HD For Indies

UPDATED - scroll down

I've mentioned this idea before, but indies, do be realistic - the odds of getting into Sundance are HARSH:

films submitted: 3624
films to be screened: 121
truly indie films likely to be picked up for significant theatrical distribution that didn't already have it going in: my guess, 1-3

It is PLENTY hard enough to make an indie film - a great many die on the table, so to speak, and never get finished. Of those that get finished and submitted to Sundance...this year, 3.33% of submitted films will be shown. Ouch. And of those that were actually indie-outta-left field, perhaps 3, maybe 4, will get picked up for meaningful distribution at best. Maybe just 1. So if we presume 2 truly indie films get picked up, that's 2 out of 3624, or 0.055%....or one in about 1800 (OK, 1812 to be exact).

Is your movie ready to beat out 1811 other films?

Really?

I'm ALL FOR people pursuing their dreams. I'm already thinking of the short I want to make when I get my own Red One (hey, who wants to help?). But be sanguine about the odds, the results, and especially the business case. If you want to make a movie, do it for the right reasons, and be ready to be happy about the time you spent and the money it cost, and be ready for it to not have tangible, financial results.

Especially at the box office.

Then think about cable, direct to DVD, and any other market that might pay you for your content.

Source:

"For the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, 121 feature-length films were selected including 87 world premieres, 14 North American premieres and 12 U.S. premieres representing 25 countries with 55 first-time filmmakers, including 32 in competition. These films were selected from 3,624 feature film submissions composed of 2,021 U.S. and 1,603 international feature-length films. These numbers represent an increase from last year when 1,852 U.S. and 1,435 international feature length films were considered."

-mike

FRIDAY UPDATE

There's some good stuff in the Comments on this one.

Many (fairly) took me to task for sounding all "Debbie Downer" in this post. Whilst cranky when I wrote it, the underlying driver wasn't "U R Hoserated." A much happier way to fix/spin/"I'd like to amend and revise my prior statements" it would be to be Zen about it - the making and finishing of the movie should be a BIG chunk of the reward.

Don't count on financial rewards to consider it a successful adventure was my point.

There, am I closer to half full now?

: )

Also, the odds ARE tough. But unlike rolling an 1812 sided dice and hoping it comes up with the one right number, the odds aren't as bad as they look...not all sides of that dice are the same size. There's a LOT of lame submissions out there (small dice sides). And the commenter that stated that the number of quality submissions is about the same? That makes sense to me - I could see quality submissions going up SOME, but not on track with/at the same rate as overall submissions (the good submissions are the bigger sides of that 1812 mega-dice).

The juju I'd suggest - plan, plan, plan like a Bad MF; have a GREAT script, Stay On Target, have a good technical plan in place so you don't have to worry about codecs on set for more than 3 seconds a day (that stuff should alllllll be resolved before you record your first frame!), etc.

The flip side is MOST movies are weak. Make one that rocks. Take Juno for instance - they just let'er rip, and it ROCKS for that reason. The storyline is pretty tame - teen pregnancy, decides to adopt, falls back in love with boyfriend - with that log line, my stomach aches from Movie Of The Week syndrome. But their attitude, and OMFG - the DIALOG - makes that movie SING. Lines like "Honest to blog!" and music with lyrics like "my mp3-dvd-rumble-pack guitar" made me LOVE THIS movie. Is all about the attitude. The cinematography? Lighting? Sound design? I dunno, I never really noticed them, so they quietly and professionally did their job right. But it is the script, and acting, and Ellen Page* in particular that made it a winner.

Making a movie that just plain fucking RAWKS? THAT takes Nerves of Steel, Balls of Brass (or metric female equivalent), and Heaps O' Determination.

: )

-mike

* As I said to Erica (girlfriend) recently, there are three young actress performances that have knocked me off my feet in my lifetime - Natalie Portman in The Professional, Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire, and Ellen Page in Hard Candy. That girl is going places.

Labels: festivals, film festivals, Sundance

(click the picture to load video)

Hey all -

I've been back a few days but trying to catch up on my world. Here (finally) is the video I shot of the distribution/acquisition rights panel that Scott Kirsner (of CinemaTech blog fame) moderated. Officially, it was titled "Rights Licensing in the New Era of Distribution."

