Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

I am not thrilled to report that you must pre-register online between Nov 8 and Jan 5 in order to purchase individual tickets online for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Like the passes and packages, there is a non-refundable fee of $5.00. If, however, you’d like to be certain that you’ll be able to secure screenings, you’d be advised to register!!

After the close of Pre-Registration, you will receive an e-mail on January 6, 2006 with your assigned date, time, password, website address and phone number to use when selecting and purchasing your tickets (there is an additional $5.00 per phone order fee). Your purchase date will fall sometime during the second week of January, 2006. You may purchase a maximum of 20 tickets to screenings and/or panel discussions per order. There is a limit of 4 tickets total per screening or panel discussion.

As with passes and packages, Pre-Registration does not guarantee availability. Pre-Registration dates and times are randomly assigned by a computer. Refunds will not be given for non-collected tickets ordered via the web or phone. Pre-Registration Link

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I ordered my Ticket Package for the Sundance Film Festival for 2006 on Monday. While Alec’s time was worse (today at 10:30 a.m.), he was able to get a Ticket Package, also. So, now, I’m living for January 19th! I’m working on locating housing now. Also working out the details of how to blog with more video and audio while I’m up there. I’m trying to figure out how to create a webcam feed.

In preparation for the festival, I’ll be doing a lot of reporting in November and December on the films that are scheduled to screen. American and World Competition films are scheduled to be announced on November 28. Feature films on November 29 and shorts on December 5.

I’m anticipating that PARTICIPANT PRODUCTIONS may have some films in the mix. Participant is the organization founded by eBay billionaire and philanthropist Jeff Skoll with the intention of supporting films that made a difference in the world AND told a good story. Among the films they’ve supported thus far:

• MURDERBALL

• NORTH COUNTRY
• GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
• SYRIANA

Not a bad beginning. They’ve got a nice website with details on future projects. Take a look at what might show up at the festival. I also expect to see THINKfilm snapping up breakouts at the festival. No doubt Mark Urman and company will be on the lookout for exciting independent product. Last year, they picked up MURDERBALL and THE ARISTOCRATS. The year before, they pounced on BORN INTO BROTHELS. I noticed that the former director for the Sundance Documentary program, DIANE WEYERMANN was named to the newly created position of Executive Vice President of Documentary Production at Participant. I’m expecting great things!

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John Anderson has an article in today’s New York Times on how independent filmmaking was Direct to Video, Now It’s Direct to the Web. According to Anderson’s article, “As cheaper technology and a seemingly inexhaustible hipness quotient have led to more filmmakers and films being produced, theatrical distribution has become more expensive, the outlets more cautious, and the returns on investments more dubious. The Internet has absorbed some of the spillover, although the bigger success stories - notably, the political films of Robert Greenwald (UNCOVERED: THE WAR ON IRAQ;   OUTFOXED: RUPERT MURDOCH’S WAR ON JOURNALISM), or FASTER, a highly lucrative motorcycle documentary narrated by Ewan McGregor - have been niche movies with a core audience.

So what about more general fare with no stars, budgets or hope? That’s where IndieFlix, founded by Ms. Andreen and her business partner, the filmmaker Gian-Carlo Scandiuzzi, comes in. Directors submit their films, which are then posted on IndieFlix.com. When users log on and click to buy the films that capture their interest, IndieFlix burns them onto a DVD and ships them out. The price for a feature-length film is $9.95.” Read the complete article at NYTimes and check out the IndieFlix site for more info.

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Ticket sales for packages and passes begins tomorrow, October 24th, for the 2006 Festival. I pulled an excellent time this year — Monday morning at 10:30 a.m. I have high hopes for a good package. Alec got Wednesday morning at 10:30 a.m. A significantly worse time (although not as bad as my draw LAST year. I got the last hour of the last day which left only the most expensive pass as an option.) I’m already excited about going and getting geared up. If you haven’t checked out the website, you might want to give it a look, It’s media rich and very useful.

Of course, Alec and I will be covering the festival for Cinema Minima again! Coverage begins today!

Last week, I discovered that the sister of one of my graphic design students had a bit part in an independent film currently making the festival circuit — EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. It turns out that M.K.’s sister is the drummer in the Gypsy Punk band Gogol Bordello. While they’ve been popular in NYC for several years, they’re becoming more well-known of late.

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED was written and directed by THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE’s Liev Schreiber. The film debuted at Telluride and won the Laterna Magica Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

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Giant, baroque factory photo-series.
Cory Doctorow:

These Naoya Hatakeyama of a lime factory are incredibly striking — they look like something out of Quake or Star Wars, huge, inmpossibly baroque and gorgeous.

