MicroCinema Scene

Alex Ferrari exploded onto the Micro scene with his short film Broken which pushed the boundaries of digital cinematography and low-budget special effects. Now he is back with an even more ambitious project: Red Princess Blues. The new project is a feature-length project and is currently in pre-production. To pave the way Ferrari has made a short-film prequel, and this time it’s fully animated.

For a limited time, thanks to Latino Review, you can now view Red Princess Blues: The Book of Violence in it’s entirety. On-line. For free! As you might expect, it’s pretty amazing. You’ve got until February 7th to check it out. HELPFUL HINT: It’s a big file, so let the entire film load before you push play. It makes for a much better viewing experience.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT.

Synopsis: In this tale we meet her as a 12 year old little girl who finds herself in a strange country looking for her father. She is then taken in by a “unique” looking man who goes by Nino. The short film is completely from the perspective of Princess and what she is going through. She soon discovers the “Book of Violence” and slowly begins her journey that one day will lead to vengeance.

If that whets your appetite, head over to the Red Princess Blues site for more information about the animated short and the upcoming feature film.

Benten Films is following up their excellent release of Joe Swanberg’s L.O.L. with another movie that has been tagged as part of the “mumblecore” movement: Aaron Katz’s Quiet City. Benten seems to be positioning themselves as the Criterion Collection of micro-cinema. The Quiet City release is loaded with special features including Katz’s first feature Dance Party, USA. To top it all off, the packaging is BEAUTIFUL.

DISC ONE: QUIET CITY

• Director’s Commentary
• Cast Commentary
• Joe Swanberg’s Quiet City
• The Music of Quiet City
• Footage from the NYC Premiere
• Quiet City Trailer

DISC TWO: DANCE PARTY U.S.A.

This is a pretty killer video that shows how a few guys with digital filmmaking tools recreate the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan. It definitely took a lot of time and hard work, but the results are pretty amazing.

IFC has announced Festival Direct, a new Video-On-Demand label that will specialize in lesser known independent films. “We still see a lot of movies out there that we’re not sure make sense as theatrical titles,” said IFC president Jonathan Sehring. “We know that there’s an audience for these films as a supplement to our existing day-and-date program.”

Festival DIrect will debut Feb. 29 with the following titles:

• Jar City
• It’s a Free World
• Puffball
• Beautiful, Ohio
• Good Time Max

Festival Direct titles will be available for $5.99 via Time Warner, Comcast, Cablevision and Cox.

Every year our friends at B-Independent name an Underground Film Of the Year. Yesterday, B-indie publisher Allen Richards announced that this years award has been given to to Blood, Boobs & Beast - a documentary about legendary B-horror filmmaker Don Dohler.

Allen Richards: “Another year has gone by and that means it’s time again for me to announce B-Independent.com’s Underground Film of the Year. Some truly wonderful films were submitted this year, but only one touched me on both an intellectual and emotional level - John Paul Kinhart’s documentary Blood, Boobs & Beast.”

Past winners of the award include MicroCinema Scene Favorites Radio Free Steve, Meat Market, Sixteen Tongues and Last Rites of the Dead. Head over to B-Independent and read the full review.

Microcinema heavy-hitters Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma), Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and M dot Strange (We Are The Strange) have joined forces to create From Here To Awesome - a film festival that truly addresses the changing filmmaking landscape. Exploiting new internet-driven distribution models, the festival’s intent is to connect films to their audience. The festival itself will consist of 10 features, 10 shorts and 10 virtual panels and will be screened via on-line channels and alternative real-world venues such as mobile drive-ins, microcinemas and the occasional living room.

Have you made a film you think the world should see? From Here To Awesome is a discovery and distribution festival that might be the perfect system to get your film blasted to audiences in theaters, living rooms, online and via mobile phones. All filmmakers are welcome to be a part of the festival. There are NO submission fees, filmmakers retain their rights while receiving revenue directly from the distribution outlets. A wide range of major promotional partners and distribution platforms are on board. All we need now is your film. Please submit ASAP to give the festival’s audience time to vote your film into the top 10, so it can be a part of the April Showcase.

Best of all… there are NO entry fees.

For more information, visit From Here to Awesome.

The 2008 Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing and although we aren’t there, we will be keeping an eye out for any product announcements with micro-filmmaking applications. The Casio EX-1 is an interesting new camera that was unveiled today. Although I haven’t been able to find a retail price, this camera shoots in Super-Slow Motion at frame rates up to 1200fps. UPDATE: Suggested retail price is $999.

The downside is that the camera scales the image back to 336×96 at 1200fps. Engadget reports: “Still, the results are startling even when set at 300fps (with the bonus of a much higher resolution) when compared to a typical camera’s 30fps recordings.” See for yourself in this YouTube clip.

The filmmakers at Alter Ego Cinema know a good thing when they see it. Their micro-budget ($45) film Amateur Porn Star Killer generated a lot of internet buzz, a DVD release and even a limited theatrical run. Now director Shane Ryan has made a sequel - slashing the budget this time to only $20.