This is a punt posting of what I saw one day at Sundance - I could edit & improve audio, but I don’t have time. I made a quick tour of the New Frontier Lounge noting the vendors present, then went and sat in on the Distribution Rights Panel that was moderated by my fellow blogger and buddy Scott Kirsner. Also on the panel were Orly Ravid of Wolf Releasing, Jean Pruitt of Independent Film & Television Association, Tracey Mercer of Revelation Entertainment & also Clickstar (Morgan Freeman’s distro), David Straus of withoutabox.com, Linda “O”, head of acquisition of shorts and podcasts for Shorts, Intntl.

I shot this using movie mode on my little Canon S450 snapshot camera by holding my arm up for 45 minutes, so pardon the shaky camera work. I got the first 35 or so minutes than ran out of room on my camera card, purged some stuff and got about 5 more minutes, missing the last 20 minutes or so unfortunately. But there is still much info of interest on here.

Yo Sundance - it was open to the public, so I’m posting this here. If anybody has a problem with that, please let me know, link below.

Enjoy and soak in the info.

NOTE - I posted this article as the video was still uploading and I left the studio - so if the video doesn't show up or is incomplete, check back later. I'll be back in a few hours to check on it and make sure it is working.

-mike

PS - David Straus of withoutabox.com talks about new services they are going to roll out, I'm interviewing him in next few days to get more info on that, will report here about it.

Labels: distribution, festivals, Kirsner, online distribution, Sundance

So here's my last update from Sundance - it is 3:50am as I type this, and prepare to Hate Me.

So you know how you always hear about those fantastic parties at places like Sundance? Well, tonight was one of them - the New York party.

And of course, I got to go, and you probably didn't.

HUGE party at a HUGE house, waaaaaaay up on the mountain. Just go see the pics for yourself.

And I say this with all the due glibness of a 4am Sundance after party glow -

Don't hate me for being just a little bit cool, just for once.

: )

(OK, granted, maybe not cool, but at least in a cool place.)

Celeb watch - Jeff Dowd, THE DUDE ABIDES himself that the character was based on, and Mizuo Peck, Sacagawea in Night at the Museum in the pics.

I ran into folks from earlier in the week, too - the Four Eyed Monsters crew, IndieFilm.com, David Leitner I'd only known from CML, the crew from PostWorks in NYC.

I also had great fun this week hanging out with the crews from Red, OffHollywood Digital, Tekserve, and Assimilate, and hope to see them all again soon, and to all them thanks for letting me hang.

Signing off from Sundance,

-mike

Labels: Sundance

First off, YET MORE PICTURES from the last few days.

If you read the Bambi story, you can see her picture here.

Monday - got up and met the folks from HD House, they wanted me to moderate yet another panel, this time on indie post. As moderator sitting on a panel with 5 or 6 folks from post houses, didn't feel fair to push my DIY ethos/agenda on the group, so we talked about how folks could work with post houses to avoid the common pitfalls when making movies. It all boiled down to asking a lot of questions in advance.

They all recommended sticking with one post house all the way through (unless something goes wrong of course), and they all expressed frustration at the false economy of trying to shop around to get bits and pieces of your project done at different places - scans here, conform there, color work somewhere else, for instance - because there are lots of legitimate non-obvious costs in moving all that stuff around, and if there is a problem, it opens the doors to all kinds of finger pointing. Not to mention the time/hassle/difficulty of handing stuff around, nor the simple imperative that not everybody works the same way, workflows differ, and assets from one shop may not transfer cleanly to another without problems.

Travis from Sound Lounge, made the point repeatedly to make SURE you got a good sound recordist on set, make sure they are properly qualififed, check their references, and that will fix myriad audio problems.

I brought up the point about how your time is spent in post - if you prep your assets incorrectly or poorly (non-slated shots, sloppy, ill-formatted offline edits, etc.), it'll cost you more. They all responded strongly to this - even though it makes them more money, it means you end up burning time fixing stuff just to make things work right, rather than spending money making your film look good. Since you're paying by the hour to, for instance, have your online editor sift through your badly formatted ALE files, or in telecine having the operator have to roll through your footage trying to figure out missing slates or find tail slates, etc.

