AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

LA Times “Web Scout” blog
Enter a cineplex this summer and you’re basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole — the biz term for a colossally expensive movie — is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man — incredibly! [...]

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Variety
Conference offers animation fest, 3-D tech
As it prepares to return to Los Angeles for 2008, the Siggraph computer graphics conference and tradeshow unveiled its most Hollywood-friendly program and schedule ever, including greater access to its animation fest, 3-D technology and a tribute to the late Stan Winston.
Siggraph organizers held a media sneak peek at Sony [...]

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The New York Times
The nonprofit Tribeca Film Institute in New York is joining Amazon.com to create a digital marketplace for films and videos that have been stuck in archives with limited circulation or have been otherwise unavailable through conventional retail and Web outlets
The service, called Reframe, is expected to become active on Monday through an [...]

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TechCrunch
IndieFlix, a marketplace for independent films, has launched MyFestival, a new streaming video site that will let film festivals crowdsource the movie selection process. MyFestival is making its debut in conjunction with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), which is taking place from May 22 to June 15.
For MyFestival’s pilot trial at SIFF, users will [...]

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YouTube Blog
Generally speaking, Cannes is considered the grand-mère of all film festivals. For 11 days every spring, the cinematic world descends on this beach town in the south of France to celebrate everything film, from the lowest-budget student shorts to the summer’s biggest blockbusters.
Starting today and for the next 11 days, we’ll be featuring [...]

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Variety
Film Institute awards artists $35,000 each
The Tribeca Film Institute has awarded its 2008 Media Arts Fellowships to 20 filmmakers and media artists, who each receive $35,000.
Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, awards are presented in narrative, documentary, experimental, installation and computer-generated media genres.
Twelve of the 20 winners this year are women, marking the first time the [...]

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Variety
Pierre Collier’s design salutes director’s vision
David Lynch will get star billing at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival next month — although not with a film.
The fest’s official poster, to be unveiled this week , was created by artist Pierre Collier around a Lynch photograph of a bust of a platinum blonde woman with her eye [...]

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Oil and Hollywood Don’t Always Mix - The New York Times
LAST fall, just as the movie capital was starting to panic over slowing injections of cash from hedge funds, Warner Brothers struck oil.
The studio, home to Bugs Bunny and Harry Potter, reached an unusual multibillion-dollar agreement with investors in Abu Dhabi. The partners agreed to [...]

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Like its well-fed folks, the Austin, Texas, gathering is swelling - The Los Angeles
High-profile studio films have been added to the lineup.
You see them uplinking everywhere: bloggers, techies and assorted Internet enthusiasts (don’t call them geeks) hunched over laptops, tapping away at iPhones and wielding digital video recorders with the kind of abandon more [...]

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Babelgum invests $15 million in shorts - Variety
Investment to look into exclusive content
Internet TV network Babelgum has earmarked Euro 10 million ($15.4 million) fund that will invest in new, original and exclusive content.
The coin will fund specially commissioned 15-minute documentaries and narrative shorts.
Longer-form docs on specific themes — the environment is one major area [...]

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