PARK CITY, Utah – The Sundance Film Festival has always been synonymous with independent movies, but this year's wave of digital video artists brought some bold new visions into the festival mix.
After last year's successful debut of several DV projects, including Blair Witch Project and Celebration, the established film industry is starting to warm up to the these budget-friendly, homespun projects.
At the same time, a whole new generation of filmmaker is emerging with some innovative ideas about film creation and using cutting-edge computer systems, along with the Internet, to carve out their artistic visions.
"This kind of fell into my lap, and now it's a great business to be in," said Charles Tentindo, an electronic cinematographer with Mimic Films, who primarily uses DV for short films and corporate jobs. "To have your own equipment and be able to shoot and deliver a fine-looking product, it's a floodgate business," he said.
Over the last year, independent filmmakers have been putting their work online for the first time, with Internet startups like Atom Films and Ifilm.com giving would-be filmmakers a place to showcase their newest works. Ifilm uses a democratic review process, ala MP3.com, where the viewers determine which films move up the charts based on the number of times the movies are viewed.
Andrew Hindes, editor in chief of Ifilm, said that DV and the Internet have created a new life for short films, which have never found viable outlets for mainstream audiences. Likewise, new distribution methods are allowing niche filmmakers to reach the audiences that might be interested in their peculiar tastes.
"The film business has basically been run the same way for the last 100 years, and independent film has had a very specific routine for the last 30 years. But that's definitely changing. As people realize that, it becomes an attractive alternative, or complement, to the festival route," Hindes said.
One of the biggest advantages of DV filmmaking is that directors can immediately see the results of a shoot, and decide whether or not more takes are needed. "So what you lose in image quality, you gain in flexibility," Hindes said.
Nori Jill Phillips, an actress who just finished her first role in a digital video film, said it was an exhilarating experience to be involved in so many aspects of the filmmaking process.
"It's one of those truly independent films where everybody just rolls up their sleeves and gets in there," said Phillips, who stars in the dramatic feature First Time Again.
"I love the whole process of doing it, and finding out how you come from the idea for the script to writing it, to making it, to wrapping it and doing post-production editing and distribution," she said.
Because of digital video's inferior quality, Hollywood is primarily using the Internet and DV as a promotional device, putting up film trailers to generate interest in new films.
Several independent filmmakers said that DV will mostly be a medium for shorts, documentaries, and corporate advertising. But if the story is compelling enough, DVs will also make the occasional splash in drama as well.
"If your film has heavy-duty content, people will overlook quality in a heartbeat, just like they did with Celebration. It was a crappy looking film, but it didn't matter," Tentindo said. Celebration was an award-winning DV at last year's Sundance.
Alec Proudfoot, a director with Survival Machine Productions, was busy converting and compressing digital video on his Sony laptop from a 70MB clip into a half meg Quicktime file. He predicts that the digital video projectors of the future will have several different inputs so that filmmakers will have choices on which format, and look, they desire.
"The next thing is using high-definition video to create movies that are close, if not equal to 35mm, and theatrically releasable without the jagged lines [that are evident in today's DV technology]," he said.
"The danger is the industry will stick with high definition, because there is the capability to continue increasing the resolution until it's well past 35 mm and approaching Imax quality. George Lucas recently said that he used a high definition camera for a few scenes in Phantom Menace and nobody could tell the difference," he added.
As new software emerges for post-production and high definition cameras become available, DV could become a viable alternative for feature-length films.
Ironically, despite the advances in the do-it-yourself editing equipment some DV filmmakers are already realizing that the hassle of learning new software, maintaining upgrades, and becoming a computer expert may not be worth the trouble.
"The more and more I look at all this editing equipment, the more I think my films should be cut by a professional editor," Tentindo said.
"Pay them the $2000 to work on it for 3 days, and cut the thing, and do a great job," he said. "So you don't have to worry about the money, the upgrades, the technology. Let them be an artist."
