If the truth will set you free, then you might say that Robert Redford has a vision of movies becoming a force for liberation. No, not the ones like “The Green Hornet” or “No Strings Attached.”
At the opening press conference of last year’s Sundance Film Festival, the actor, filmmaker and part-time Utah resident was discussing the dwindling reach of traditional news media when he posed the question, “Where are people going to get the truth?” Some of that truth, Redford went on to say, is likely to be uncovered — and dramatically showcased — by documentaries.
In 2011, Redford’s Sundance Institute is following up on that suggestion by adding a new program to the festival lineup with the specific aim of focusing more attention on non-fiction filmmaking. After the festival launches on Thursday, patrons can peruse its Documentary Premieres section, featuring a mix of new films by established documentary filmmakers and docs of lesser pedigree that are deemed worthy of increased scrutiny.
Festival programming director Trevor Groth said that the first-ever Documentary Premieres lineup features an all-star roster of the usual suspects: New films by Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”), Steve James (“Hope Dreams”) and Oscar-winner Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) will all be featured.
Groth mentioned two films, on the other hand, that were included because of their subject matter. “Amazing Shadows” caters to film geeks by mapping out the mission and function of the National Film Registry, a massive celluloid stash that archives new films every year. And “Rebirth” is a decade-spanning film about the experience of five people attempting to recover and move on from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“The filmmakers interviewed the subjects once a year,” Groth said. “I was profoundly moved by this film. I think it’s going to have a huge impact at the festival.”
Which films get in?
The festival wants its films to make an impression. A longtime programmer at Sundance, Groth moved up to his current position prior to the 2010 festival, taking the place of previous programming director, John Cooper. (Cooper, in turn, rose up the ladder to take the place of former festival director Geoff Gilmore, now with the Tribeca Film Festival.)
Prior to last year’s festival, Groth said, the programming team, which picks the roughly 130 films screened by the festival from among thousands of submissions, set a rule: No film would be included on the Sundance slate unless at least one programmer was seriously passionate about it.
The programmers don’t always get it right. The festival has famously rejected films in past years that broke out via other channels. Doug Liman’s “Swingers,” which launched the careers of Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, was a Sundance no-go. So was “George Washington,” the debut drama from respected indie filmmaker David Gordon Green (now in the midst of making a successful transition to Hollywood with the stoner comedies “Pineapple Express” and “Your Highness”).
“You don’t want to be the programmer who passes on a film that goes out and makes a splash somewhere else,” Groth said, “but at the same time, those are actually the OK ones. They find a life somewhere else.” What’s worse, he said, is wondering about the film that almost made it, then got turned away and never resurfaced.
One film that didn’t make the grade in 2011 is a long-gestating local film “95ers: Echoes,” a sci-fi thriller made at ultra-low cost using every trick in the book by the husband-and-wife team of Ali and Tom Durham of Spanish Fork. Tom Durham, a Brigham Young University film school graduate and the film’s director, said that he submitted a rough-cut version of “95ers” to the festival, hoping for the best.
With many effects shots missing or incomplete, he wasn’t surprised to be rejected: “I kind of knew that was going to happen.”
The hopes and dreams of filmmakers like Durham are big business for the state of Utah. The festival reports its economic footprint each year in collaboration with the University of Utah’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research, and the overall economic impact of the festival in 2010 was a healthy $62.7 million. More than 41,000 people attended the festival last year, eating out to the tune of $10.5 million, while spending $24.9 million on lodging and $6.9 million on recreation.
Some of that impact, to be sure, comes from inside Utah. Orem resident Scott “Skippy” Jessop has been to every festival for the last seven years. He books time off from work religiously and buys food and fuel throughout the festival in addition to purchasing such necessities as hand warmers. (Alas, no money spent on motels: His parents have a timeshare in Midway.)
Skippy, a 33-year-old broadcast journalism major at Utah Valley University, isn’t quite your typical festivalgoer. Most people go to Park City to see movies, and Skippy usually sees a few. Mostly, however, he’s there to look for famous faces. Skippy people watches the way that some people bird watch, and he’s good, too.
“One year I got a picture of myself and Robin Williams,” he said. “He was wearing a hat and dark glasses. If you saw a person walk past you dressed like he was dressed, you would never say, ‘That’s Robin Williams,’ but there was something about him.
(Skippy has become such a fixture at Sundance that photographer and filmmaker Mark Hedengren made a movie about him, “Sundance Skippy,” that played at the LDS Film Festival in Orem last year.)
With months of festival prep in the rearview mirror, you might expect people like Groth to be feeling a little worn down right about now, but the opposite is true. Groth said he’s fired up: “I just can’t wait for people to see these films, and for the dialogue to start happening around them.”
A filmmaker has to have a vision. What’s the story? How is he (or she) going to tell it? As with a lot of things in life, however, there’s got to be money coming from somewhere, at some point, or the whole enterprise is only a bright idea.
That’s where Kickstarter comes in. Launched in 2009, Kickstarter is an online pledge fund, so to speak, a meeting place for people engaged in creative endeavors (writing a book, recording a CD, creating a board game) and people who, for whatever reason, are willing to donate money to support those endeavors.
The 2011 Sundance Film Festival lineup includes “The Woods,” a film by Matthew Lessner that was completed using Kickstarter. It’s the first such film to play at the festival.
Lessner shot the film in 2008, then lost all funding before he could complete production. His footage sat untouched for a year — until he learned about Kickstarter, and reaped a post-production budget from the kindness of strangers.
Lessner said in a release that he “ended up raising enough money from 95 backers, mostly total strangers, to resume and ultimately finish work on the film.” (Lessner’s film corralled $11,584 from Kickstarter.)
Spanish Fork resident Tom Durham raised money using Kickstarter to finish his sci-fi thriller “95ers: Echoes” (he submitted a rough cut to Sundance but wasn’t accepted). Durham, a married father of four, said that Kickstarter is the newest spin on a concept called “crowd funding” — getting small amounts of money from many different individuals — that indie filmmakers have pursued for years.
With Kickstarter, you don’t have to find your own crowd. Well, sort of. Durham, 34, said that lots of projects posted on Kickstarter are ignored. His own pitch, he said, covered three important bases. “You need to have something that catches people’s eye,” he said. Even someone who’s only giving you a few dollars wants bang for her buck.
(Kickstarter donors pledged $17,020 to “95ers,” which is still in post-production. More information about the film is available online at www.95ers.com.)
You also need to somehow demonstrate the ability to deliver results, Durham said. And it doesn’t hurt to have a great story about your great story. Durham said that telling about how he and his wife, Ali, had worked on their film for years, a piece at a time, got people excited.
“We told them our story, in our own words,” he said. “We got a lot of comments from people about how they were fired up about their own creative pursuits.”
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment