This entry was updated on January 28 to reflect the film's award status.
PARK CITY, Utah--On one end of the documentary spectrum, you have films that are akin to extended works of journalism. They are in-depth, objective examinations of issues, personalities or phenomena that often leave you thinking that truth really is stranger than fiction.
A still from the film, Fields of Fuel, which is screening at Sundance.
(Credit: Fields of Fuel via Sundance)On the other end are advocacy films, which seem increasingly popular here at the Sundance Film Festival, particularly when it comes to politically charged issues such as the war in Iraq and the environment.
The latter type of documentary can be just as informative as the former, if done right. Take Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, a 2006 festival film, which many people credit with having woken up the general public to the potentially grave consequences of global warming.
Another such example at this year's festival is Fields of Fuel, which received a long standing ovation at its first public screening here Monday. (Update: It turned out that Fields of Fuel won the festival's audience award for documentaries). In the film, director Josh Tickell tells the story of his life as an activist pushing for the use of biodiesel and other alternative fuels in an effort to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and protect the environment.
I tend to be wary of advocacy docs for fear they'll be feature-length brainwashers. But Tickell's film is fair, honest, informative and--a biggie for me--nicely edited. And I suppose it was convincing, too--it got me thinking about buying a car with a diesel engine and I went online to find the nearest biodiesel fuel pumps.
Josh Tickell has traveled the country trying to persuade consumers to switch to biofuels or other alternatives to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil.
(Credit: Fields of Fuel via Sundance)Tickell's efforts have already been well documented. (Click here for my colleague's story on his efforts.) He's written two books on biodiesel, done countless interviews and is perhaps best known for traveling the country in his biodiesel-powered "Veggie Van" to promote alternative fuel. But the documentary might just appeal to consumers in a different way.
I was a little turned off, especially at first, by the fact that he's telling his own story in scripted pseudo-interviews. I'd prefer someone else doing the interview, exposing us a little more to Tickell the person, as opposed to Tickell the activist. Viewers get a little of that, however, when he reflects upon his frustration at one point in the film when it seemed all his efforts had made no difference. "If anything, the U.S. slipped backwards," he says, reflecting on the early Bush years.
The audience was totally charged after the film as Tickell took the podium for a quick Q&A. He also brought up a huge cast and crew who he said had put "blood, sweat and tears," into the film.
Director Josh Tickell addresses the audience before the first public screening Monday of his Fields of Fuel at Sundance.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)Among the cast members were Jonathan Wolfson and Harrison Dillon, founders of a South San Francisco company called Solazyme, which makes biofuel out of algae. Solazyme demonstrated a car powered by its fuel at the festival and also announced a partnership with Chevron.
No word as of yet about Fields of Fuel getting picked up for distribution. Last year a similarly interesting activist documentary on global warming call Everything's Cool also got a warm Sundance reception, but never made it nationally to the big screen. (Thanks to a News.com reader who pointed out that the film had a small theater run in New York and Los Angeles.)
Among the other feature-length films at this year's festival with green themes are Flow: For the Love of Water, about why water is a dwindling resource; and Up the Yangtze, a film that quickly got bought for distribution about the building of the Three Gorges Dam and its effects on the lives of the locals and the environment.
There are also many environmental shorts screening, including Mr. W, by a Germany based filmmaking team called The Vikings. Mr. W, which preceded Fields of Fuel, is much better on the big screen but is totally worth a couple of YouTube minutes.
PARK CITY, Utah--After the Saturday night premiere of U2 3D here at the Sundance Film Festival, the film's director called upon the excited indie filmmaking audience to follow her lead in embracing new 3D technology.
"3D is now open," Catherine Owens said, adding that if she--a sculptor and multimedia installation artist without a traditional film background--could make a film in 3D, so can they.
Business Week media columnist Jon Fine borrowed Owens' "3D is now open" line to set the tone for a panel discussion he moderated the following day, "In 3D: The Future is Now," which explored the new generation of 3D as a viable outlet for creativity.
"New technology is changing the way we tell stories," Fine said.
Panelists declined to weigh in on the race for the best 3D movie projection technology, which began in earnest last November with the release of Beowulf in 3D. Viewers had the choice of watching that film in Imax 3D, Real D, and Dolby 3D; Dolby 3D was our winner--and not just by a nose.