In general, start talking to your post folks EARLY. Now, I of course am all HD for Indies, DIY style, so I'd tweak that to recommend talk to your post CONSULTANT/S, be they independent consultants (ahem, guess who), or your contact at your designated post house. They WANT you to ask questions, early and often, to make sure all is going to go well. There used to be a pretty straightforward process when making a movie - you shoot your film, telecine to offline DVCAM or BetaSP for the Avid, then the editor sends over an EDL to the post house to conform. No more! While it certainly CAN be done that way, and done well, and that is the basic premise of most traditional films (with extra steps in there), there are now LOTS of other options on how to get things done. is it Avid? Is it FCP? Is it 23.976, 24.0, or 29.97 timeline? Where are the assets coming from - film, animation, PAL, NTSC, 720p, 1080p, 1080i video, is it log, is it lin, is it Rec 709 or 601 or full range, etc. etc. etc. etc. With more choices comes many more possibilities.

While it is entirely possible to produce high quality content at low prices with the latest digital tools, there are also a GREATER number of ways to produce crappy looking, expensive content using those same tools.

With so many choices, there are lots of ways to goof that up. Get help to make sure it is not only being done correctly, but also optimally, and also at a price point that makes sense for your project & budget.

During production, follow proper procedure - shoot slates. Smart slates (with rolling timecode) are GOOD, and will pay for themselves in post - if somebody has to manually sync up audio, it'll take time and money. Renting a smart slate isn't all that expensive. If you can't do that, be sure to slate every shot. Tail slates CAN work, but will cost you more, as the telecine operator has to hunt them down, log the info, then go back to the start of the shot to do his thing.

In post, have LOTS of coversations in detail about what you want to do, what you're going to bring them, and ESPECIALLY how it should be prepared.

I've had TWO SEPARATE conversations with post folks who lamented about all the work required to collapse a timeline and get it all ready - that's time they have to bill for.

Monday night we went out, got into some movie premiere party that was so crowded (literally shoulder to shoulder in entire place) and loud that even the New Yorkers wanted to bail - there's definitely a crucial party density that should not be exceeded at an event like this. Enough folks in there to feel hoppin', but not so much that you can't circulate without holding your drink over your head moving 10 feet per minute. Reading this, anyone who books anything? You can't actually mingle/schmooze/network under those circumstances. You have to have the ability to see someone and walk over there in 10-20 seconds tops.

So we all bailed (yeah - too crowded to take out camera and snap pics).

I ran into Hal Hartley (whom I'd interviewed the day before for HD House) on way out, asked him if I could snap a quick picture with him, he bluntly said no. Ooooooookay. Maybe he was as ready as I was to get out of that place.

We went to a bar, everyone whipped out their Blackberry Pearls and tried to find another/better party to go to (see pic, 2nd link at top), tried to get into another nicer party but weren't on the list and couldn't social engineer it at this point. Blah.

Tuesday was a slow day - we all dragged out of bed late, had to go deal with lost rental skis, and finally hit the slopes around 12:30. Skied as a group, but shall we perhaps say skill levels varied? I decided to defer humiliating certain skiers mercilessly for a later date, since he spent so much time upside down.

: )

I broke off from the group to go hit it HARD - skied a bunch of double blues and zoomed the regular blues at 40 mph or so - HEAVEN!!!!!!!!!!

Had a perfect Zen-like last run from the top to bottom of the mountain, caught up with the other guys, and we all came home and cooked a big meal of pasta - Mark's a helluva cook.

Then I cratered early - too much high speed ski time.

Wednesday I got up and saw my friend Scott Kirsner (of the great CinemaTech blog moderate a panel on Distribution Rights - it was WAY better and more interesting than I thought it would be, as the guy who ran the panels talked about inviting studio acquisition execs and they ALL deferred. Instead, he got a bunch of folks who were on the ragged edge of what's going on with acquisition and distribution. It was really interesting - this a new ballgame these days, and it is ALL up in the air and being figured out on the go. I managed to shoot most of it with my little still camera's movie mode, will compress and post as I can ASAP, should be GOOD.

