In a recent NPR broadcast, Andrea Shea gives the lowdown on David Lynch's Inland Empire, and Lynch himself discusses some of the filmmaking process behind the movie, including digital cinematography. Interestingly, the segment ends stating that Lynch claims he will never shoot on celluloid ever again. Nice segment worth a listen, but overall there is nothing dramatically new that you haven't heard before.

(via CinemaTech)

To go along with the other video comparisons we have posted about, here is a side by side by side by side look at a frame from I Robot. The formats in question are Xvid, DVD (480p), 720p, and 1080p and as expected the 1080p looks superb. However, the 720p doesn't look that much different and would be cheaper/easier to produce for a film. Of course if you are aiming for a large screen distribution, then the extra cost of 1080p would make sense, but for anything else, 720p will do just fine. Get a good look at the full size image and see for yourself.

It is rumored that NetFlix may be planning a video download service after the company launched a film preview service where you can watch previews of movies that NetFlix thinks you might like. It uses Windows Media Player and the quality is good and like the Amazon Unbox service you need to install something first to watch the videos. This kind of feels like Netflix could be warming up ready for a video download service. If it is I somehow doubt that it will offer anything better in terms of price and DRM than the other services out there. Well at least there could be another web based video distribution channel that may hit the living room to join the lonely Xbox Live Marketplace and Akimbo.

It's pretty common for film producers to release their trailer well before a film is due to stir up some buzz around the movie and entice investors and distributors to cash in. However, a new trick is evolving where film producers are uploading their trailers to video sharing sites. The viral effect can produce thousands of trailer views which is great publicity and will definitely please those investors.

Nerdcoer for Life has done just that and the trailer has received nearly 250,000 views online and counting.

Time Magazine's Richard Corliss wonders about the modern movie critic. At one time, an independent movie was made or killed by a few reviews. Now, critics are rarely ever invited to screenings. Corliss says everyone at Time but him are invited to screenings.

But Corliss also believes that around award time (as in now) the studios start to seek their attention. It is then when critics finally become useful, even if the work is kinda silly. "I'm a member of the New York group, which met Monday to choose its best. The job is simple: tear yellow-lined paper into cracker-size bits; write a name or three on one piece; wait while the names are read out and tabulated; vote again and again; finally reach a consensus in this category; and go back to square one."

The article does a great job illustrating the absurdity of being a movie critic. For example, I was unaware of the regionalism present in movie critic circles.

So, I was watching the new "Pirates" DVD over the weekend, and decided to check out the "sneak peeks" on the disk. I should preface this by saying I couldn't find an online version of the clip, so those of you who didn't buy "Dead Man's Chest" will have to take my word. Disney has assembled a trailer of sorts promoting Blu-ray disks.

To my surprise, many favorite Disney characters, from Aladdin to the fairies in Sleeping Beauty turned out in support of the format. Basically, Disney pulled every clip of every character they could think of, who said the word "blue" in an animated feature. I have to admit, it was a bit unnerving seeing some of my beloved childhood animations hocking a format that could just as easily disappear as become THE standard.

Disney has always supported the Sony developed format over rival HD-DVD, but the company seemed in the past to be...hesitant to jump in feet first. Well, now they come out with a one-two punch that just about made me feel like Blu-ray was a member of my family.

Interestingly, the same "Pirates" movie which contained the the trailer will not be coming to Blu-ray in the near future. According to this article, Disney plans not to release any of it's "major A-list titles" until they reach a certain "platform penetration."

It seems to me Disney could help the platform grow by releasing all it's major titles in Blu-ray format. At the same time, I realize they have a reputation to think of, and it wouldn't look good to have mountains of unsold copies on store shelves. Maybe you can understand why I'm confused by the the house that Walt built.

That was the lecture, now here is your homework.

Tell me where you think Disney stands in the format war. Are they:
A). totally committed to Blu-Ray
B). sitting on the fence to see what happens
C). not really concerned about which format they use.

For bonus points, tell me "How important is Disney's role in the success or failure of the Blu-ray format?" The winner, who will be selected by an impartial panel of judges, will receive a personalized message board response from an authentic DVGuru blogger.

Looking forward to your input

Adam

I've made multiple links to information on David Lynch's Inland Empire over these past couple of months, but an official website for the film has finally popped up. It's fairly sparse, with only a trailer, some photos, links to reviews, and a small schedule containing screening dates, but at least this is better than nothing at all. Hopefully the release schedule will be quickly updated as more dates are unveiled. Check it out. Here's a link to previous Inland Empire posts.

