A Thing or Two

KBVR show features Paul Turner (Darkside Cinema) and Jon Lewis (Oregon State University)

Oregon State University's student-run radio station, KBVR, features a series each Monday at 11:00 a.m. Pacific, called "Talking in the Theater" and hosted by Mervin Kurniawan. In this MP3 recording, Paul and Jon discuss the 2009 Academy Awards. The show is about a half hour long. 

College Isn't Free: Rap Video by Nathan Worden

There were lots of great short films shown this weekend at the da Vinci Film Festival. But what seemed to catch my imagination the most were the films created by teenagers. The amount of talent and commitment shown by these young folks was really great.

Here's a rap video by Nathan Worden, a high school senior in Corvallis. It's called "College Isn't Free," and it rocks!

Balloons in the movies: "Helium and Celluloid," by Jerry Rees

In my previous post, I talked about the da Vinci Fast Film Project, where each film used a balloon as a prop. Here's another inspired use of balloons in movies. Jerry Rees has put together archival movie footage from many popular classic films, with an added twist: in each scene, he's digitally inserted a balloon. It works amazingly well!

He calls it, "Cinema's Romance with the Balloon: a retrospective of the most famous scenes."

da Vinci Fast Films

Over the weekend at the da Vinci Film Festival we screened the Fast Film Projects to a sold-out crowd. These films were created in only 48 hours by 9 different teams ranging in age from 12 to 60. Some of the entries looked and felt a lot more polished than you might expect.

Each Fast Film was required to use this year's standard-issue prop (a balloon) and da Vinci quote, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." In some, these two elements were inserted into a story that had perhaps already been conceived. In others, the entire (short) film was inspired by the balloon and the quote. The winning film, "Fair Share," was chosen by audience response at the screening Sunday evening, March 8. "Fair Share" was written, directed, and edited by Evan Gütt, a high school senior from Corvallis.

2009 da Vinci Film Festival March 6 – 8

The 2009 da Vinci Film Festival will be held March 6 – 8 in Corvallis, Oregon, featuring 30+ selected films ranging from features to short subjects, documentaries, and films by young filmmakers.

Check out the new television commercial on YouTube!

Attention Hollywood: It's about the experience as much as the films

My husband and I operate two art cinemas we built ourselves, here in Corvallis, Oregon--a university town of about 50,000 people when school is in session. The Avalon Cinema has one screen and holds 110 theater-goers. The Darkside Cinema is a four-plex with each room holding 49. It's built on the second floor of a former department store, which we renovated in order to reuse downtown space in a cool old building.

Although this is a university town, most of our clientele are not students; they're young working singles and couples, aging boomers whose kids are old enough they don't need a babysitter, and retired seniors.

It's been interesting to watch the major studios whine about the decline in attendance. By contrast, we've been enjoying steady and even increasing attendance, and we think it might be because:

• The films we play are not Hollywood crap. We play a wide variety of "indie," alternative, foreign, documentary films, rated anywhere from G (Penguins, Millions...) to NC-17 (Bad Education, The Dreamers...).


• Our prices are well below the cineplexes—both for tickets and for snack bar items.


• Our popcorn is infinitely refillable.


• People can bring in their own food and beverages, as long as they pack out the trash they brought in.


• We have a well publicized policy of (good-natured) harassment for anyone who leaves their cell phone on.


• We're a visible part of the community, hosting benefits for non-profits and participating in civic issues to keep the downtown alive and thriving.


• We hire staff who bring their human-ness to the job. They interact with patrons in a friendly manner, not as corporate automatons. They know can make independent decisions about how to handle issues that come up.


• Customers can talk to the owner(s) face to face. We are not hiding in a 9-to-5 corporate office outside the area. And Paul writes really great content.


• Each week, we send an email to more than 2,000 subscribers, talking about upcoming films and what's happening with us and with the theaters. We never share email addresses, and we don't put ads in the weekly messages.


• We DON'T show commercials. Previews of coming attractions, yes. But never commercials.

So, even though we don't have stadium seating complete with cupholders, we have a loyal following in the growing Mid-Willamette Valley. And cushy, old-fashioned seats. Plus a sofa.

We're not perfect; we face challenging business issues like any locally owned, independent, on-a-shoestring business. But we feel pretty good about bringing quality film—without the BS—to a wide range of local cinephiles who show their appreciation every week.

Links to both theaters and some other nearby independents:
http://www.corvallismovies.com

Citing Slow Summer Box Office, Hollywood Calls It Quits

The Onion does it again!
Link: Citing Slow Summer Box Office, Hollywood Calls It Quits.

Scroll down the page to see the shot of Mel Gibson begging for work on Wilshire Boulevard. (Maybe there is a dog!)

[The Onion logo used without permission, but with great reverance.]

Searching for Armenian Orphans of the Genocide

BBC News tells of Turkish documentary maker Berke Bas, who is searching for a relative descended from the little girl the Bas family took in and hid under the kitchen sink during the Armenian Genocide (1915-1916). Uncovering the stories of Armenian children who were saved from the Genocide and raised in Turkish families is problematic. Turkey still refuses to admit that the Genocide took place, exerting political and personal pressure on those who dare speak out. And there are religious issues; if you have been raised Muslim and are exposed as originally Christian you become an outcast. Nevertheless, Turks and Armenians alike are seeking to uncover the truth about their relatives and the descendants of those rescued children.

I may have just found my true calling.

At any rate, I look forward to seeing the work of Berke Bas come to the screen.

Here come the pixels! (Slowly...)

You may be wondering why, when you can purchase a perfectly adequate digital projector for viewing DVDs at home today, your local movie theater is still running 35mm film through a big loud projector that may have been built in the early part of the 20th century. Certainly, it would cost a lot less for the film studio to send pixels down a pipe than it does for them to ship a six reel film to a depot for the theater owner to pick up. Why aren't all the movie theaters running digital projectors?

The main reason digital cinema has not been implemented widely yet is that film studios, exhibitors, and equipment manufacturers remember what it cost to get caught out using betamax video players when the vhs format became the de facto standard. So in order to arrive at a universally accepted digital cinema format, the consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) was formed in 2002.

As part owner of two art cinemas here in Corvallis, the Avalon Cinema and the Darkside Cinema, I've been looking forward to the announcement that came yesterday. With the newly published specification (176 page pdf), the first concrete step has been taken in the upcoming transition from film to digital.

Several issues remain unresolved, however. Foremost, the studios don't want to pay the estimated $3 billion for theater conversion, and certainly the exhibitors are in no position to pay the cost, given the continuing slump in attendance and the big bite the studios take from each ticket sale. Additionally, security schemes (such as watermarking films to prevent piracy) could impair image quality. And network reliabilty will be an issue: if a theater is transmitting an unlock code to a film company and can't get through, what happens to that night's show?

So while the equipment manufacturers and film studios gear up, industry participants will continue working to solve these issues. But don't let that keep you at home. Traditional film, running at 24 frames per second, is still one of the most immersive, enriching experiences we can have for the comparatively low cost of a movie ticket. See a film tonight! And save some popcorn for me.

Wired News covers this story here.

The DCI press release is here.

Note: the September 2004 issue of Video Technology Magazine included a table compiled by John L. Sokol that lists all the various digital formats, including cinema, computer, TV, cell phone, and mini-LCD. (Let me know if you find one that's more current.)