Then I hooked up with Lisa McWilliams of the Mobile Film School, and Gary Walker of Tex FX, a visual effects house in Austin as well - Gary was compositing lead on Apollo 13, and now works in Austin working on small films. He is here supporting the film Teeth that he was FX supervisor on. He now does digital FX and FX supervision for indie projects and is based in Austin. And he's good, a good person, and has very reasonable rates. Hint hint.

Now I'm getting ready to go to dinner with the guys, hit the big New York party up on the mountain, then crash and get picked up early to get to the SLC airport and then on to home (when I'll crunch the videos down on the Big Box and post'em up).

I'll let you folks know how the New York party goes up on the mountain...

-mikey OUT!

Labels: Sundance

Quick and raw, here we go, here's pics from last few days, and here's the rest:

Picking up from where I left off - the Reduser.net party was in the same condo as the Red party - Jarred of dvxuser.com started a new site specifically for Red, and he also used it as an opportunity to promote a new service called Rocket Indie, a self distribution solution for independent content. They handle DVD replication and packaging and order fulfillment and credit card processing. FAQ page here, I'll find out more and report back.I hadn't realized that Jarred had been a DP and Nick (other guy involved with Rocket Indie) had been director of the film Shadow Company, a good doc I saw earlier this year at SXSW about private mercenaries working in Iraq. (Really good, go see it.)

Hung out, talked to a bunch of folks, met some new prospective clients, and after a while was ready to hit another party - I'd heard that HD House was having a party, and that sounded like a good place to hit up potential new clients (detect a theme here?).

Partying in Sundance has it's price - I was standing in the kitchen, and the attractive woman walks up, stands right in front of me, and says "Are you Mike Curtis from HD for Indies?" "Yes?" I say...."I want to f*ck you...." she says, with a profoundly effective sultry look in her eye. (Hang on, this isn't going to turn into a "Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me...." letter.)

I know this isn't right or real, but I don't know what's going on. Suddenly, somebody starts busting out laughing...and it is Thor Wixom, with whom I'd been jokingly lamenting the limits of my geek cred with the night before, saying it was fun and all but would never yield rock star status. So of course, he convinced his wife's best friend to punk me in this fashion.

What do I do? Stand there and turn beet red.

Punked. Well punked, and touche Thor - all in good fun.

And what is her name?

Bambi.

I couldn't make this up.

Jendra Jarnagin was at the Reduser.net party as well, and we decided to go check out the HD House party down in town. We got down there, but it was already over. Jendra then whipped out her Blackberry (BTW - the Blackberry Pearl is THE "lookee what I got" item at Sundance) and sent a text msg out to 4 or 5 people simultaneously to find out what was the best thing to do next. She's amazing - she's lined up over 30 parties to attend at Sundance, because she spent a huge amount of time getting ready - to the point of she even called it pre-production. As a result, she knows exactly what to do at any given moment, with multiple fallbacks.

In direct opposition to how I've approached Sundance - I'm sponging off my friends for "what's going on tonight?" - which is a valid approach, one should use all one's resources - but there are big gaps when I'm trying to figure out where I should best be. Next time - plan, plan, plan. And apply for press credentials, for which the deadline was back in December, before I'd even locked in plans to attend.

In any case, Jendra got several responses back in minutes, and we were off, meeting up with a friend of hers to try to get into a party. We got there, waited, checked out status (does signing up online count as the "Will Call" list/line to stand in?). We stood around for about 15 minutes and got another text message, and decided to go to a party we'd have better odds of getting into.

