How does one organise a film festival?

On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:25:06 GMT, "Bruce Calvert"
<silentfilmxspam.RemoveThis@verizon.net> wrote:

>"J. Theakston" <tomservorobot.RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:1191461137.001116.252050@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
>> 2) 2 35mm projectors set up for reel-to-reel. Don't bother running
>> silent stuff unless you have variable speeds put into them. You can't
>> run archival prints without this very important point.
>
>Jack has some outstanding advice. I'm going to nit-pick on this point
>though. First of all, many late silents, plus the Harold Lloyd features,
>the Chaplin Mutuals, are available with recorded soundtracks. These could
>be shown at 24 fps, and you might not even have to have a special aperature
>plate for the full silent frame size. Other silents that might not have a
>track, like some Douglas Fairbanks films or late 1920s Hal Roach films, will
>look just fine at 24 fps. You won't have much luck with most films from the
>1910s though.
>
>Also, if your budget is limited, or you want to start small and grow bigger,
>you can always start with 16mm. In fact, a.m.s. member Chris Jacobs lives
>in Fargo, N.D. and he has an extensive 16mm collection. The Kansas Silent
>Film Festival in Topeka, KS shows mostly 16mm films to large crowds. There
>are several places that rent 16mm films. While Swank has a huge selection,
>their classic films are not always in good shape, and they are expensive.
>Kino, Douris, and Milestone are other sources.
>
>You should famaliarize yourself with which films are copyrighted, and which
>are public domain.
>
>And if the silent does not have a soundtrack, don't forget the live music!
>
>--
>Bruce Calvert

I'm hoping that as titles are released on HD (BluRay or HD-DVD)
they'll also be available for theatrical showings, that way you'll be
assured of (generally) the best prints possible. HD certainly isn't
film, but it's darn close to what's often *used* as film resolution.
The width of HD is 1920 pixels, whereas for example, we did the FX for
Titanic at 2048 pixels, which is only 6% more. (Actually, since
Titanic was 2.35:1, it actually has less pixels than a full of frame
HD-- 2 million pixels for HD vs 1.78 million.) So with a good
projector an HD disc should look really great. And there are some
very good (and affordable) projectors available these days, especially
for small/medium venues.

For silents, it even makes it easier for the accompanist to rehearse,
since they can view the actual "print" at home (or wherever they
rehearse).

It could actually become viable for small town theaters, at least with
well-known classics and some advertising.

A few weeks ago I even saw NTSC uprezzed and projected in a theater
and it looked great. Granted it was a cartoon, which is more
forgiving, but still, I doubt anyone else in the theater knew or
cared.
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

"J. Theakston" <tomservorobot RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1191461137.001116.252050@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> 2) 2 35mm projectors set up for reel-to-reel. Don't bother running
> silent stuff unless you have variable speeds put into them. You can't
> run archival prints without this very important point.

Jack has some outstanding advice. I'm going to nit-pick on this point
though. First of all, many late silents, plus the Harold Lloyd features,
the Chaplin Mutuals, are available with recorded soundtracks. These could
be shown at 24 fps, and you might not even have to have a special aperature
plate for the full silent frame size. Other silents that might not have a
track, like some Douglas Fairbanks films or late 1920s Hal Roach films, will
look just fine at 24 fps. You won't have much luck with most films from the
1910s though.

Also, if your budget is limited, or you want to start small and grow bigger,
you can always start with 16mm. In fact, a.m.s. member Chris Jacobs lives
in Fargo, N.D. and he has an extensive 16mm collection. The Kansas Silent
Film Festival in Topeka, KS shows mostly 16mm films to large crowds. There
are several places that rent 16mm films. While Swank has a huge selection,
their classic films are not always in good shape, and they are expensive.
Kino, Douris, and Milestone are other sources.

You should famaliarize yourself with which films are copyrighted, and which
are public domain.

And if the silent does not have a soundtrack, don't forget the live music!

--
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

On Oct 4, 1:00 am, Fred <fw... RemoveThis @hotmailx.com> wrote:
> I'm hoping that as titles are released on HD (BluRay or HD-DVD)
> they'll also be available for theatrical showings, that way you'll be
> assured of (generally) the best prints possible.

I would generally advise not to do this for a number of reasons:

1) The biggest, of course, is that you can't charge admission when
running video with any major studio. I know it sounds dumb, but they
want you to run 35mm, and for good reason, of course.

2) I don't know what equipment you're going to use, but generally,
while the consumer equipment I've seen looks good in a 10 foot
setting, blown up any further is going to be stretching the
limitations of the format, particularly on the brightness. 35mm and
even 16mm have the luxury of being ready with high-power Xenon
lamphouses.

