Sundance is green, actually

Dr. Rushton pointed me toward this article (The Films Are Green, but is Sundance?) from the NYTimes just as the festival was starting. It ignorantly, and snarkily, asked if Sundance was eco-friendly, citing poor examples such as trucks idling on Main Street waiting to be unloaded during set-up, and vague conclusions about how many people fly in on private jets. That's all you've got? Did you research it at all?

Redford founded Sundance with the idea of connecting and fostering arts and the environment, and environmental protection and preservation is of the highest priorities of the Institute and Festival. Even as just a seasonal employee, I would vouch fervently for this commitment.

Dr. Rushton also sent me this article (NYT plays dumb about Sundance) that is a good response to the first.

Here are a few of my own examples:

This year, Sundance did not sell bottled water - they're giving out BPA-free nalgene bottles and placing Brita fill-up hydration stations around, with the message of reducing bottled-water waste. The number of film guides (~75 pages, newsprint) printed was cut way back to save paper. The city shuttle system is free for all, and beefed up with more frequent routes for festival weeks, so that driving private vehicles can be highly discouraged.

I did more research and learned this:
Electricity used for all venues and theaters is offset by clean, renewable wind energy, through a partnership with Rocky Mountain Power's Blue Sky program. The CO2 emissions avoided by these offsets is equivalent to protecting one acre of forest.

Just a few examples that I'm familiar with working in the box office, I'm sure there are many more. I was disappointed with the New York Times article, it was unresearched and embarrassing for them; clearly written by a green journalist, and I don't mean eco-friendly.

A couple more films

Mystery Team was amazing. It's written, produced, and acted by Derrick Comedy, which is a group of five kids that met at NYU and worked in the same comedy sketch group. They started making short videos online, that gained so much viewership and popularity, they decided to do a full-length feature, and landed in Sundance; further proof Sundance really is fostering new, young, filmmakers, not just hosting the dog and pony show for those already famous. Mystery Team made me laugh, the entire audience laughed; and I think it represented a new style of comedy, different from predictable tv sitcoms, more clever than blockbuster holiday comedies; it was original and fresh, and had wonderful characters. The humor style was geeky and sophisticated at the same time. Afterward, during the talkback, someone in the audience asked, "When can I get this on DVD?!" The response was, "When someone in this audience picks it up for distribution." I also found I was sitting right in the middle of the production crew, one guy on my left, three to my right, who all did the taping and editing, etc. None were much older than college students.

Then this morning I saw Lulu and Jimi, a German film, a scandalous love story set in Germany in the 1950's, which was fantastical, colorful, highly stylized, and filled with Rock and Roll. It had some dark undertones, but I really enjoyed it. I got a couple extra tickets for my Australian roommates, so they came along too. Ray Fearon (Jimi) spoke after the film, and was so charming and fun to listen to. We proceeded to act like fawning fans do, and got our photo taken with him. I went back into work after that, and the day went quickly.

More films tomorrow, and more updates later.

In the ticket line

Sundance is off to a bustling start. I work long days. I try to see films late into the night. I am sitting in line under a tent right now, waiting to get a comp staff ticket for Mystery Team. Last night, I saw Rudo y Cursi, a film from Mexico making its North American premiere, about two rival brothers played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna (both from Y Tu Mama Tambien). It was a beautiful film, and the director, cast, and crew did a Q&A afterward, which was really neat. I was walking down the street talking about it on my cell afterward, and the guy walking behind me says "it was just picked up by this afternoon, by Sony." "Congratulations, it was really great," I said back. Later, I stopped by the post-screening talk back for Spring Breakdown, a new comedy with Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch from SNL. Someone asked, what was your inspiration for the film? And they replied something to the effect of, dumb stuff you do in college.

Then in the afternoon I snuck out of work for a few hours and saw The Greatest, which is in the US Dramatic Competition. It stars Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon, who were both there, and Carrie Mulligan, a young actress who has TWO movies in Sundance this year. It is about a family who loses a son. It was particularly interesting to hear the screenwriter and director, Shana Feste, speak about the central theme of grief, and how it influenced her upbringing, her father having lost a son before she was born. When she spoke, her expressive gratefulness and graciousness to have her film be selected in Sundance really showed, and made the film more endearing.

More updates soon.

More on blending arts & advertising, from Australia

I posted on this before; seeing more creative art in advertising because the only way to get people to watch ads anymore, and not zip right through them, is to give them some entertainment value. This is done, I imagine, by creative individuals, artists to some degree at least, not just sales/business people as may have been more traditional.

My Australian roommates Rachel and Edda pointed me toward this commercial for an Australian airline, Qantas, that uses the Australian Youth Choir singing in worldwide locations in their ad. I thought it was really great - it's a beautifully directed children's choir, and it makes me (and them!) want to watch the ad again and again.