At Party # 2, the Premiere party, we ran into a journalist Jendra or her friend knew. He wasn't getting in, and as legit press he expected better response from them - so he bailed and handed his pass over to us - but it was One Only. I figured there's no way I'd get in, as the third in a group of three with no legit cred to get in. I figured I'd wait until it was definite, then bail back to the condo. Fifteen or 20 minutes later of waiting outdoors in the brutal Park City cold (see? Isn't Sundance FUN!!!...????), we got to the front of the line...and waited for another 10-15 minutes. I see Matt Dentler of SXSW South By Southwest Film Festival get whisked in, he's here and busy as hell. I wave hi and he says "See you inside!" ...If only. When at last the PR guy turns and bluntly asks who we are, the girls' answer isn't good enough. Frustrated, we all turn to leave. On a lark, I say to the guy "I'm friends with Matt from South By." (insider's name for South by Southwest) "Keep going..." he says, implying Not Good Enough Yet. Quickly, I'm thinking: "I've panelled there for about 12 years." "Keep going..." "I run HD for Indies website, I get about (insert egregiously inflated traffic number here - did I say per day? I meant per month), and one of my clients' movies is premiering tomorrow." "OK, you can come in."

SCORE!

I try to get Jendra and her friend in, but I apparently have exactly 1.0 persons worth of party access pull. I have officially talked my way in somewhere I wasn't invited, I feel proud of myself for learning how to Do Sundance, even if just a little.

: )

Once in, the place was PACKED - they were at capacity, and it showed.

I ran into:

-Mathew St. Patrick, otherwise known as "the black guy on Six Feet Under" - chatted w/him for a bit, he's here supporting a friend's project

ran into Jacob Walker of indieflavor.com, is "MySpace meets Monster.com for indie production" - sounds interesting, I want to follow up with him

he intro'd me to Matt Ostasiewski of AFI Dallas, they are starting a new film festival there, will be right after SXSW starting March 22nd

Schmoozed around there for a bit, ran into a tipsy Alyssa from earlier from Reduser.net and stood there with her hands under my arms to warm her up for a bit. Ah, alcohol and big parties- craziness.


we hunted around for a bit and finally found a place that would deliver pizza at 1:30 in the morning.

"I need to look into standby tickets to try to see John August's The Nines at 8:30am show Monday morning - my one chance to see it probably.

I may be doing an interview at 5pm at HD House, I'll have to see how that goes."

Those last two lines were written in the wee, wee hours after a long long night.

Sunday - up at 8am after NOT drinking (see? I CAN learn, albeit slowly)

Tim & Matt wanted to go ski to, so we headed over to The Canyons.

Day Of Joy ensued - after not skiing for 3 years, it was fantastic and I had a blast - I'm going to stay longer and get some more skiing in.

Got back by 4, was over at HD House again at 4:45 to interview Hal Hartley for them (3rd engagement with HD House, we're definitely getting along).

Here's what I remember about his talk on his new movie, Fay Grim, which is a sequel to Henry Fool. That first movie was shot in 35mm, but he shot in HD for this one.

Here's what I can remember off the top of my head:

-shot HD
-shot w/ Sony F900
-Sarah Cawley? Cawvey? was DP
-spent a day with a DIT getting basics looks into camera in pre-production, and just used those looks through production
-budget was what - 2-3 million?
-Zeiss lenses, he usually shoots 50mm on 35mm film, and DP told him what equivalents would be on Zeiss Digiprimes
-Hal is comfortable shooting digital and projecting digitally too
-it was an HDNet deal - working with them, gotta shoot HD, they'll do day and date release - in theaters and on HDNet same time, then on DVD the following Tuesday or whatever
-in general, if distribs can't make money on movies, then movies won't be bought (or financed)
-Hal pleased w/good digital projection - Christie 2K projector was good
-shot on HDCAM
-downconverted to DVCAM for offline edit on his own G5 and Final Cut Pro
-took EDL and tapes to SwissFX, who wanted the relationship and business (he'd worked with them on previous DV based movies), did the color work there
-made a 24p master, made a 1080i60 HDCAM for festivals
-also did a filmout, but it had greater contrast, producers didn't feel comfortable making that decision, so showing the 1080i, Hal's comfortable with that
-shot double system sound, I asked why, he said it was an aesthetic choice

asked Hal what he'd like to shoot on next, and he was happy to stick with F900, out of a sense of "it was sufficient" and it was something he knew, trusted, and felt comfortable with

lesson learned - familiarity and comfort with cast, crew, and equipment goes a long, long way

hung out and talked to the Davids from Cineform, finally met Newman I'd missed the other day, talked about workflows with RAW, the realtime 4K cineform playback they did recently, can't record realtime from Dalsa, but can convert after acquisition to Cineform and work with that compressed footage all the way through

