*** From the Archives ***

This article is from February 28, 2005, and is no longer current.

The Art of Business: Hollywood Bound

As recently as two years ago, any film shot in a digital video format was considered an oddball exception at the Sundance Film Festival, the country’s premiere film marketplace. At this year’s gatherings, perhaps as many as one-third of the films were shot digitally.
But technology changes haven’t stopped there. This year, many more films — even those shot in traditional 16mm and 35mm film formats – were enhanced with desktop digital software tools. These are largely Adobe products, such as Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator.
This shift toward digital enhancement is providing new avenues for graphic artists, photographers, and illustrators who want to make the transition to, or at least dabble in, the film industry.
“Directors of independent films are constantly searching for inexpensive ways to create dramatic visuals for their films,” said Ian Calderon, Sundance Institute, Director of Digital Initiatives. “Artists who work in digital formats are in a key position to step in and offer these services.”
Studio Sign-On
Digital filmmaking used to be the purview of independent, no-budget films, but now even the big studios are deploying low-cost digital methods.
Take, for example, Martin Scorcese’s The Aviator. At a Sundance seminar, Aviator special effects supervisor Rob Legato explained how he used Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere extensively to create or enhance many of the scenes in the film. (He did much of the work on a Macintosh G5 in his basement, a few feet away from his washer and dryer.)
If you’ve seen The Aviator, you probably remember the dramatic sequence in which Howard Hughes crashes a test plane into a Beverly Hills neighborhood. The actual set was a golf course with three set houses. All the backgrounds of the neighborhood were digital still photographs composited in the distance using After Effects. Even the spectacular dogfight scenes were shot using individual radio-controlled planes and then pieced together with After Effects.
To quote Legato, “After Effects is just Photoshop in motion.”
Legato said many other scenes in the film were included only because they could be created economically with these desktop tools. Legato even used Photoshop for last-minute color corrections, which, if corrected traditionally, would have costs tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.
Legato contracted some work to others equipped with Macs. “It was like having a virtual production studio, but without paying the big rates due to overhead.”
Another Sundance film, MirrorMask, directed by English graphic novelist Dave McKean, used CGI rendering, Adobe After Effects, and a number of other digital programs and techniques to create spectacular alternate worlds for the film’s live-action characters to inhabit. Much of the work was done by graphic artists proficient in digital formats who had never worked on a film before.
If there was a theme this year at Sundance, it was “teenage alienation.” Films such as Pretty Persuasion and The Chumscrubber all attempted to recreate the world as seen through the eyes of our alienated young. To visually capture this perspective, several directors incorporated digital imagery, including the world of the video games that obsess many teens.
In The Chumscrubber, graphic artist and video director, Mike Mills, went as far as to intersperse digitally created video game characters and backgrounds in the film to create the environment of marginalization that some teens live in. Again, these effects were all created on the desktop.
New Markets
For years, we’ve been hearing about declining or flat print and Web markets. In contrast, film is a growth market. For example, soon direct-to-Web broadcasting will empower a new class of filmmakers. Among them will be the corporate marketing directors we know so well from piles of print collateral. They’re likely to be open to hiring digital artists they’ve worked with in other media.
And because the palettes and menus of Adobe applications are already familiar, the learning curve to explore an entirely new medium is minimal.
If you’re ready for a new direction, seek out indie filmmakers in your area and offer your services. Start small, build your resume, and grab a bag of popcorn on the way into the theater.
Read more by Eric J. Adams.
 

Eric is an award-winning producer, screenwriter, author and former journalist. He wrote the script and co-produced the feature film SUPREMACY, starring Danny Glover, Anson Mount, Joe Anderson and Academy-Award-winner Mahershali Ali. As founder and president of Sleeperwave Films, Eric relies on his unique background to develop film commercial films around contemporary social issues. As a seasoned storyteller, Eric also coaches corporate executives on creating and delivering compelling presentations. He has written thought leadership materials for entertainment and technology companies, such as Cisco, Apple, Lucasfilm and others.
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