both on the HP 8400 workstation. more

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 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