Takin' it to the streets. (Viewpoint Film).(Mill Valley Film Festival speakers address impact of digital video on independent filmmakers)(Panel Discussion)

During the past couple of years, George Lucas has been preaching and demonstrating the advantages of digital cinema, exhibitors at the National Association of Broadcasters convention have made the switch from all analog to mostly digital products, and Apple has been transforming its Macintosh into a digital video studio.

Recently several speakers at the Mill Valley Film Festival (www.mvff.com) addressed the impact of digital video on independent filmmakers--and opened my eyes to how deeply digital video is affecting people in the community outside and beyond the professionals.

For example, Ryan Kennedy, a recent college graduate, is using digital video tools to experiment with new forms of cinema. His film (and college thesis) Control, a dark, sci-fi thriller now making the festival rounds, was shot with a Canon digital video camera, composited with After Effects, and edited with Final Cut Pro. "My thesis was to have music narrate the piece," he says, "to tell the story through music and video." The result seems both linear and non-linear--that is, there is a linear story line, but the images don't always appear in a predictable manner.

For Bruno George, new projects director at Alpha Cine Labs, which specializes in convening video to film, the impact of digital video on filmaking is stunning. "It's struck me in the past few weeks that when I got into filmmaking, it was high end," he says. "When I was 16, great cinematographers showed us how to take pictures. Now, the technology has moved down to consumers. Everyone from cops to Steven Soderbergh is making movies with the same gear."

Mac and PC-based editing, effects, and compositing tools have been within reach of consumers, or at least "prosumers" and, therefore, independent filmmakers for a while. And now, digital video cameras that can produce cinema-like images have begun moving downstream as well. The new Panasonic 24P, for example, captures cinema-like 24 flames-per-second digital video (or NTSC). At $3795, the palm-size minicam puts digital cinema into the hands of independent filmmakers--and its out put straight into a nonlinear editing system.

"People are in love with movie making and they're obviously in love with the process, says John Sanborn, a writer, designer and director whose work has appeared on Comedy Central and the Web. "The audience is incredibly literate about what these tools can do. No one looks at an image today with a naive eye. They know how movies are put together. But while our generation sees moviemaking as inclusive or exclusive, my daughter's generation has no boundaries. There are no barriers between having the knowledge and sharing the knowledge; movies become just another way for people to tell stories. It's a good thing. That's what changes the world."

Changing the world might be a lofty assumption, but it seems to be happening. Already, non-profit organizations are helping community members use digital video to create films to tell personal stories and sometimes do a little muckraking.