Festival-goers of all stripes packed a large screening room for the panel here, a good indicator of both consumer and filmmaker interest in the topic. Many, in fact, waited in long waitlist lines for a ticket to the sold-out forum.
For their efforts, audience members, donning Dolby's black 3D glasses, were treated to 3D movie clips from several different filmmakers on the panel with varying approaches and levels of so-called gimmickry (i.e., use of eye tricks like things jumping out at you).
Business Week media editor John Fine (third from right) moderates a panel Sunday on 3D at he Sundance Film Festival.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)First, however, panelists did their best to explain the technology.
3ality CEO Steve Schklair, whose company created the 3D camera and tools used in U2 3D, said the technology aligns images taken from two separate motion-controlled digital cameras that are placed side by side--as the left eye and right eye. The images are matched up afterwards in a layering process that controls for depth.
"You have an entire new dimension which is depth," added indie filmmaker Jed Weintrob, who used an earlier generation of 3D technology in his horror movie Scar. "The 3D screen is truly breaking down the wall that separates you from the action."
It's not, of course, that 3D is new--the studios have been employing the technology in a sort of 3D renaissance of late. (My daughter is all geared up for the 3D Hannah Montana concert film coming out next month.) What's different now, the panelists say, is that 3D tools are quickly becoming more accessible for smaller budget independent work.
"Moore's law is driving down the cost of the technology," said Ray Zone, who has spent the past couple of decades working in 3D art, including filmmaking. Zone said the day is quickly approaching when a filmmaker can make a 3D flick using a desktop application.
And the numbers of movie theaters equipped with 3D projection technology continue to grow rapidly. So do the numbers of consumers with 3D-equipped home theater systems.
To me, the use of 3D in action or horror films is a no-brainer, if done well. Such genres already set you up to be sitting at the edge of your seat, waiting to be shocked by whoever or whatever is suddenly in your face. That was the case for clips shown at the panel from Weintrob's Scar, Zone's Dark Country, and a reel offered by panelist Todd Cogan from the Pace 3D studio (co-developed by Vince Pace and James Cameron).
In a different category, however, are films like U2 3D, which uses the technology more subtly, not to shock, surprise or further dramatize, but simply to immerse the viewer in the film narrative.
Owens said she's of the belief that you can't just plug any old script into 3D. Rather, you have to be more of a conduit for the technology.
"If you get in its way, it will not perform," she said. "Let 3D speak to you."
While other panelists agreed that too much 3D gimmick can detract from a film's story, it's hard to hold back.
"Gimmick is really cool," Weintrob said.
Zone chimed in that when you think about it, every advance in technology was a gimmick: "sound, color, widescreen..."
"Moviemaking is really a gimmick," added panelist Phil McNally (aka "Captain 3D"), who did stereoscopic work for Disney's Meet the Robinsons among other films, and argued, "If you really want to focus on a story, you should be a writer."
Cogan offered one simple, but important rule of thumb for using 3D: "Do not hurt people's eyes."
PARK CITY, Utah--Jason Kohn, director of last year's prize-winning Sundance documentary Manda Bala, shot his every frame to be seen on the big screen, but now realizes "most people are going to experience it in DVD."
Given the latter, he said he was excited to have been awarded a new grant from Microsoft, announced here Sunday night, that will allow him to create a disc using the software giant's HDi technology. HDi enables him to complement the movie with interactive and Web-enabled features such as viewer polls, song downloads, or picture-in-picture commentary and character biographies.
"We never would have been able to afford this," he said at a press conference at the Microsoft House, a Sundance Film Festival venue created to show off the company's digital media technologies.
"It fills a weird little niche that I didn't even know existed," he added, noting that in documentary filmmaking in particular, you often have lots of extra footage, which HDi can help showcase.
The grant, worth about $100,000, also includes support for production of the finished product on HD DVD.
HDi is Microsoft's implementation of the interactive layer in the HD DVD format, the company said in a statement. It takes advantage of mandatory features in every HD DVD player, including a secondary video decoder and an Internet connection.
