(by guest writer Romona Paden, at Sundance)
: Four years ago Robert Redford�s annual Sundance Film Festival, based in Park City, Utah started an offshoot organization to bring a wider audience to independent film makers via the Internet.
The Sundance Online Film Festival showcases ten short films submitted to the main festival as well as 30 others made specifically for SOFF. Categories showcased here include short subject, animation, and a new forms gallery.
Titles within SOFF are also being screened during Sundance. One of these is called Recipe for Love, an eclectic Flash animation created by New York-based artist Chris Ferrantello.
Amye Osti, SOFF�s executive producer, says the $10 digital pass was introduced this year in an effort to make Sundance online self sustaining and as a means to provide funding for artist stipends. On at least one day of the digital festival, SOFF was gaining 75 subscribers every hour. Subscribers to SOFF can then vote on the films in a kind of “viewer�s choice awards.”
The digital side of Sundance runs from December through mid-February. And, Osti says, there�s a possibility the festival will begin running year round.
“The end goal is always to get the work out there,” she says.
One company looking to help artists do just that is Vancouver-based Digital Film Group. The company provides services for encoding digital cinema, digital film consultation as well as digital-to-film transfer.
Rechna Varma, project manager of the company, says Digital Film has around 45 projects under its belt since it was founded in 1999. Depending on the kind of transfer the company does, costs range from a few thousand dollars to $50,000.
As costs for the services are reasonable, digital technology “democratizes the arts,” she says.
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