Mike has an excellent collection of links regarding Mel Gibson's soon-coming Apocalypto, another big budget, bloody, historical feature that was shot digitally with the Panavision Genesis. Everything from reviews of the film, to behind the scenes information, to digital cinematography and a feature on Panavision itself, the stories cover a variety of angles regarding the film. Regarding the film itself, Mike says:

"I'd comfortably say it is the best looking Genesis shot film so far, and I'll need to see the whole thing before I could say the best looking digital feature so far, but that is yet TBD and pretty subjective anyway. But it looks rilly rilly good, m'kay?"

I actually had no idea that the film was shot digitally until very recently, so that must be a pretty sure sign of the visual quality, at least.

Similar in purpose to my own interview with DIY filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake, Sujewa himself has interviewed Lance Weiler, director of The Last Broadcast and the recent Head Trauma. Like Sujewa, Weiler is another independent filmmaker who has embranced the DIY ethic, and has seen great success in self-distributing both of his films.

"I think it's an amazing time to be making work. The new push toward DIY and self distro is cool in the sense that people are making it a first choice. For a long time people looked down on self distro as if it was a sign of failure. But I think that filmmakers are coming to realization that they don't need to wait for someone else to validate their work, that they can get it to an audience on their own terms."

With both of Weiler's films now available on DVD nationwide, the two discuss the state of independent filmmaking, challenges, successes, and filmmaking inspirations and influences. It's a very lengthy and in-depth interview well worth the read if you're into the DIY thing.

Morgan Freeman's production company has teamed up with Intel to launch a new video download website called ClickStar.

Unlike the video download sites like Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow and the iTunes Movie Store, ClickStar is offering something very different. It will be an outlet for independent films offering downloads within a few days or weeks of cinema debuts.

Freeman's newest film 10 Items or Less is being added to the lineup and will be available on December 15th. ClickStar will also have older independent films available for download.

It sounds like this will only be made available through XP Media Center PCs or higher end versions of Windows Vista since it uses the Intel Viiv technology which leaves a huge chuck of the movie buying population out. It would be good to see ClickStar opened up and made available through TiVo, Akimbo and IPTV enabled cable operators.

Despite only supporting Media Center PCs ClickStar is offering something very innovative and is helping to shape video distribution in a direction that I, and I'm sure many others, will appreciate.

Back in 1999 The Blair Witch Project became the most financially successful independent film of all time, partly due to the way the producers played the internet to create a lot of buzz. Now, the team is at it again with another movie, Altered. Granted, the film is backed by mainstream Rogue Pictures, but we'll have to see whether the team can pull it off again. Investor Ken McCarthy seems to think so and is on board with the horror flick. Since The Blair Witch Project was hailed as one of the first successes of "viral marketing," way back in the late 90's, it'll be interesting to see what approach the film makers take now that the internet is even more pervasive. Check out the trailer below:

Scott Taves over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (gotta love a paper with a hyphen in the name) has a roundup of the latest in the "hi-defmatch" (his words, not mine.) The article is a pretty comprehensive look at the current format war and, while there isn't much new for anyone who has followed Blu-ray and HD-DVD closely, it is a pretty good article.Taves discusses some of the lesser known issues, such as boot up time,and box design, and also dredges up the video game console argument.

Click READ, and check it out.

The best movie related database on the net just got better with a fresh new look. It is now easier to find your way around plus they added have a separate independent film section for those non-mainstream films you wanna know more about. Looking good IMDb.

Serious distribution is a major challenge in getting your film seen, but there are several companies out there who claim to make the daunting process a bit more manageable. Indie-Pictures is one of those companies, and they take an approach to distribution through releasing and selling DVDs online and attempting to get them into stores across the country through their own network. Of course, they share DVD sales revenues with individual filmmakers. For more information and a sampling of their previous releases, check out their website. Seems like it might be worth investigating, depending on your wants and needs.

(via DIY Filmmaker)

Back in mid-October, I did a bit of an interview with Sujewa Ekanayake, director of Date Number One and huge promoter of the DIY filmmaking ethic. Up until now, it has been hard to get a sense of his own low budget film DNO despite his extensive blogging about the experience and DIY filmmaking in general. Thankfully, he has recently uploaded a sample clip of the film to YouTube for online viewing. If you've been keeping up with his writing, check it out!