3) Word of mouth gets around, and no matter how good it looks,
particularly with cinephiles, which will be the majority of your
audience, they don't want to see something they can see at home (ie. a
DVD or video). They want the full experience-- film on film, live
accompaniment.

And Bruce is right-- I overlooked some films can be run at 24fps for
brevity's sake. You can run this stuff without any problem, but if
you're going to start installing equipment, you might as well go all
the way and put in some controllable motors.

J. Theakston
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

The Keaton Celebration started small, with people who knew nothing
about film; they got together and had dinner and watched a movie, then
divided up tasks and got to work. So it can be done. The Chautauqua
Silent Film Festival runs on 16mm and DVD, and while it doesn't bring
in many folks from outside the area, it has a big enough local
following to keep going year after year.

Having the festival sponsored by a museum, library, university or
nonprofit can help. On the other hand, it means often relinquishing
artistic control to a committee, so don't take things too seriously if
you don't get every film you want. By not charging any admission, the
Kansas Silent Film Festival manages to get many films from archives
without paying a rental fee.

Mont Alto would be interested in a North Dakota gig (our violinst
hails from there), though that would require a bit of fund-raising and/
or grant money. Kansas has a "Kansas Touring Program" that will use
state arts funds to cover half the performance fee for approved groups
-- see if North Dakota has a similar arts program.

Live music for silents turns the festival from "just" a film festival
into a sort of concert, and often helps your press. It's a "hook" that
you can hang a newspaper or radio story on. And say what you will
about the Alloy Orchestra (and I know people will), they have a great
story, they draw a crowd, and their live shows are polished,
entertaining, and enjoyable. AND-- the Alloy and Mont Alto know how to
go about obtaining prints of the films they perform for, in various
formats. And cultivate some local pianists and organists so that you
can have lower-budget more flexible options for your secondary
screenings, or occasional off-season screenings.

Start with some crowd-attracting films (The General, Go West,
Metropolis, The Mark of Zorro) or some easy-to-market films (Sunrise
won the only academy award for Most Artistic Production, The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse features Rudolph Valentino dancing the
tango). Add some hilarious short films (Charley Chase, Buster Keaton)
to let people know that even films they haven't heard of are worth
seeing. Fill out the program with a couple of unusual films that YOU
want to see. Don't forget to show a big crowd-pleaser every year.

Rodney Sauer
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
www.mont-alto.com
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:00:15 -0000, "J. Theakston"
<tomservorobot.TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Oct 4, 1:00 am, Fred <fw....TakeThisOut@hotmailx.com> wrote:
>> I'm hoping that as titles are released on HD (BluRay or HD-DVD)
>> they'll also be available for theatrical showings, that way you'll be
>> assured of (generally) the best prints possible.
>
>I would generally advise not to do this for a number of reasons:
>
>1) The biggest, of course, is that you can't charge admission when
>running video with any major studio. I know it sounds dumb, but they
>want you to run 35mm, and for good reason, of course.

I'm not talking about picking up a disk at a store and showing it, I'm
talking about the studios providing HD disks as an alternative to film
prints. The cost savings of doing it that way should be extremely
attractive to them, at least as much as it is for major theatrical
releases. Think about it, as movies are remastered in HD, they can
provide them for theatrical exhibition at no extra cost. So instead
of having to deal with film prints, they can disks instead. That
means they can have more films and more copies of each film available.

>
>2) I don't know what equipment you're going to use, but generally,
>while the consumer equipment I've seen looks good in a 10 foot
>setting, blown up any further is going to be stretching the
>limitations of the format, particularly on the brightness. 35mm and
>even 16mm have the luxury of being ready with high-power Xenon
>lamphouses.

I never said consumer equipment. And like I said, from at least the
early 90's till around 2003 or so (and in some cases still), visual
effects films had only 6% better resolution than HD. I've heard many
complaints about Titanic, but none regarding noticable pixels.

>3) Word of mouth gets around, and no matter how good it looks,
>particularly with cinephiles, which will be the majority of your
>audience, they don't want to see something they can see at home (ie. a
>DVD or video). They want the full experience-- film on film, live
>accompaniment.

All theaters are making the switch over to digital. And digital
projection is seen as a desirable thing to most theater goers, because
they know they're seeing a better "print" than they'd see otherwise.
There are even web sites that people go to specifically to find
digital showings. It won't be long (less than 10 years) until each
and every "theater near you" will be digital.

Also, I never said there wouldn't be live accompaniment. In fact, I
specifically said it would make live accompaniment *easier* because
the accompanist would have easy access to the exact print of the film.


