*** From the Archives ***

This article is from February 9, 2004, and is no longer current.

The Art of Business: Good News from Sundance

I recently had the pleasure of spending a week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Great films, great food, great energy, and a great percentage of movies shot and edited digitally, or shot on film and then enhanced with “digital intermediate” technology.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to run into a number of festivalgoers who hearken from the graphic arts world. Chief among them is Chris Dellorco, the renowned L.A.-based artist who illustrated video covers for virtually every Disney animated title. Dellorco also works regularly with Mattel, Hasbro, McDonalds, and Coca-Cola.

I caught up with Chris at the Sundance Channel party, and he gave me his view of the emerging role of the graphic artist in the world of film.

creativepro: Chris, tell us a little about yourself and your work as a graphic artist and illustrator. How did you get started with Disney?

Chris Dellorco: I had been working with airbrush and acrylic paints, for well over 10 years, illustrating primarily movie posters. As the film industry started using more photos instead of illustration, I started looking for different avenues for my work. A friend of mine had been doing some video covers for Disney Home Video and got me in there. My clean airbrush look was very much in sync with what they were doing, so it has worked out quite well for me. As I did more and more Disney work, though, I got less interested in doing the same stuff day in and day out. There isn’t a lot of room for creativity when you do Disney art. They know exactly what they want.

Consequently, I started to look into doing my work on computer just to keep things fresh and interesting. I started on Photoshop 2 with an Apple 8500. At first, I would have to convince Disney to allow me to work digitally. They were very worried that the art wouldn’t look like the conventional art that I was doing for them. Now, of course, they’d probably throw it out if I showed up with a painted piece.

cp: It seems like DV filmmaking has become a huge part of the Sundance Film Festival. Is this the year that DV becomes acceptable on the big screen?

Chris: A quick look at the Film Guide this year shows that about forty percent of the films presented are on HDV shot with a Sony HD cam. Almost all the documentary selections are on DV. I wish that I could say that DV is always the first choice for the filmmakers when they use it, but it’s not; a number of directors that I spoke to said they would rather have shot on 35mm film, but financial issues forced them to choose DV. Of course, some films utilized the DV “look” to accentuate the overall appearance of the film. For example the film “D.E.B.S.” has a saturated, glossy look that seems well suited to DV. On the other hand, “Napoleon Dynamite” was shot on film and I don’t see why. Its “look” would have worked just as well on DV, and the filmmakers would have saved a lot of money.

Mario Van Peebles directed a film entitled “BAADASSSS!” about the making of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song,” the landmark film shot by his father, Melvin Van Peebles. Given the pseudo-documentary style, Mario Van Peebles told me “I can’t imagine getting that look with film. It needed a video look.”

Filmmakers are still trying to achieve a “film look” with DV. In post-production, they are doing this with programs that adjust the color levels and sharpness to make the video look like film. New lenses are beginning to appear that have more limited depths of field. This helps in creating softer backgrounds, which looks more “filmic." I think that DV succeeds when shot in controlled lighting situations. Unfortunately, in exterior shots, the sky and backgrounds frequently get washed out because DV is so high contrast. I don’t think that it will be that long before this gets resolved too.

cp: With DV is coming on strong, what role do you see for graphic artists and creative professionals?

Chris: I think that DV provides lots of opportunities for digital artists familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator. If you’re using any of the Adobe packages (especially Premiere Pro and After Effects), you’re already familiar with the interface and the menus. Of course, an artist can create images in Photoshop that can be easily imported into After Effects for some interesting special effects, depending on what you do. In After Effects you can do video compositing with any image or background that you create in Photoshop}.

Most of the films that I saw at Sundance on video have not really explored this area too much. I think more and more filmmakers with limited budgets will begin to recognize what can be done through special effects done by digital artists and incorporate these effects into their films. They’re at the early stages of that.

cp: What about a role for graphic artists in DV editing?

Chris: Anyone familiar with Photoshop or Illustrator should have an excellent start at using Premiere or After Effects. The problem is that most of the filmmakers that I spoke to at Sundance are using Final Cut Pro for editing. In one comical situation, I was at a party for “Stuff Magazine” and a friend of mine told me that he was trying to locate a copy of Final Cut for his partner. We asked a few random people around us if they could help. Out went the cell phones, and within five minutes we had a lead on a copy. I just don’t think, at this point, that it would be that easy to get Adobe Premiere with just a few calls. Adobe is definitely hot on Final Cut’s tail with the latest Premiere, though. Perhaps in the near future, more filmmakers will be using Premiere.

cp: What can graphic artists learn aesthetically from films and how can they apply it to their work?

Chris: I think that it is a constant give and take, a dialectic of sorts. Film constantly takes from visual artists and, in turn, artists can use imagery that they find in films. Films can be especially useful, because, more than art, films have entered images into the national unconscious. As large populations see a film, sometimes several times, the visuals in the film become part of a vernacular of unconscious symbols. I think that artists can capitalize on the use of these powerful symbols by evoking them in their art.

Places like Sundance are a great opportunity for visual artists to see cutting edge filmmakers displaying new images and symbols.

cp: Okay, gotta ask — best parties, best movies, most fun?

Chris: As far as parties go, they do tend to all blur into one. I saw Paris Hilton at several, including the aforementioned “Stuff Magazine” party. What she has to do with Sundance, aside from the legions of paparazzi there, I don’t know. Of course she does have a homemade “short film” out. I hear that it’s getting a lot of distribution on the Internet, but not exactly Sundance material (if you get my meaning). The artist agency parties were pretty good. UTA had one with a full casino and dancing girls. William Morris had a fun one that attracted a lot of stars, including Naomi Watts holding hands with Heath Ledger, Laura Darn, Peter Fonda, and Andre 3000 of Outcast. The DJ played “Hey Ya!” and the crowd went wild dancing for him. I liked the Daily Variety party because it honored Emerging Directors instead of celebrities.

As for films, I particularly enjoyed a film called “Napoleon Dynamite,” which depicted the life of an odd, neurotic teenager in high school using totally deadpan humor and painfully under acted performances. Even the press, at the press screening that I attended laughed. Believe me, they almost never laugh.

Read more by Eric J. Adams.

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