On a side note, I thought it was interesting that the Youth Choir is part of the National Institute of Youth Performing Arts, but receives no funding from any government or corporate entity, and undertakes no fundraising. All of their income is from tuition fees, concert performances and merchandising. Hmm.. must be some high tuition. Rachel, now 19, tells me she was chosen from a singing line-up of everyone in her grade 4 class, to be apart of the Choir for a short time.

Fairness: Loyalty versus accessibility

At Sundance, tickets are in high demand, especially for premiere category films and particular screenings in the first few days. We don't say a film "sold out" because it may still be possible for people to get tickets in the waitlist line - but this does not appease many patrons who have bought ticket packages and called to fulfill them over our call-in line and can't get tickets to the screenings they want. Some patrons have been coming to Sundance for years, even decades, and understandably become frustrated that their lottery-assigned time to reserve tickets is later in the process and tickets for some screenings have run out.

Shouldn't they have had the chance to get the best tickets first? Shouldn't they be rewarded for loyalty? Good question.

In many arts non-profits it seems a good idea to offer preferential treatment (such as early ticket selection opportunity) to long-standing patrons, especially those paying big bucks for large ticket packages. The problem is, in an organization as big as Sundance, with an enormous number of people who have been long-standing patrons, plus the number of people who come in as part of the industry/press and artist groups, we would run out of tickets for anyone else if we rewarded everyone who has some kind of connection or loyalty to the organization.

Sundance honors a strong commitment to be accessible to a wide developing independent audience, and also to give some priority to the local Utah community. To be true to these goals, we have to make tickets available to these groups, not just those already in the industry, and those that have been attending for years. The most fair way the ticketing dept has found to make tickets available is with a lottery system - you register to get a time slot and one is randomly assigned to you within a few-day period. This results in happy people, who got early time slots, and generally less-happy people who got later time slots. This puts everyone on the same playing field for ability to obtain tickets.

The idea of accessibility is something we ponder a lot in grad school. As arts administrators, is it our jobs to make the arts accessible to all? To break down stereotypes and social barriers that serve up the arts as "elite?" It seems an ideal notion; art for all. And I've noted this week that this commitment comes at a price - telling loyalists preferential treatment is not available and perhaps risking their support and some sales. It's particularly difficult to honor this when other organizations CAN give preferential treatment to some (often without sacrificing accessibility for all). But I like Sundance's ideals - regardless of how big and popular they get, they seem to stay true to their roots "supporting independent artists and audiences." So I continue to explain on our customer service line this week..."I'm sorry you got a later ticket selection time, but this is the most fair way for everyone to have a chance to get tickets."

Top 40 non-profit websites

It's always fun to see good design, especially in non-profits.
Here is a list of the Top 40 Non-Profit Websites of the year by the DesignM.ag website
http://designm.ag/inspiration/non-profit-websites/
They're worth a look.
The webguys here at Sundance were pleased to make the list.

Democratization and gatekeeping

It's a common idea that entertainment has become more democratized with user-generated content dominating more of our attention in everything from blogs to videos to computer games.

YouTube presents a problem along with its opportunity: no gatekeeper function, resulting in bad videos. With no way to filter what content is good and bad, fewer people will use the service as a form of browsing entertainment. (I know it's most useful to my peers when we need to deliver a newly-made presentation to a group without transporting hardware.)

The Onion's reporting on this is very funny.

So they're stepping up with a little gatekeeping; or at least a way to steer users to making and viewing better content. This is what I've noticed so far:

YouTube Project: Report
In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, the project asks users to submit content that tells a 5-min documentary-style story. It's a contest "intended for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be told." The winners were decided in Dec and now these videos are being promoted on the homepage.

YouTube Project: Direct
In partnership with the Sundance Film Festival 2009, the project asks users to submit short 5-min films incorporating 3 famous props. With a grandprize of a trip to Sundance and a screening of your film there, YT is pushing users to SUBMIT better content. Also by asking users to vote on the 10 selected finalists, YT is helping viewers to find better content to WATCH (and serving some artistic purpose, drawing some attention to young filmmakers.)

YouTube Symphony Orchestra
If you're a musician, you download your part of the custom-written song, and practice, and record and upload yourself playing it. And you can view other people playing their parts to see how you measure up. They then select winners to go play in Carnegie Hall. This is also interesting for what it means for the arts; a new way to find artists, an online-based community for musicians to connect and collaborate, etc.

What do we think? Will efforts like this increase YouTube's use for entertainment purposes, rather than simply looking up music videos? I took a few minutes and watched the Project:Direct finalist short films. Some were ok...