Sundance

So, i arrived into Park City yesterday for the opening night of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in Utah. I love this place! There is always such a great atmosphere generated by a mixture of international film makers, cinema lovers and skiers which awaits you as you step into Salt Lake City airport. I flew out here from New York where i had only the day before been checking the quality of the HD master for Braden King's feature 'Here' starring Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal which plays in U.S. competition tonight. Alongside 'Here' i am also supporting Andrew MacLean's feature 'On The Ice' which i shot in the arctic landscape of Barrow, Alaska last spring and which also plays in the U.S. dramatic section of the festival. By default this also means that i am automatically nominated for the Excellence in Cinematography award so i have my fingers crossed. Either way i am at the festival with two films that i am extremely proud of and have worked incredibly hard on helping to get this far. I feel several celebratory beers coming on.

I travelled the 26 miles from the airport to my condo in Park City in an airport shuttle with a number of other actors, producers and journalists, one of whom was an actor from 'The Wire' and another had acted in the film 'Pariah' which was to open the festival in just a few hours. After negotiating the darkening snowy landscape and unclear signage we finally dropped every one off at their respective accommodation and i headed onto Main St. to meet the cast and crew of 'On The Ice'. It's so nice to see everyone again after our two months of filming out on the frozen arctic ocean and i hardly recognised people out of their heavy arctic clothing. We ate before heading to see the opening night film, Dee Rees' debut feature 'Pariah'. This was a moving and beautifully shot story of young African/American lesbians growing up in the suburbs of New York. Following this we headed to see a midnight horror movie called 'Silent House' which played at the Yarrow Hotel and was produced by one of our producers Lynette Howell (Half Nelson, Blue Valentine). It was an interesting and pretty jumpy horror flick apparently containing 13 continuous shots originated on the Canon 5D which were then seamlessly edited together to produce a feature movie from one apparent continuous take. A really interesting idea although the ending i felt, like many movies in this genre, failed to deliver.

Okay, so i'm wrapping this up for now as i have to get ready to attend the screening of 'Here', the first of the two premiers today followed by a Q&A and then a party to celebrate. We have 6 screenings of each film in total which means that i will attend 12 Q&A's starting with 2 today. I had better start memorising the answers to all the technical questions and recalling how we actually shot the films. It all seems like such a long time ago now. In truth i haven't actually left my apt. today as i gave an interview to UK magazine televisual with re: to my work on the BBC drama 'The Crimson Petal and the White' which i shot last summer/autumn and spoke with FujiFilm U.S. about an article they are writing for 'Here' which we shot on 35mm Fuji film stock. It will be nice to finally wander out into the snow.

Goodbye for now and i'll be sure to update very soon.

'Here'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbEW94IG9qg

'On The Ice'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgHFoS283_o

Ion Cinema Article

http://www.ioncinema.com/news/id/6064/top-100-most-anticipated-films-of-2011-10-names-to-remember

 

January 24 2011

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