Link

(via We Make Money Not Art)

Update: Edward Burtynsky’s photos are also a remarkable celebration of the beauty in giant quarries, dams, scrapheaps, and refineries. (Thanks, Kevin!)   [Boing Boing]

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Europe’s ancient, gorgeous sewers.
Cory Doctorow:

These galleries of urban explorers’ photos of Europe’s gorgeous, ancient sewers are thrilling and eerie. Some of these are ancient, some are modern, all are the secret world under the streets that we can hear gurgling when there’s no one else around.

(via BLDG Blog)  [Boing Boing]

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‘Gromit’ eases o’seas B.O curse. Film News: Pic added $26 million to o’seas take during frame — UIP’s “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” continued to scare up some serious coin on the international B.O. scene over the Oct. 14-16 frame by adding 12 markets to its distrib pattern, including the U.K. [Variety.com]

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Kingdom of Heaven. DVD Reviews: Despite its drubbing at the B.O., “Kingdom of Heaven” is director Ridley Scott’s best film since “Gladiator,” combining an intelligent script which tackles the historical complexity of the Crusades, mostly top-notch cast and great visual beauty. Fox’s double-disc set, unfortunately, serves up several nifty features and a lot of filler. [Variety.com]

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Alec is 18 Today! Happy Birthday Alec!

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
    Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)
    French Novelist

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For starters, there’s the Prosumer HD Camera Roundup-updated with everything about what camera to buy and why.

Right behind it is Mike Field’s Report on Classic Indie Mistake - Shoot 24p, capture/edit 60i . This article can save you a world of hurt on your independent production. Read it and save yourself!

Finally, he’s got a list of several great Apple Knowledge Base Articles on video.

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(WCCO) Osseo, Wis.   Five people were killed and 29 were injured after a tour bus hit a jackknifed semi on Interstate 94 west of Osseo, Wis. early Sunday.

The bus was the first of four carrying Chippewa Falls, Wis. high schoolers and adult chaperones home from a marching band competition, authorities said. The bus driver and the high school band director were among those killed.

Chippewa Falls has only one public high school so nearly everyone in town will be touched by this tragedy. (There is one parochial high school, too, located across the street from Chi-Hi, so they’ll be affected as well.) Two of my sisters work at the high school. Many of my nieces and nephews go to school there. The children of friends and more distant family go there. Fortunately, my family is not musically-inclined, so they were not among the killed or injured. They will, however, be among the people who grieve for the lost.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those back home.

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Kong is King - Production Diary - a REAL “Making Of” documentary Kong is King.net | King Kong movie news and rumors

The 12 Weeks to Go episode from a couple of weeks ago covers color correction and what it can do for your film - interesting in and of itself aside from the fact that it is, you know, King Kong and rocks and all.

Now, since film has such a wide exposure lattitude, and Kong is working with nice, full res, 10 bit log scans (or maybe even better, dunno), they can push the looks to incredible degrees. Morning light? Evening? Dark? If properly shot, it can be pushed to any of these places. Video, lacking the dynamic range of film, can’t be pushed as hard, but can still be heavily “bent” to give it a look different than as it was shot.

The entry on motion capture is also especially good - as a former compositor/VFX guy (not at this level - but then, only about 0.01% are), I really like the detail they put into these. The usual coverage about mocap is to see the guy in the dot suit, see the point cloud data (the 3D points of dots translated into 3D space in computer), then see a rough of the character moving like that, then the final. Here, they talk about how Andy Serkis (actor who performed Gullum) is motion captured for the Kong performances, and how they use a combo of mocap, translation software (to conform his human mocap to the ape physique & proportions), and hand animation to get the end result. Definitely gets in “under the skin” to explain how it all works. Every episode that I have seen has been head and shoulders above the usual “making of” type stuff, however is driving this process is clearly concerned with actually showing how this stuff gets done, instead of the usual puff piece to drive the marketing of the film home.

Kudos to whoever is in charge, they seriously deserve some kind of reward.

Check out all the other entries for other production coolness. - Mike Curtis [HD For Indies]

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Graffiti Filmmaking. Hannah Eaves talks with a filmmaker who shoots the streets of San Francisco as they are. It’s become a popular code word for an underground zero-budget celluloid or video creation - guerilla filmmaking. But what does it mean to be… [GreenCine Daily]

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Red Giant Software releases Magic Bullet Editors 2. Red Giant Software today announced the availability of Magic Bullet Editors 2, a real-time film look plug-in for desktop video editors… [MacMinute]

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