Sundance festival views tech through wide angle

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That option gives viewers a choice between watching films as a community experience on the big screen, or downloading them to view on-the-go or in the comfort of their homes. Calderon says this move is in response to consumer demand and a viewing experience reshaped by the likes of YouTube.

"They want content on demand, when they want it, where they want it, and they want to be able to take it with them," he said.

On the big screen
Technology will also play a major role in the screening rooms, which are located in the snowy resort town's multiplex, library and racquetball club. More than half, or 69, of the 123 feature-length films screening at the festival were filmed using a high-definition camera and will be shown on Sony HDcam, the festival's video format of choice. (Sony Electronics is a festival sponsor, along with tech brethren Hewlett-Packard, Adobe and AOL.)

David Sington,
director, In the
Shadow of the Moon

For filmmakers like David Sington, who shot some 60 hours of interviews for his documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, on the surviving crew members of each Apollo mission, using film would have been "prohibitively expensive" and impractical. By shooting in video, he got "stunning" visual results while not having to interrupt the astronauts mid-interview for film changes or making them sweat under hot lights, he said.

Sington's film is without narrative, relying solely on the astronauts talking about their Apollo experience, what it means to them now, and what they would like to impart upon the next generation as it works to get back to the moon.

"Narration is fine, but it does stand between the viewer and the people in the film," said Sington, who spent 12 years making documentaries for the BBC before starting his own production company. "This way, you get to make up your own mind about what kind of people they were...at the end of the film, you've gotten to know them as people."

Producers on the film spent weeks in the NASA film library in Houston looking through cans of film unopened for 30 years and remastering shots in high definition. That entailed the tedious job of lip-syncing 16mm rolls shot in mission control with audio recordings from the mission controllers' voice loop that are now available through NASA's Web site.

The aforementioned Chasing Ghosts, the documentary on the golden age of the arcade, is another Sundance film that relies on high-definition video to keep costs down and allow for longer, uninterrupted interviews with top scorers.

First-time filmmakers Lincoln Ruchti and Michael Verrechia said complications arose in post-production, when they were trying to reassemble all the older video formats. Still, film was never a viable option for them, and the HD video "looks sweet."

Film artists have always had to contend with new technologies--TV, VCRs, DVRs and now mobile video players, to name a few--considered a threat to the film medium, Calderon said. But, he adds, those fears have never been realized. If anything, technology is making it easier for the everyday person to film, edit and distribute a movie, Calderon said.

"A camera you can buy now for under $5,000 would cost $100,000 five years ago. The burn rate of technology is so rapid. As soon as we have it home and unwrapped, they've got a new one out," he said. "You've just got to get out in front of it."