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Feature - A declaration of independents

The Third Annual Whistler Film Festival celebrates accessible filmmaking technologies

The Third Annual Whistler Film Festival celebrates accessible filmmaking technologies

It’s not easy to make an independent film.

The list of adjectives describing the process of bringing a set of brainwaves to cinematic fruition without the blank cheque sponsorship of a major Hollywood studio would fill this publication and most of its archives. It’s a lot of things to make an independent film, but easy, it is not.

Of course, the best things in life may be free but the most exciting things are never easy. And if it weren’t for that excitement, there wouldn’t be events to celebrate independent filmmaking like the Whistler Film Festival, which sets itself down and digs into a big, ol’ sloppy third birthday cake this Thursday.

Save the biggest pieces for the original festival creators and current directors Kasi Lubin and Shauna Hardy, who have stayed true to their original vision of creating a major cultural event primarily for the people of the Sea to Sky corridor. Their vision continues to grow as this year the festival will showcase 40 feature and short films, including six world premieres (a six-fold increase over 2001 and 2002 combined), an eight-session filmmaker forum and workshop series, and even a youth-directed mini festival.

Declares Lubin: "We’re on the radar now," right proud, as she should be.

Run as a non-profit society, as are the majority of major film festivals, both Lubin and Hardy are adamant the Whistler festival will retain its community focus.

"To me this film festival is not going to be successful unless we have buy-in from the locals," says Lubin. "We want them to come and support us. Everybody else is gravy."

Adds Hardy: "We want to be one of Whistler’s premier cultural events, we want to provide a really entertaining and engaging lineup for our audience so our programming should appeal first and foremost to Whistler filmgoers."

Those looking for an easy typecast will pin the duo’s statements on the Adventure and Action Sport Filmmaking forum. The Thursday session features celebrated figures such as mountain bike/snow film auteur Christian Begin and the man carrying the torch for Endless Summer, director Bruce Brown’s surf film legacy, son Dana Brown. There are also film offerings such as Dana Brown’s surf documentary Step Into Liquid, part of Thursday’s launch lineup, and Farther than the Eye Can See, a Sunday, Dec. 7 screening documenting the incredible first ever summit of Everest by a blind man.

Athleticism and grand vistas are inseparable from the area and while this year’s festival subtitle, "Experience the Adventure of Film," would appear to draw from the theme, there is also a deeper meaning behind it.

After all, the making of any independent film is a grand adventure, a quixotic voyage with creative, but rarely significant financial rewards. Vancouver director Trent Carlson’s film The Delicate Art of Parking presents a mockumentary-style look at the most hated of municipal soldiers. Oregon director Mika Kitamura takes on underage prostitution in Cambodia. There are too many more to describe, but even those of the most banal subject matter are in some way every bit as adventurous as Brown’s ode to big wave jockeys.

Just as the residents of Whistler revel in athletic adventure they also possess a spirit of creative adventure. There is a vibrant alternative and independent film community here, raising its head through events like the 72 Hour Filmmakers showdown at the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival and even the goofy Heavy Hitting Films B-Grade Horrorfest, which just turned two this past Halloween.

Preparing latent filmmakers with the tools they need to bring their projects to life is the focus of most of this year’s filmmaker forums and workshops, which are organized and directed by Patti-Jo Wiese. A co-owner of Vancouver/Bowen Island’s Digital Film Group, a company which converts digital film projects into 35 mm print making them compatible with traditional theatre projection systems, Wiese and her co-workers are perhaps best known for their work transferring the internationally acclaimed Atanarjuat — The Fast Runner.

That particular film, says Wiese, is a great example of how creative vision and artistic adventure made use of simple technologies and brought an amazing depiction of life far above the Arctic Circle to the rest of the world.

"It showed all filmmakers that the tools are there, the audiences don’t care how it was shot if you can tell a good story and create beautiful imagery," says Wiese.

A champion of digital cinematography and post-production, Wiese has organized the seminars to educate emerging filmmakers on technologies that make the enormous task of producing an independent film that much more affordable and accessible.

Local Digital Feature Success Stories brings together the directors of five festival features, to talk about the process of making their respective films, all of which have been well received across the country even though they were produced from humble budgets.

Digital Distribution Choices for Independents — Pipedreams for the Pipeline, opens a dialogue with digital filmmakers about digital projection and distribution, allowing potential filmmakers to understand there are avenues for their projects even without finding the tens of thousands on average required to produce a 35 mm print of their work.

Digital Cinematography Defined, a two part series enlisting the local camera union and led by experienced director of photography James Tocher is a hands-on look at what kind of footage today’s digital cameras – criticized in the past for their spare, broadcast news aesthetic – are turning out. It’s an opportunity for filmmakers to check out the different filming tools, both standard consumer models and high-definition models. Guest techs will be on hand to help participants explore as deep as they wish.

And a two-part, hands on seminar on industry vanguard editing software package Final Cut Pro 4 brings in top Vancouver instructor Alec MacNeill Richardson to show both established filmmakers and brand newbies the program that has led the digital post-production revolution.

"I really see B.C. as a hotbed for digital filmmakers," says Wiese. "For emerging filmmakers living in Whistler, they’re getting unbelievable access."

Accessibility is the key concept when it comes to digital film technologies, particularly in regard to the independent filmmaking community. Cameras are relatively easy to track down and acquire, expensive film stock can be written out of stretched budgets. In terms of post-production, a creative team can purchase and set up an entire computer editing studio, complete with Final Cut Pro 4, for a fraction of the cost of renting time in a traditional editing studio.

