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Resfest 2000
By Jerry Roberts
Above: L.A. Resfest participants enjoy DGA luncheon. (Photo: Robert Hale)
Below:N.Y. Resfest participants take part in DGA luncheon. (Photo: Elisa Haber)
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The impact that digital technology has made in all aspects of moving picture-making was made strongly apparent when the Directors Guild of America hosted Resfest 2000 and co-sponsored the traveling ten-city festival in New York as well as Los Angeles.
Scores of filmmakers and artists exhibited their digital works and
participated in seminars that measured the extent of digital's inroads in filmmaking and on the internet as well as its future possibilities for directors and other filmmakers.
The future might even mean that narrative filmmaking might some day be a thing of the past, suggested Holly Willis, editor of co-sponsor RES magazine. Willis, moderator of the "Future of Filmmaking" seminar said that DV technology could bring a "return to primitive cinema" with hybrids of live-action and animation, with interactive capabilities and other potentialities reshaping the industry and public appetite.
In fact, Guild member Richard Linklater's forthcoming feature Waking Life, which combined live action with animation, was the showcase case study at Resfest.
Using digital video techniques usually means cheaper, more quickly made and interesting-looking images - practical ideas alive in every aspect of Resfest. "Using digital technology allows us to do projects that normally wouldn't get made," said Scott Stewart of The Orphanage, a San Francisco-based digital motion picture production and post-production facility, which processed some pictures in Resfest.
Guild member Fisher Stevens' new film as star and producer, Sam the Man, directed by Gary Winick, was one of the feature presentations in the festival along with the animated Wave Twisters and director Kirstian Levring's The King Is Alive.
"Independent films have been taken over by the studios and become studio films," said Stevens, whose picture is a traditional romantic comedy set in New York about a creatively blocked writer's infidelities. "DV films are the new independent films. We shot it digitally because we couldn't have afforded to do it on film," Stevens told the audience during the Future of Filmmaking seminar.
Celebrated cinematographer Allan Daviau, who shot Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun and many other movies, attended the seminar in which director Elyse Couvillion's five-minute DV short, Sweet, about romantic daydreaming, received analysis and commentary from the director. Daviau was Couvillion's voluntary cinematographer.
"There's no way we could have done this as inexpensively on film or any other kind of video," he said.
At the New York Filmmakers Luncheon, DGA member Josh White spoke to a group of festival participants.
Josh White began his career in the late 1960s with The Joshua Light Show, a multimedia production presented live behind rock acts at Fillmore East. White, who directed large-screen video projections and is a leading TV director, spoke about the accessibility digital filmmakers experience today.
"In a very short period of time, maybe in the last five years, the tools of production, the very means by which we create and distribute our work has gone from being filtered by a few powerful people, to being unfiltered and open to all," he said. However, "this does not make the work good and arguably it does not even make it better. But it does make it accessible and it makes it democratic."
White outlined the financial and legal benefits of Guild membership stating that "very high on the DGA list is something called Creative Rights. "The Directors Guild is run by people who are active in film and television. Their interests are your interests. They are a very strong political force. As a Guild they create contracts which honor your craft. Creative and artistic rights that may not occur to a young filmmaker have already been addressed by the DGA."
Case Study: Waking Life panel. Moderator Jonathan Wells, Bob Sabiston, Tommy Pallotta, Wiley Wiggins and DGA director member
Richard Linklater. (Photo: Robert Hale)
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Susan Panepento, DGA Assistant Eastern Executive Director, emphasized, "The Guild is not about just the $60 million feature film. We are a diverse membership in terms of the people involved and the type of creative work they are producing. In doing that, in the past five years, we've developed a Low Budget Agreement and most recently an Internet Agreement." These contracts give filmmakers the benefits of Guild protection and benefits and superior DGA crews not normally available to low-budget independent films.
At the Nov. 5 Los Angeles Filmmakers Luncheon, Guild member Randal Kleiser told the assembled that "the DGA believes that the Resfest directors are involved in cutting edge filmmaking" and explained that the benefits afforded by making films under the Guild's low-budget agreements - namely, top notch DGA crew, creative rights protections, and flexible enough to accommodate many budgets.
Jonathan Wells, editorial director of RES and director of Resfest 2000 added that,
"Before digital filmmaking was a buzz-phrase, the DGA was supporting us."
Kevin Lewis contributed to this report.
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