The HDi grant, awarded in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, follows Microsoft's other efforts to support independent films, the company said. Another example is the 1,000 HD DVD Indies Project, which gives indie filmmakers free access to HD DVD authoring and on-demand replication. Microsoft is also offering digital rentals of festival short films on its Xbox 360 platform.
PARK CITY, Utah--It seems wherever I go in this crowded ski-haven-turned-Tinseltown, people are talking about the Internet and its implications for the Sundance Film Festival and the overall indie film industry.
Whether it's chit-chat about the Hollywood writers' strike over compensation for content sold on the Web, or more formal panel discussions such as Saturday's "Webolution: Hollywood Adapts to the Web," the topic is ripe for discussion.
Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, speaks as part of a Sundance Film Festival panel on Hollywood adapting to the Web.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)As for the writers' strike, the buzz on the street is that studio specialty divisions and other distribution companies will be buying Sundance films in earnest to fill their threatened schedules for later this year and 2009. So far that hasn't happened, but I'd expect distribution news to start trickling in over the next few days.
On the flip side, however, by all accounts Hollywood has scaled back its typical Sundance schwagg-fests and ended up sending smaller teams due to trying economic times.
The strike was one of the main topics kicking off the Webolution panel, which was hosted by The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher, who has long focused on digital issues and teams up with Walt Mossberg for D: All Things Digital. Panelists included Joost CEO Mike Volp; tech strategy advisor Phil Lelyveld; Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro; Erik Flanagan, who heads up digital media for MTV, Comedy Central and South Park studios; Hulu CEO Jason Kilar; Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America; and Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos.
Of course, opinions ran the gamut on predictions about what model for Web distribution will live or die. However, a few common themes emerged: no one quite knows the best way to monetize Web content, but ad-supported models appear the most promising; the old school TV watching days are over; creating films specifically for the Internet has ; the government needs to step in quickly to help create more broadband competition; and the media landscape is changing rapidly, a major contributing factor to the writers' strike.
"We're in a period of enormous transition and change," Glickman said, adding that his employer has to protect intellectual property while recognizing consumer demand for online content.
The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher moderated the Sundance panel.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)The panelists were less unanimous about what will be consumers' primary methodology for finding online content. Some touted aggregator and content sites like Veoh and Joost. Others saw more in the power in social networks like MySpace and Facebook.
Volp, for example, made the point that we're more likely to watch something if it has been recommended by a friend.
"There's probably no more powerful way of delivering video in a way in which people will actually view it," Volp said.
PARK CITY, Utah--Last night I saw U2 live in concert here at the local high school performing arts center...at least it felt that way.
Bono and I even had a moment--during "Sunday Bloody Sunday" he reached out his hand and almost touched me. He had to be singing to me, and not Robert Redford, Google's founders, or the rest of the Hollywood glitterati in my company. Right?
It wasn't actually a concert. Rather, I was attending a screening for the concert film U2 3D at the Sundance Film Festival. But same diff. It really felt like I was on the concert floor. Better yet, at times I felt like I was one of those waify teenage girls at concerts who gets hoisted onto someone's shoulders for a bird's-eye view.
That's me, getting used to my cool glasses before the screening gets under way.
(Credit: Michelle McPherson, festival-goer from Rippen, Calif.)I don't use this term lightly, but I really felt like I was witnessing something "revolutionary" in filmmaking. The 90-minute compilation of footage from the band's Vertigo tour in South America was shot using a new generation of 3D technology provided by Burbank, Calif.-based 3ality, which co-director Catherine Owens said was initially conceived for sports footage. For the Sundance screening, it was projected in Dolby 3D Digital Cinema. (More to come on 3D tech following a related panel discussion later Sunday.)
What blew me away was the seamlessness and subtlety of the 3D tech, combined with the surround sound. You quickly forgot you were wearing those goofy glasses (in my case, over my own specs). It was hard to tell whether the applause and singing was coming from the film itself, or the Sundance audience members. When Bono asked the crowd to show him the light of their digital devices, the glow of cell phones from the festival audience blended right in with those of the concert audience.
Bono speaks to a star-studded crowd just before the screening of U2 3D at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday night.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)Never, in my five years of covering the festival, have I seen such a hot and hyped ticket. Only two screenings of the film were scheduled, both of them taking place Saturday night. One was at 9:45 p.m. and the other at midnight.
