Critic's Notebook

Cinequest at 20

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Cinequest was the scrappy upstart amongst Bay Area film festivals? Apparently not: This year finds San Jose’s annual cinematic blowout entering its third decade.

February may be the shortest month, but Cinequest is going longer nonetheless, at least for this 20th anniversary annum: The 2010 fest runs nearly two weeks, Feb. 23 through March 7, once again at venues all within three blocks’ walking distance in downtown SJ. (For those with a car-free carbon imprint, they’re about 20 minutes’ walk from CalTrain.)

As ever, the primary Cinequest mix is equal-parts heavy on both world premieres (mostly U.S. indies) and recent festival faves from around the world.

topics: activism, actors, audiences, bay area, genre films, how-to, independent film, technology, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

3D reloaded: Where does 3D go from here?

The release of Avatar this month put a fitting capstone on a frenzied campaign by studios to reintroduce stereoscopic 3D to audiences in 2009. No less than 10 feature-length films were released in 3D versions this year, almost all of those animated films. In terms of animation, what began as a minor novelty has become the norm. There’s no doubt that some of the work is satisfying. (As Dennis Harvey noted recently here in SF360.org, animated features were some of the best releases of the past year.) And Monsters vs. Aliens, Up and even Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, were better in 3D than 2D. (Of course, I mean stereoscopic 3D, since these were all animated in the 3D CGI style, as opposed to 2D hand-drawn….) The technology itself is impressive. This is not, as Jeffrey Katzenberg was so fond of saying during the run-up to the Monsters vs. Aliens release, the red-and-blue-glasses 3D of the 1950s. The technicians have found a way to smoothly present depth and action, and are not intent on simply having hands reach out or explosions engulf viewers purely as spectacle.

topics: activism, animation, avant-garde, bay area, technology, world cinema

The 6th Screen

Unresolutions of 2009

End-of-year lists, top ten films and new resolutions have now come and gone. But what about all the messy things we haven’t resolved? Certain questions in 2008 endlessly plagued us, leading to outlandish predictions, flame-war mayhem and an outbreak of opinionated public speaking. In case you missed it, a few were: "Is the ‘profitable indie film’ dead?" and "Will the last film critic please turn out the lights?" (I’m referring to Mark Gill’s June speech at the Los Angeles Film Festival entitled Yes, the Sky is Falling. and a critic-crisis neatly summarized here, as well as the ques-tion of optimism concerning new-tech distribution strategies from Peter Broder-ick and Scott Kirsner). For more on those lingering issues, I leave you to Google. In the meantime, The Sixth Screen issues opinions on a few remaining unresolved technology issues below.

topics: cinephiles, critics, digital filmmaking, directors, independent film, technology

The 6th Screen

Greenscreen envy

For anyone working in the Internet video industry, walking into the Revision 3 studio is a little like stumbling into Xanadu (Khubla Khan’s, not Robert Greenwald’s). Live switching in a control room that sports a massive mounted flatscreen HD monitor alongside a row of compositing systems, multicam teleprompter-assisted shoots in a spacious greenscreen studio, and a fridge full of beer?

Senior Director of Marketing and Product Management and iFanboy producer and co-host Ron Richards tries to tell me that it’s all on the cheap—the monitor replaces the traditional window into the studio and was a sweet deal, small prosumer HD cameras are mounted on low-tech wheelie dollies. But coming in from a traditional production environment where we’re still shooting on BetaSP and trying to dress an old studio, this looks like paradise. And these guys aren’t even going out to traditional TV broadcast. Instead they’re part of a new generation of pioneering Internet broadcasters.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, technology, the web, tv

The 6th Screen

Unresolutions of 2009

End-of-year lists, top ten films and new resolutions have now come and gone. But what about all the messy things we haven’t resolved? Certain questions in 2008 endlessly plagued us, leading to outlandish predictions, flame-war mayhem and an outbreak of opinionated public speaking. In case you missed it, a few were: "Is the ‘profitable indie film’ dead?" and "Will the last film critic please turn out the lights?" (I’m referring to Mark Gill’s June speech at the Los Angeles Film Festival entitled Yes, the Sky is Falling. and a critic-crisis neatly summarized here, as well as the ques-tion of optimism concerning new-tech distribution strategies from Peter Broder-ick and Scott Kirsner). For more on those lingering issues, I leave you to Google. In the meantime, The Sixth Screen issues opinions on a few remaining unresolved technology issues below.

topics: cinephiles, critics, digital filmmaking, directors, independent film, technology

The 6th Screen

Greenscreen envy

For anyone working in the Internet video industry, walking into the Revision 3 studio is a little like stumbling into Xanadu (Khubla Khan’s, not Robert Greenwald’s). Live switching in a control room that sports a massive mounted flatscreen HD monitor alongside a row of compositing systems, multicam teleprompter-assisted shoots in a spacious greenscreen studio, and a fridge full of beer?

Senior Director of Marketing and Product Management and iFanboy producer and co-host Ron Richards tries to tell me that it’s all on the cheap—the monitor replaces the traditional window into the studio and was a sweet deal, small prosumer HD cameras are mounted on low-tech wheelie dollies. But coming in from a traditional production environment where we’re still shooting on BetaSP and trying to dress an old studio, this looks like paradise. And these guys aren’t even going out to traditional TV broadcast. Instead they’re part of a new generation of pioneering Internet broadcasters.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, technology, the web, tv

The 6th Screen

Greenscreen envy

For anyone working in the Internet video industry, walking into the Revision 3 studio is a little like stumbling into Xanadu (Khubla Khan’s, not Robert Greenwald’s). Live switching in a control room that sports a massive mounted flatscreen HD monitor alongside a row of compositing systems, multicam teleprompter-assisted shoots in a spacious greenscreen studio, and a fridge full of beer?

Senior Director of Marketing and Product Management and iFanboy producer and co-host Ron Richards tries to tell me that it’s all on the cheap—the monitor replaces the traditional window into the studio and was a sweet deal, small prosumer HD cameras are mounted on low-tech wheelie dollies. But coming in from a traditional production environment where we’re still shooting on BetaSP and trying to dress an old studio, this looks like paradise. And these guys aren’t even going out to traditional TV broadcast. Instead they’re part of a new generation of pioneering Internet broadcasters.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, technology, the web, tv