As for going to theaters to see things available for home, people go
to the theater for the social aspect at least as much as to simply see
the movie. It's just (for most people, myself included) better to see
films up on a big screen and with an audience. That's especially true
of silent comedies. (As an aside, I recently went to sold out
screenings of Lawrence of Arabia and 2001, both of which are readily
available on home video and have been since the beginning.) And if
going digital means that getting the movies is cheaper (rentals should
be at least a little cheaper, and shipping should be negligible), then
prices can be a little cheaper too. Speaking for myself, I'd gladly
go to a theater showing things off of BluRay as long as the projector
was up to the task. And remember, most revival theaters have smaller
screens than the majors. I know, for example, that good HD projection
would look fantastic at the Silent Theater in LA.

Lastly, out here in LA, most theaters run video before the movie
starts (in lieu of music), and that video is just NTSC. While it's
not the greatest, it's easy to comprehend how HD, even on screens that
big, could look wonderful.

Fred

PS: I'm working on a project right now that's being done in HD
resolution and will be projected on screens that are 30 feet tall.
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

On Oct 4, 11:16 am, Fred <fw....DeleteThis@hotmailx.com> wrote:

> I'm not talking about picking up a disk at a store and showing it, I'm
> talking about the studios providing HD disks as an alternative to film
> prints. The cost savings of doing it that way should be extremely
> attractive to them, at least as much as it is for major theatrical
> releases. Think about it, as movies are remastered in HD, they can
> provide them for theatrical exhibition at no extra cost. So instead
> of having to deal with film prints, they can disks instead. That
> means they can have more films and more copies of each film available.

The problem here, I think, is that DVD itself, whether standard or
high definiton, has become a relatively ordinary experience for much
of the public.
Millions of people have the ability to play DVDs in their homes; only
a tiny fraction has ever been able to run 35 mm. So even if a
particular film hasn't been released on DVD yet, showing it in that
format might lead people to conclude, "There's nothing special here;
we theoretically *could* watch this film from a disc if the studio
chose to release it that way". Film itself has an aura of romanticism
that more practical (if more mundane) media tend to lack.

-Harold
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

On Oct 4, 2:30 pm, Harold Aherne <leotolstoy....TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> The problem here, I think, is that DVD itself, whether standard or
> high definiton, has become a relatively ordinary experience for much
> of the public.
> Millions of people have the ability to play DVDs in their homes; only
> a tiny fraction has ever been able to run 35 mm. So even if a
> particular film hasn't been released on DVD yet, showing it in that
> format might lead people to conclude, "There's nothing special here;
> we theoretically *could* watch this film from a disc if the studio
> chose to release it that way". Film itself has an aura of romanticism
> that more practical (if more mundane) media tend to lack.
>
> -Harold

============================================
This is certainly true for many film buffs, but Fred is right that
this is changing across the country as we speak (or write). Here in
Grand Forks, ND, every first-run movie theatre is now running 2k HD
video (aka "digital") and although I can usually tell from a glance
that it has an artificial crispness and "edge" to it, audiences in
general love it (mainly because of poorly trained projector
"operators" who couldn't thread a film in frame to save their lives or
couldn't figure out how to avoid platter wraps that destroy several
feet of film). They may or may not realize that a high-end (very
expensive now) home Blu-Ray projection system is only marginally less
sharp than current theatrical showings. (And the vast majority of HD
tv sets currently being pushed are only 720p resolution rather than
1080.)

If good HD transfers of silents could be put onto BluRay DVDs, and a
bright theatre-quality 3-chip DLP projector that is properly
calibrated were used to show them, I would guess that 95 percent of
the audience would never know it was video and not film unless you
told them, and most of those (unless they're die-hard film purists
like us) might even go out of their way to see it if they knew it was
"digital." And then BluRay copies would be available for home viewing
for those who could actually afford the high-resolution home
projectors and aren't annoyed by single-chip DLP color fringing
artefacts.

It's now at the point, where video projector quality (and competence
of those calibrating them) is just as important as print quality used
to be. Poor film presentation these days is probably more common than
poor video presentation, even though film at its best far surpasses
the best currently available commercial video.

As noted before, the success of any silent series will more likely
depend upon a promotable live music accompaniment and/or various tie-
ins to local or regional connections than on print quality or video
presentation (much as I would prefer everything on 35mm nitrate or at
least 16mm Kodascopes).

--Christopher Jacobs
http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/cjacobs
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:30:05 -0700, Harold Aherne
<leotolstoy_75.RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Oct 4, 11:16 am, Fred <fw....RemoveThis@hotmailx.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm not talking about picking up a disk at a store and showing it, I'm
>> talking about the studios providing HD disks as an alternative to film
>> prints. The cost savings of doing it that way should be extremely
>> attractive to them, at least as much as it is for major theatrical
>> releases. Think about it, as movies are remastered in HD, they can
>> provide them for theatrical exhibition at no extra cost. So instead
>> of having to deal with film prints, they can disks instead. That
>> means they can have more films and more copies of each film available.
>
>The problem here, I think, is that DVD itself, whether standard or
>high definiton, has become a relatively ordinary experience for much
>of the public.
>Millions of people have the ability to play DVDs in their homes; only
>a tiny fraction has ever been able to run 35 mm. So even if a
>particular film hasn't been released on DVD yet, showing it in that
>format might lead people to conclude, "There's nothing special here;
>we theoretically *could* watch this film from a disc if the studio
>chose to release it that way". Film itself has an aura of romanticism
>that more practical (if more mundane) media tend to lack.