-agreed to do one more thing with HD House at 1pm tomorrow, post for indies panel

-went back to condo

-went to Fuji party

-ran into Susan and Brian again (Four Eyed Monsters folks), Jendra again, Lowell Kay from DR Group

...and now it is time to head on out for another evening - I'm a day behind, but I'll catch up as can.

-mike

Labels: Sundance

First up, see pictures from the last couple of days here, I'll post some more tomorrow as well.

My talk Friday went well - it was a small enough group I tailored it for the folks there, so we ended up talking about their particular interests and needs. A couple of folks there have been testing the SI-2K recording head, so I want to follow up with them.

Utah has some funky rules about bars - you have to be a "member" to come into a bar, which basically means a cover charge to enter. On top of that, shots are state regulated, and TINY, so you still pay $7 but get a small amount of alcohol. Harrumph.

My friends at OffHollywood Digital (a post facility & production company) and Red (edit - and Tekserve too) had a party on Friday night, and it was great - good turnout, good folks, lots of industry to the invite only shindig. Mark Pederson, one of the partners in Off Hollywood, did an outstanding job of public announcing, we All Hail. Susan Buice of Four Eyed Monsters fame showed up, she and her partner in crime Arin Crumley are shooting daily video blogs for Sundance. I chatted with her about Red, and she got so jazzed about it she tracked down Arin (who was napping on a stranger's couch) to come over and see. Arin came over and we did a long interview about Red, and he definitely Got The Fever. See his entry on the day, it's 2 1/2 minutes and a minute of it is on Red, he's into it - see more about it here, including a great quote about how just the idea of Red inspires him to make a new feature.

Update - ran into Susan Buice at the Fujinon party tonight, she said there were some problems with the audio file format or compression or something, Arin was working on it, so it is coming, just not done yet.

I continued to network and schmooze and hopefully picked up some new potential clients, so Mission Accomplished. I then proceeded, without noticing, to get unmercifully plowed. Oopsie.

Thus polluted, I managed to navigate all the way back across the road to my place and crashed out hard.

I woke up this morning and had to change my ambitions for the day - instead of speaking for a second time at HD House, I downsized my goals for the day - now I was just trying to keep down toast. My apologies to anyone who showed up looking for me, I understand Gary Adcock jumped in at the last minute - thanks man! He knows his HD shiznit inside and out - I ask him for answers to stuff I don't know.

A few hours of recovery and a LOT of "Urban Detox" later, I went to go see Ted Schilowitz of Red talk about the Red One to see if there was anything new to report. Not really, nothing I haven't reported here on before. At one point he was talking about changes, and progress on the camera, and NAB, and said something about "we'll keep you posted on progress over the next few months" or something very much like that. Does that mean they won't be done for a few months? They've been saying "engineering goals" and "no promises" and "all specs subject to change" all along - just curious when the cameras will be done. I've been idly hoping to get mine this summer sometime. If it takes until August, I won't be surprised. If it took until December, I'd be cranky about it.

Also in the same presentation, Jeff Cree of Band Pro talked about Sony's upcoming F23 camera

Here's what I can remember at 3:30am the next day about it:
-F23 names comes from F from 24 frame capable (?) and 23 from 2/3 inch sensor - simply as that. No HPC or anything in front of it, just "F23" is the full name
-it is NOT NOT NOT a baby Genesis! It is not a commercialized version of the Genesis (Sony designed the electronic guts and imaging system of the camera, Panavision did the casing/packaging/form factor stuff)
-it has a different imager and different tech - it is a 2/3" 3 CCD setup, B4 lens mount - so totally different from the 35mm sized sensor and Panavision lens mount in Genesis
-shoots 10 bit, 14 bit image processing
-1-30 fps in 10 bit 4:4:4
-1-60 fps in 10 bit 4:2:2
-CAN ramp shots, and can control ramping and offrate IN THE CAMERA
-records to a dockable SRW-1 HDCAM SR deck - that is the big deal about this camera
-is newer than the F950, shares some things with the HDC-1500
-SRW-1 can mount on top (compact) or back (better center of gravity to shoot with), or can be remoted for a two part tethered solution
-can go 100 meters with single or dual link HD-SDI
-a fiber optic option will be available in the future, can go 1600 meters
-better lattitude by 1 1/2 stops if I recall correctly than the F950 (this may be wrong recollection on my part)

