(long post)
I was lucky enough to have a long chat last week with writer/artist/saloniere/marketer Evelyn Rodriguez about her visit to the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
Evelyn used to live in Salt Lake City, and attended the Festival many times as a spectator. She now resides in San Jose, California, and described this visit — her first since 2003 — as the first time she attended the Festival as an artist.
Among her many projects, she is working with Click.TV, an online video company that develops tools for video annotation, commentary and social interaction that make it easier to search and engage with segments of interest. "For instance, in a day-long congressional hearing, you can jump straight to the part that’s on the bill that you’re tracking. And then join in on an online interaction discussion at that timestamp about the issue."
She went to Sundance to find out what was up in the world of film, and most particularly video. She hoped to meet other people who were exploring the alternative medium of digital video. Even a low budget film costs at least $1 million, she said, but video is a different, more accessible world, with fewer barriers to entry. "I met people that teach a No Budget Film School, people working on social microfinancing to finance films, and people helping to film-makers self-distribute their films. I walked out of the X-Dance film, "Chasing the Lotus" ready to buy a DVD. There’s got to be a way to capture that impulse."
She was somewhat surprised that when she told friends and acquaintances that she was going to Sundance, many replied they "don’t go to Sundance anymore" because it is too commercial. While she agrees that the Festival has changed — for example, she doesn’t remember quite so many corporate lounges, which now effectively take over the Main Street storefronts during the Festival, she felt that Sundance still had something for everyone, from the avant garde to the nearly mainstream. And the fact that so many companies want to be associated with the Festival adds value; she cited two examples that enhanced her Festival experience: the Krups Café co-sponsored with Salt Lake Roasting Company at New Frontiers on Main which showcased video art installations, multimedia performances, panels, and a digital microcinema, and the Adobe/HP equipment demonstrations/workshops.
This year, Sundance has really embraced social media — Second Life, YouTube and iTunes among other things. We talked at length about whether more people are or will now be aware of independent film as a result of blogs and other social media. Or I wondered, is it more a case of the "long tail" chasing itself?
Evelyn suggested, and I think she’s on the right track, that perhaps in our age group (we are both in our early 40s), the same people are likely to be engaged with social media and interested in independent film, but in younger groups, say mid-20s, social media like YouTube et al are reaching a much broader, diverse audience. The fact that a film is classified independent may not even matter for the younger folks, who will just recognize that they saw something cool that they liked on a friend’s MySpace page or in a YouTube clip.
Arin Crumley of "Four Eyed Monsters" grassroots indie fame was videoblogging Sundance this year on behalf of the Festival. While behind camera taping the Social Networking panel, he added how he’d engaged with Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, blogging and everything at his disposal to promote the video. Said Evelyn: "They even had visitors to their website vote for cities to show the film assuming if they had critical mass they could arrange a screening. One of the six ‘cities’ was Second Life. I myself watched "Strange Culture" at the New Frontiers microcinema while the film was simultaneously premiering in Second Life." She said the Q&A with the director and with subject Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble alternated between the live audience and the SL theater avatars.
Evelyn and I also discussed how social media is starting to change HOW we will see films. The only way for an artist to get his or her work seen won’t be the local movie theater, whether it is the local 10 screen Cineplex or an art house. Only 120 films last year got theatrical release across the nation. Distribution business models are on the cusp of change. Online alternatives, the growth of digital video and the possibility of interaction with the story are blurring the lines between artist and audience. Stories won’t necessarily have a beginning, middle and end, or even a script. For example, David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE was shot 100% in digital video, and the script was written scene-by-scene as the taping unfolded. And Lynch is distributing it himself.
You also don’t need a film school degree or expensive equipment for decent digital video. Evelyn believes that we will see more and more "regular folks" using video to tell interesting, impactful stories. While making a documentary film has been a lifelong goal, it didn’t seem feasible to her until now. Soon, she’ll embark on a digital video project that will start shooting in post-Katrina New Orleans in late February. She’s also exploring the idea of communities, colonies, ensembles, collectives, and Salons of artistic creation — bringing dancers, theater directors, writers, filmmakers, videographers, sculptors, social media visionaries and all sorts of people together in real as well as virtual space, to see how they stretch one another and push the edges of what’s possible in social art and social video. "Online video feels like the earliest days of cinema to me. When people were so enthralled by its novelty, as one audience member said at the Web 2.0 panel, that even a clip of someone sneezing was engaging. So these are pretty exciting times to be exploring this medium."
And in the end, isn’t that what Sundance is really all about? Inspiring us to share our creative vision with the world through the medium of film and moving pictures.
To read more from Evelyn, check out her blog, Crossroads Dispatches.
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Tags: Sundance, Backstage at Sundance, Evelyn Rodriguez, long tail