One of the first festival-goers to arrive on the scene in hopes of getting a wait list ticket to the first showing was Nick Buckmaster, a huge U2 fan from Sausalito, Calif., who had been waiting since 10 a.m. He made the trek to the festival to see U2 (he's seen them perform 60 times) and also because he heard such amazing reviews of the film, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival among other places.
Despite their early arrival, festival staff members didn't let Buckmaster and his fellow fans start lining up officially until 7:45 p.m. And first dibs for wait list tickets went to those who had been waiting in line unsuccessfully to see the prior star-studded Robert DeNiro film, What Just Happened. Buckmaster did get into the show, which he said "was really far better than I expected."
He had worrried a little that the 3D would be gimmicky, as it was, in his opinion in some 1980s-era 3D films like Jaws. "This was more an enhancement of the experience," he said, adding that he was also happy it featured all the band members, not just Bono.
Ticket scalping at Sundance is very uncool; however, rumor has it that tickets to last night's show were going for up to $1,000. Kind of crazy for a film that opens in wide release next week both in IMAX and digital cinema.
A still from the film, U2 3D
(Credit: U2 3D)The band's presence, however, did make the screening extra special. Bono opened the show by touting the importance of Sundance and the special mood that exists despite the "celebrity clusterf***."
"There is a lot of love and Irish whiskey in the air," he told the crowd, adding that if Sundance were in Dublin, it would be called "Raindance."
Of course, he had to sneak in his comments in between yells of "I love you, Bono." (I promise, it wasn't me.)
Owens, in her closing after the Q &: A, emphasized that the fact that she was able to put together U2 3D with no filmmaking background says much about the technology and its power as a new medium.
PARK CITY, Utah--Adriana Falcao, the winner of a recent YouTube film competition, is no stranger to the film industry.
A professional author and screenwriter in her native Brazil, she's contributed to some 15 scripts, including A Maquina (The Machine), which screened at film festivals internationally, and Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias, O (The Year My Parents Went on Vacation), which Brazil's Ministry of Culture submitted for the 2007 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
Adriana Falcao readies for a night on the town on Friday night on Main Street in Park City, Utah, amid the Sundance Film Festival mania.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)But Falcao is totally new to making films specifically for the Web, as she did with Lacos (Ties), the six-minute short that not only made her the winner of YouTube's Project Direct contest, it landed her a nine-day stay here at the Sundance Film Festival. Her expenses are being paid by Hewlett-Packard, which sponsored the contest. In addition to the trip, she'll get the opportunity to meet with Fox Searchlight Pictures production executives.
Never in her life did she think she'd end up at the Sundance Film Festival, said Falcao, who spoke through interpreter and friend Joana Braga, who's also involved in the Brazilian film industry. Unlike other film festivals, Sundance, she said, is considered more on the cutting edge of new media.
"This moved me and affected me so much," Falcao said through Braga, adding that she's now working on a film that relates to the way people use the Internet and is also planning other Web-based projects.
It was Falcao's 18-year-old daughter, Clarice, an actress, songwriter, singer, and YouTube aficionado, who first learned about contest. Project Direct is a followup to YouTube's similar competitions in the music and comedy realms, said YouTube spokeswoman Jennifer Nielsen.
Project Direct was limited to filmmakers in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S., for legal and other reasons, and entries had to be films created specifically for the contest. Judges included Juno director Jason Reitman and others from Fox Searchlight.
Clarice, who was interested in putting together a high-caliber entry for the contest, solicited her mother's help. Falcao said she was willing, so long as her daughter and the other cast member--a friend and former boyfriend of Clarice's--participated in the creative process. After getting feedback from the young actors on their visions for the piece, Falcao wrote a script in a day, while Clarice wrote and recorded an English language song to go with it.
Collegue Flavia Lacerda filmed the picture in one day, and they spent one day editing.
"The whole thing cost $500 and took three days." And it was quite a family effort. Falcao's 15-year-old daughter handled the very modest wardrobe.
Missing from Sundance, sadly, is Clarice, who couldn't get a visa in the month or so between when the contest results were announced and when Sundance began on Thursday.