Also talked to JVC guy about the new GY-HD200U and GY-HD250U cameras that shoot 60fps progressive to 19mbit HDV. Some notes:
-24p mode in those and the 110 are all 19 megabit for 24p - no frame repeating or cadence, so each frame at 24p at 19mbit means more data, less compression, cleaner image than 30p mode
-60fps is achieved by using a GOP of 12 instead of 6
-claims it looks good, since less motion frame to frame, 60fps encodes more efficiently per frame than 30p does - so doesn't require twice the data rate
-but obviously, each frame from 60p can't look as good as each from from 24 or 30p

I wandered around a bit and came back to see Crispin Glover talk about his new film. After a tiresome, wandering intro, he showed three teasers for the film - I left - it looked painful to watch, so I didn't want to hear any more about it. Color me gone.

Celebrity Watch:
-Ian Ziering was apparently at the Red/Off Hollywood party, but I missed him. He started trying to schmooze up a cute woman, but was irked when he realized she was married to the six foot seven tall guy - Jarred Land of dvxuser and reduser.
-Saw Kevin Bacon on a balcony. He looks harshed on - time to serious net that lens.
-Saw P. Diddy (or is it just "Diddy" now? I don't track that crap) - when he crossed the street, it was like this Reality Distortion Field of excitement that travels before him like a bow wave, leaving a wake of those 20something girls shrieking along behind him, trying to get their camera phones out in time
-saw (I think) Sasha Baron Cohen out and about at night tonight - he was wearing a hat pulled down low, collar turned up, and huge, dark sunglasses after midnight, and every time he walked by somebody, he held up his hand to shield his face. Seems like he's not enjoying being famous and not liking the attention here. Not a fun way to go around. Hey Sasha - come to SXSW, nobody will care...
-saw Crispin Glover speak, and he still dresses funny. Funny odd, definitely not funny ha ha.

I then came back to get ready for the Reduser.net party, but I'll save that for another entry - it is 3:45am, gotsta get to bed. This is pretty much what I'd written before, just not as witty and charming (riiiiiiiight). More name dropping, pictures, and adventures to follow in our next exciting episode...

-mike

Labels: Sundance

I just spent a half an hour writing about the last coupla days, and dammit, Safari crashed and I lost the whole thing. Gotta go to the Reduser.net party, I'll re-write later or tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's my first round of pics from Sundance, including a snap of P. Diddy (or is it Diddy?) on the street.

Labels: Sundance

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

...and many purchaseable on iTunes Store.

Labels: iTunes, online content service, Sundance

First off, tomorrow I'll be speaking at 11AM AT HD HOUSE, NOT NOON AS I'D SAID BEFORE.

There's no "center" to Sundance - I had to go down to town to speak at noon, and I wandered around afterwards for a bit. There's lots of foot traffic up and down the hill on Main Street. There's LOTS of twentysomethings milling about. It is also pretty quick and easy to pick up where folks are in from - long black cashmere coat, big white turtlenecks, short productified dark hair, sunglasses on indoors? New York boys. Cute blonde early 20s women looking concerned and stepping carefully in their Ugg boots? Assistants or wanna-be assistants in from LA working the scene, and clearly not used to the cold.

The ski mountain comes right down into town - my friend walked by me on Main Street as he was taking a break snowboarding to grab some lunch.

Tonight is a party I'm helping my friends prep for, so we're tooling up for that.

Tickets are pretty much impossible to come by - it is theoretically possible to get up in the wee hours and wait in line for returned tickets - bag that, I'm not that dedicated.