Well, first of all, it wouldn't be advertised as "Come see our DVD!"
The films would be presented as digital presentations, just like what
you see in movie theaters today. Real "projection resolution." Yes,
there will be people who will call up and say "will it be 35?" but
outside of the big cities, there won't be many people like that.

Film projectors are going away, and studios/distributors will not keep
up their print libraries just for the tiny handful of revival
screenings. And other than the romance of projecting film, that's
fine. While film has a higher theoretical resolution, by the time you
see a release print that resolution has gone down to slightly more
than HD (except for 65mm of course). So, for example, if Warner
Brothers does a high def transfer of The Big Parade and cleans it up
for a BluRay release, what do you think they'd rather do in terms of
theatrical rentals? Put a copy of the BluRay version aside, or spend
thousands of dollars creating a film print? And how long will that
film print look good for? Going HD would automatically allow them to
have ALL of their titles available (in great quality) for theatrical
exhibition, instead of just the biggies like Gone With the Wind and
The Wizard of Oz.

People go to theaters to see things on big screens and with crowds.
The projection format is irrelevant. I'd rather sit down with a few
hundred people to watch a pristine digital projection than a chewed up
mess of a 16 or even 35mm print. As for the look of film, I too like
it, but since these movies were all shot on film, they'll still have
that look-- the grain and halation will still be there.

And speaking of all this, tomorrow night (Friday) I'm going to a
screening of The Jazz Singer (1927) that will be digitally projected
from a digital file. It'll be 4k, not HD, I think, but still, it'll
be, at best, a glorified high resolution DVD. And this is at the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

One other thing to consider, which is why I was ruminating on this in
the first place, is that going digital means a LOT more people will be
able to see these films in the theater. It becomes easy and
affordable to do. Yes, ideally there'd be 4k digital versions, but
again that would be cost-prohibitive to small theaters. Heck, it's
even possible that you'd be allowed to use the commercially released
disk, but just contact the distributor and arrange payment.

By the way, I've seen HDV, which is only 1440x1080 projected onto a
big screen and it looked great. The only issue I had with it was
lousy compression during fast motion, but that's an HDV compression
problem. (HDV is the High Def version of MiniDV tapes that consumer
camcorders use. It's the same tape actually, just a different
compression scheme-- higher compression-- to allow the higher
resolution to fit.)

I'm sorry to have this all seem like such a long rant. I just see a
lot of possibilities opened up by the prospect of HD.

Fred
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

>Live music for silents turns the festival from "just" a film festival
>into a sort of concert, and often helps your press. It's a "hook" that
>you can hang a newspaper or radio story on.

This is a big part of getting the press interested-- making it more
than "just" movies. When I started a film society in Wichita in the
80s I made a big point of making sure every season had one or two
shows that were more than movies-- Louise Brooks relatives at a
screening of her films (including what I billed as the Kansas premiere
of Diary of a Lost Girl, doubting that anyone could prove otherwise),
Les Blank documentaries with food cooked in the theater to provide
"Aromarama," William S. Burroughs reading before the documentary about
his life, etc. Novelty and a sense of humor go a LONG way toward
getting press-- a lot longer than a Palme d'Or or the judgement of
history...
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival? 

<mikegebert.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1191522592.348404.58800@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> This is a big part of getting the press interested-- making it more
> than "just" movies. When I started a film society in Wichita in the
> 80s I made a big point of making sure every season had one or two
> shows that were more than movies-- Louise Brooks relatives at a
> screening of her films (including what I billed as the Kansas premiere
> of Diary of a Lost Girl, doubting that anyone could prove otherwise),
> Les Blank documentaries with food cooked in the theater to provide
> "Aromarama," William S. Burroughs reading before the documentary about
> his life, etc. Novelty and a sense of humor go a LONG way toward
> getting press-- a lot longer than a Palme d'Or or the judgement of
> history...

Door prizes work too. At our local screenings, we've given away DVDs of
UNKNOWN CHAPLIN for a silent movie night. We got them cheap on closeout.
For a Roy Rogers western, we bought several Roy Rogers decks of playing
cards on Ebay (cheaply).


--
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
 >> Stay informed about: How does one organise a film festival?