What excites Falcao about the Internet medium is that it allows anyone--her maid included--to access to film. Many residents of the poor country can not afford to go to the cinema, she said.
And it helps residents of Brazil, one of Latin America's leaders in Internet use, feel less isolated from the rest of the world, she said. As for YouTube, it started off only popular among youth in Brazil. Now, however, Falcao's husband, a film director who is almost 50 years old, is hooked. So is her 90-year-old uncle. "His life is YouTube," she said, adding that every day her uncle sends her a link to view.
PARK CITY, Utah--A documentary on steroid culture is shot with a state-of-the-art camera that saves footage straight onto memory cards, freeing the filmmaker from the burden of tape-shlepping.
The maker of a science fiction film makes budget by taking advantage of software that lets him do some of his own special effects.
And the director of a documentary about a high school adolescent's life is able to employ photo animators from around the globe using convenient Web communication tools.
Filmmaker Alex Rivera tells how he used technology to make his science fiction film, Sleep Dealer, which premieres at Sundance.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)These are just a few real-life examples of how cutting-edge technology is opening up new opportunities for independent filmmakers.
Such was the topic of a Sundance Film Festival panel here Friday, "New Filmmaking Technology: What's Now and What's Next."
The panel, featuring some of the festival's most innovative filmmakers, was meant to give audience members insight on the latest in HD cinematography, workflow options, and post-production software. But beyond touting some of the specific technologies they used, panelists offered a larger reminder: technology isn't going to make or break your film.
In the end, "it's all about the story," said Mark Randall, Adobe System's chief strategist for dynamic media. Randall is also a self-described "frustrated filmmaker," because he's always put his obsession with creating better filmmaking tools before his own film projects.
"I'm the biggest geek for a good picture," he said, in reference to some of the best HD technologies. But, he conceded, at some point, audience members can't tell the difference.
And with the likes of YouTube, "for the common person, that (threshold) is going down--it's not going up," he said.
Randall, whose former company and related filmmaking tech were acquired by Adobe, praised a product called On Location, bundled as part of Adobe Premier, which helps creators immediately view footage on their laptops. That way, they can confirm that they got the shot they wanted without having to mess with the tape. No longer do they have to rely on a flip-out screen, which he said is perfectly named because you often get back from a shoot and "flip out" because you didn't get what wanted.
Film director Alex Rivera, who, like Randall, is a technologist, used such software as Adobe After Effects, Apple's Final Cut Pro, and Photoshop on his futuristic drama Sleep Dealer, which ended up requiring a very long and labor-intensive edit process.
"If I had to send every shot to an effects department," he said, the film wouldn't have happened. Rivera added that the Web was also a valuable tool in culling images for the film.
Panelist Nanette Burstein, who produced the 2002 documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture, has a documentary competing here at the festival called American Teen in which the teenager's fantasies, and in one case, a nightmare, are illustrated through different types of animation.
Adina Sales, who heads up an animation company called Blacklist and coordinated the animation in American Teen, said she expects to see more and more such collaboration. "Mixed media...is where things are going," she said, adding, "We're definitely employing every kind of new tech."
Nanette Burstein hired directors from around the globe to animate the fantasies of the subjects in her documentary American Teen.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News.com)With advances in technology, however, come new hurdles. For Burstein, one such challenge is how best to convert high-definition into print for movie houses.
"I can't wait for the day that you can project digitally in movie theaters," she said.
Filmmaker Alex Buono brought up another challenge he faced in converting archival shots in 20 different formats, "dusty old tapes off grandma's shelf," into his documentary shot in high definition, Bigger, Stronger, Faster.
This is where he said he needed to rely on the expertise of those in post-production, he said. "The key is collaboration," he said, later adding, "You don't have to master it yourself, when clearly there are people who can and are mastering it."
Buono's film was shot using a HVX200 camera, which, as mentioned above, saves footage right onto memory cards. With two cards, it allows you to shoot constantly, even when one card is being downloaded onto a hard drive. And it's relatively indiscreet, which is important in documentary work.
"For us, it really streamlined the process...A smaller camera is really a big advantage. The subject is more honest," he said.
But again, he echoed a point made by others: the filmmaking tools available now are incredible, "but using these tools effectively is what it's all about."
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