Tomorrow I speak, and then I'm gonna go ski!

Pics up tomorrow...

Labels: Sundance

Hey all -

got up eaaaaaaaarly this morning and flew up to Sundance. So far, I've been a case study in how NOT to do this - I have NO movie tickets, having not gotten on the ball at any of the several times I coulda/shoulda, and my shared room situation has devolved to possibly a couch crash since my roomie decided to bring his wife after all.

Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can wrangle a press pass, but I am sooooooo doubting that is going to work.

Tonight, I'm hangin' with a bunch of folks from Tekserve, AJA, Assimilate, & Red in the condo - so of course, after food and alcohol were secured, online access was the next priority. There are five laptops open right now - I am with Mah Peeps.

: )

No pic posting yet, I'm already surfing off somebody's shared EVDO connection until the other condo gets opened up and WiFi figured out there...

Tomorrow at noon at the HD House down on Main Street I'll be talking about HD for independent filmmaking - it will be pretty freeform, so bring your questions and get the answers you want.

Also - for the readers of the fine print - if you're somebody I know and you're here, email me - there's some private functions and stuff.

Some other tidbits - had a 3 hour meeting in the last week talking about higher end (beyond Varicam) options for a feature with some folks, and realized I knew more than I thought I did since the last time I'd talked about it with someone. Some cameras are more suited to certain workflows - software and hardware that lets you load LUTs for instance - and some cameras would be better suited with a better recording medium - I overheard somewhere the F900 described as "a pretty good camera with a low pass filter attached disguised as a recording device."

Post workflows vary for all of'em, of course, too.

Other tidbits - OOPS OOPS OOPS - that Rodriguez trailer thing only applies to screenings at SXSW, NOT the worldwide thing as I reported.

Other tidbits from around the web that I surfed offline on the plane, and YES I'm too lazy to linkify, do a little cut and paste to exercise during this ice storm, m'kay?

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SED not looking so good - delayed, and Canon buying up all shares of SED Inc. - http://www.hdblog.net/2007/01/16/sed-marches-on-2/

Boris RED for Intel Macs ships - http://www.borisfx.com/press_releases/fx_graff_intel.php

netflix over the internet - downloadable movies, free to subscribers (yep, no addl charge), can watch 6-48 hrs. of content/month depending on subscription plan, about 1000 movies and shows available, (1/70th of DVD title selection). Windows only, requires broadband connection (duh) - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070116/ap_on_hi_te/instant_netflix

Avid best tips & tricks - http://www.dvguru.com/2007/01/15/avid-best-tips-and-tricks-for-2006/

Daring Fireball on the OS X in iPhone - http://daringfireball.net/2007/01/os_x

brian on the lack of cuts in Children of Men - http://www.dvguru.com/2007/01/16/the-beauty-of-a-lack-of-editing/

short video on storage options - http://www.studiodaily.com/main/training/7481.html

all about the MacGuffin - http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/196-the-macguffin

Why Hollywood isn't playing ball with Apple - http://www.dvguru.com/2007/01/16/why-hollywood-aint-lining-up-for-steve-jobs/

How to make a dead guy (FAKE one for your movie!) - http://www.sticktowhatyouknow.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1021

Many of the above links pilfered from DV Guru - thanks/apologies to those guys!

Hollywood on Youtube - friend of foe - http://www.dvguru.com/2007/01/17/nyt-hollywood-asks-youtube-friend-or-foe/

52" LCD Ultra HDTV - 3840x2160 - $50K

And as for that Grindhouse competition - if you win, it is seen at SXSW, NOT WORLDWIDE - MY BAD - that's what I get for power skim reading in a hurry....

video out from Motion or FCP sometimes sporadic, here's some possible reasons and fixes - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304979

Beware shady grey marketers when buying gear - http://www.dvguru.com/2007/01/16/grey-market-warnings/

remember when I said Black is Apple's New Black? http://www.hdforindies.com/2007/01/conjecture-watch-black-is-apples-new.html - here's new support for that theory...

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2417


-mike

Labels: Sundance