According to the Alter Ego Press Release: “The new film, while adding a couple more people to the crew, still stays true to the original shoot by focusing the majority of the film on just two actors, but this time the budget actually dropped to a mere $20. Yes, $20, that’s correct, there’s nothing wrong with your eyes. And that’s not the fun part. The fact that a $20 movie is getting major distribution isn’t the only humor in this either. Nope. What’s real amusing and completely unheard of, is that this $20 movie has secured a deal based on the trailer alone, the film wasn’t even close to being finished when the release date was set.”

Amateur Porn Star Killer 2 will be rleased on May 13, 2007 by Koch Entertainment and Cinema Epoch. If the sequel generates as much interest as the original, Ryan says he has at least four Amateur Porn Star Killer flicks planned. Meanwhile, he continues his quest to finance his dream project: Romance Road Killers. “If I don’t find anything within the next year, I’ll just do it myself,” says Ryan.

It’s a new year and time for a new direction here at MicroCinema Scene. Regular readers will have noticed that we have been down for some time now and you’ve probably wondering what the hell was going on. Here’s an explanation:

EXPANDING OUR FOCUS

Since 2003, MicroCinema Scene has covered the world of no-budget moviemaking. What’s remarkable is how much has changed in that brief span of time. MiniDV was the hot new technology and getting your movie on DVD was the ultimate goal. The term “microcinema” specifically referred to small exhibition spaces that screened independent or underground movies. Things have changed dramatically.

High Definition cameras are now an affordable option. The internet has opened up countless new ways to distribute, network and even find financing for independent projects. In 2008, a microcinema could be you, an iPod and a digital download.

While we will continue to review as many DVD releases as you can send us, we will be seriously expanding our focus to cover work that that is being released digitally. We will also be exploring these technologies as they advance, always looking for ways they can be exploited by independent filmmakers. Just to clarify, we want to add to our coverage, not replace the old with the new.

With that in mind, we saw a need to do a lot of work to the site itself, so that we can publish more content and move faster when it comes to incorporating new technology.

THE NEW SITE

You’ll notice immediately that quite a bit has changed about how the site looks. What might not be as readily apparent is that the site has changed structurally as well. MCS now uses Wordpress as it’s Content Management System.

Wordpress is primarily known for being a popular, free, open source blogging platform. I’ve used it for quite a few sites over the last few years (including my personal blog) and as the software advances I’m starting to become more and more impressed with it’s capabilities as a CMS. Also, it has a very simple user interface that makes it easy for our growing group of contributors to directly submit content.

I also believe that Wordpress is a very important tool for the indie filmmakers publicity arsenal and will be writing a series of articles about this in the near future.

There are still a lot of kinks to work out. A lot of the articles look really ugly right now because of code that carried over from previous versions of the site. Some of the old content is difficult to access. We are working to fix this and soon our entire archive will be clean, nice-looking, fast loading and easy to find.

THE FORUM

The MicroCinema Scene forum has always been a huge part of this site. We are working on a new system that will solve some of the problems we had with previous versions of the forum. Forum 1.0 was getting completely besieged by spammers. Since the site is a completely volunteer run project, spending hours deleting messages and banning IPs was becoming a real drag. Forum 2.0 was relatively SPAM free, but slow to load and increasingly buggy. Forum 3.0 should alleviate these problems and develop into a place that keeps the spirit of the old forums, but that makes communication even easier. If everything comes together as we think it will, you should even be able to access it via your mobile devices.

Meanwhile, you’ll notice that all of the reviews and articles have a comments section. We would love if you took advantage of this, because nothing on this site should be seen as one-way communication. Everything we publish should be seen as an invitation to conversation and community.

Thanks for bearing with us during our recent downtime. Stay tuned and get involved because some cool stuff is on its way.

And most importantly… keep making movies!

It’s January. Your geek-sense should be tingling because that means it’s time for new product announcements. Here are two buzze about projects that I’m particularly excited about:

1. The RED Mini
At last years NAB, Red honcho Jim Jannard hinted that a pocket version of the RED would be unveiled for NAB 2008. This product is now confirmed and it even has a name: Scarlett. Jannard posted the following at reduser.net:

“Scarlet. Our Pocket Professional camera.

We know that the name has leaked out, so we want to avoid any postings and speculation.

Prototypes will be shown at NAB. It is not a competitor or replacement for the RED ONE.

Jim”

2. Apple’s new motion graphics application

When Apple slashed the price on Shake last year, it immediately triggered a wave of speculation about what was coming next. A product code-named “Phenomenon” has been whispered about for over a year. Now AppleInsider reports that Apple will be unveiling something “super-secret” on January 16th at a MacWorld meeting of Final Cut professionals. This is a day after the Steve Jobs keynote which is sure to include some new product announcements as well. Although I’ve been editing on AVID more lately, Final Cut is my first love when it comes to editing and I can’t wait to see what they unveil.

What new cameras, software or other gear are you looking forward to in 2008?