Trent Carlson, director of festival feature The Delicate Art of Parking says for the $20,000 he spent renting an editing studio on his last film, he spent approximately $13,000 purchasing an entire computer editing studio for Parking, which can now be used for upcoming projects as well.

"It’s definitely a big boost because there are a lot of projects out there. In the bad old days before digital, that never actually saw the light of day because it was too expensive to finish them," says MacNeill Richardson, an editor and Final Cut Pro instructor for the last three years.

"Before, post-production was the second half of the budget. I think what you’re seeing now is that filmmakers who can’t get that kind of funding in place are able to take the edit into their own hands and finish it themselves."

"Here’s a program that is easy to use, and that can apply to everyone, whether you’re making ski videos or short films or features."

MacNeill Richardson says the program is not just the domain of the under-financed either, with noted filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen said to have utilized the program for their latest Hollywood vehicle Intolerable Cruelty.

"It’s inspiring to see even big time directors going this route," he says.

While filmmakers have jumped on board with digital editing, digital cinematography has been a tougher sell, fighting a reputation for a hard, cold, reality-TV look. The benefits for the cost-cutting independent are the relative ease in acquiring camera equipment, whether a consumer-grade hand-held model or an industry level high-definition model, and the elimination of expensive film stock from the list of what Carlson calls the hard costs – the unavoidable expenditures on any film set.

"The camera rentals, and cost of film are exponentially huge," notes Wiese.

Carlson, who will be part of the Local Digital Feature Success Stories panel, says while his decision to use Final Cut Pro 4 was financial, his decision to shoot the film with "industry workhorse" digi-beta cameras similar to those used by broadcast news teams, was actually for aesthetic reasons. The mockumentary-style film actually required the colder reality-based look associated with digital filming.

In much the same boat was the Oregon-based producer/director team of Marlin McDarrah and Mika Kitamura. Their film Stealing Cambodia, which will make its world premiere at Whistler, is a hard-hitting look at underage prostitution in the Asian country, and includes digital footage as a way to distinguish certain point-of-view shots. Those segments, along with the use of Final Cut Pro 4 for the majority of post-production, aided with the high costs of an on-location Asian shoot, says McDarrah, who adds: "we wouldn’t have been able to do much of this film if not for a digital video realm."

Wiese maintains digital technologies are really nothing new to the film community, breaking in several years ago and rendering the debate over aesthetic preferences akin to two artists defending charcoal and paint as a preferred medium. She points to well known cinematographer Tom Ackerman, who worked on films Jumanji and Beetlejuice, but who chose a "smaller-grade camera" for his Cuban-based project Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time, also appearing at this year’s festival. Instead of a revolution, claims Wiese, there’s an "evolution of the revolution," occurring, as with Ackerman, when a mainstream artist actually "chooses these tools to pare down, to simplify, to enhance."

"The digital revolution is here; has been for a while," asserts MacNeill Richardson. "Digital filmmaking is really starting to come into its own. It used to be what you did when you didn’t have money for film. Now with high definition technology and systems like Final Cut Pro, you’re looking at being able to produce a pretty high-end project for a fraction of what the cost would have been years ago."

Adds Carlson: "I think that what’s important for people to know, is that no longer does the aesthetic of shooting digital hold back telling a story."

And this is perhaps the most exciting aspect of what digital technology has done for independent filmmaking: increased its accessibility. The advance has led to somewhat of a declaration of independents. Projects are being made that might never have been made otherwise.

Asked whether or not his world premiere historical documentary about the first team to climb the Grand Wall of the Stawamus Chief in Squamish could have been made without cost-saving digital technology, director Ivan Hughes answers with a point-blank: "No."

"Absolutely not," he elaborates. "The whole funding process in Canada is very, very challenging. Because of how expensive it would have been to work in any other medium, this is the only chance this story had for actually getting done."

According to MacNeill Richardson, the technical nature of the workshops in Whistler, with their focus on breaking down the barriers between the film industry and potential filmmakers, is unique compared to the forums he’s experienced at film festivals in Vancouver and other major urban centres. He describes those offerings as more theoretical and industry-based.

"It’s good to see," he says of the choice of educational subject matter at the Whistler festival. "That’s what we need to get out and show the new filmmakers coming out, guys that just got their first camera, that it doesn’t have to be an expensive process. It can happen, and it can happen quite quickly."

The focus on hands-on education coupled with a relaxed atmosphere away from the high-pressure film-marketing scene in which directors often find themselves caught up while at festivals in the major urban centres, are establishing the Whistler Film Festival as an incomparable arena for learning. It seems to come back to the fact that this festival is for Whistler; it’s gurus dedicated to making sure it fits with the vibe of the community, and is rooted in community interest and support. They know this is a place where people want to go and do things instead of waiting for someone else to do them first. After four days of festing, undaunted dreamers may be raring to take up the camera, armed with the knowledge that while it won’t be easy to tell their stories, it definitely is possible.

Hollywood, the place Wiese wryly deems "the most conservative institution in the world," likely wouldn’t have a place for a raging condemnation of the social evil of child prostitution seen in Stealing Cambodia, or a meandering tale about parking controllers. Yet Whistler Film Festival goers are awarded the privilege of viewing these inspiring projects and more because independent spirits took a chance.

As MacNeill Richardson remarks, "We’re seeing more projects that we wouldn’t have seen and different points of view and more perspectives on life. It’s a good thing for all of us."



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