From Sundance: On Professional, Indie, and UGC Content
Monday, January 21st, 2008I moderated the New Filmmaking Technology: What’s Now and What’s Next panel in the New Frontiers area of the Sundance Festival. It was an honor to moderate the first panel of the festival. Surprisingly, we had an overflow crowd for that lunchtime event on a sunny Park City afternoon.
Writer/Director Alex Rivera whose movie, Sleep Dealer, was developed here and premiered here, discussed how he was able to incorporate over 400 special effects shots to achieve his SciFi vision on a very limited budget.
Alex Buono, the D.P. on Bigger, Stronger, Faster, an excellent documentary on steroid use in America, sings the praises of Apple Color, a free application bundled in Final Cut Pro that he used in his postproduction work on the feature. He believes that if Apple Color is an acceptable program for a Digital Intermediate, it will completely change the finishing model for all independent films.
Mark Randall, filmmaker, hacker/inventor, and Chief Strategist for Dynamic Media at Adobe, explained how he does a complete videotaped walkthrough of his movies before he begins filming. This is how he storyboards, since he can’t draw (he says that even his stick figures don’t look like stick figures). For the videotaped walkthrough he doesn’t worry about lighting or acting or the set/background in the shot. But he sets up the shots the way he envisions them, has people who may or may not be actors act out the parts, and uses the captured material to create a rough edit of the film. (Mark developed a system that enables his cameras to record directly onto a harddrive.) This allows him, at very little cost, to get a true sense of the pacing of the scenes. It also allows his crew to discuss and alter setups to improve the quality of material shot for the final film. Then, as he shoots the story with digital equipment, he drops the ‘professional’ footage into the rough edit of the feature. His ‘storyboard’ is, in effect, the feature; just shot with very low production values.
In our Saturday Webolution! – Hollywood Adapts to the Web panel, Kara Swisher mentioned the issue of ‘professional content’ versus ‘user generated content.’
When it comes to storytelling, I believe this is not a particularly meaningful discussion; although it clearly is applicable to other areas, such as news coverage versus editorial and advocacy, and open source software development versus closed software development.
But in the area of storytelling, that dichotomy is based on budget and the politics underlying many discussions of the web. It is not based on factors that either the audience or investors care about. There are enough box office bombs to clearly illustrate that there is not a direct link between budget and quality, audience appeal, and return on investment. Similarly, while there are enough one-off and serial “UGC” successes to illustrate that the ability of the storyteller to engage the audience is not completely governed by budget or gatekeepers, there are also enough videos about kittens, puppies, and people being hurt or embarrassed to illustrate that the unfiltered delivery of content is not a pancea either.
As far as I’m concerned, the dichotomy that matters when it comes to storytelling is simply good versus bad storytelling. The budget indicates what resources the director/creator/author had on hand to achieve their vision, but not how successful they were at developing and realizing that vision.
Alex Rivera’s movie, Sleep Dealer, depicts a distopia in which the US/Mexican border is sealed, water resources are defended by the military, and US agriculture and businesses are able to exploit Mexican workers without allowing them into the US by hiring them to remotely operate robots from facilities in Tijuana via implanted neural and muscle connections. The story plays well, and more importantly, he has done an incredibly impressive job of realizing his vision on a very limited, independent film-level budget.
There is now a continuum between UGC and Professional storytelling (i.e. linear entertainment). Every creative person in Hollywood is creating User Generated Content. The output of skilled nonprofessionals using widely available tools can have Professional-level production values. What ultimately matters is the quality of the story and how well it can find and connect with an audience.