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YouTube wants you to film your day for a Ridley Scott documentary
They're working with director Kevin Macdonald on a sequel to 2010's 'Life in a Day.'
Amazon secures CIA torture thriller 'The Report' at Sundance
Just days after it nabbed the US rights for Mindy Kaling's crowd-pleaser Late Night for a record $13 million, Amazon has doubled down on the Sundance hits by nabbing The Report. The film -- a political thriller starring Adam Driver that probes the CIA's use of torture -- has garnered buzz at the indie film festival for its taut writing and performances. Amazon forked out somewhere in the region of $14 million to secure the film globally, reports Variety.
Amazon sets Sundance record by acquiring Mindy Kaling's 'Late Night'
Amazon might just be the biggest player at the Sundance Film Festival this year. The internet giant has spent $13 million to acquire the US rights to Late Night, a movie written, produced and starring Mindy Kaling. As Deadline pointed out, that's a record for any US-only deal at Sundance -- even Amazon's $12 million rights deal for The Big Sick included a few places beyond American borders. There was reportedly a fierce four-way fight for the movie, suggesting that Amazon was determined to stay on top.
YouTube snags the rights to Eminem-produced satirical film ‘Bodied’
YouTube has acquired the rights to Eminem-produced Bodied, a satirical film that takes place within the Oakland hip-hop scene. It's co-written and directed by Joseph Kahn -- director of 2004's Torque as well as music videos for everyone from Taylor Swift to Eminem -- and follows a grad student who decides to jump into the rap battle scene. The student, played by Calum Worthy (Austin & Ally, American Vandal), is successful, which doesn't sit well with others in Oakland's underground hip-hop world.
Amazon Prime members can stream 15 Sundance Film Festival titles
Today, Amazon announced that 15 Sundance Film Festival titles are now available for Prime members through Amazon Video Direct. The films include Manifesto, starring Cate Blanchett, and festival award winners Marjorie Prime and Free and Easy.
Sundance champ 'Birth of a Nation' chose Fox over Netflix
This weekend Nate Parker's film The Birth of a Nation won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury and Audience prizes for a drama, just days after signing a record $17.5 million distribution deal with Fox Searchlight. That was in contrast to a number of other flicks that ended up signing with Netflix or Amazon, and there's a reason. While reports from The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter claim Netflix offered as much as $20 million during an all night bidding war, Parker wanted a large theatrical release for the movie. While Netflix movies are open for theatrical releases, so far they've had extremely limited showings because the company insists on offering them for streaming on the same day -- most theater owners don't want the competition.
'Star Wars' and the coming holographic cinema revolution
"AR is going to hit us like a big bang," says ILMxLab creative director John Gaeta when I ask him whether augmented reality, as that holographic technology is known, has been undervalued by the public and press. "We're just trying to point out right from the beginning that there will be a form of AR that will be as hi-fidelity as the cinema that you see at some point. I can't say what year that'll be. But at some point, we'll have intimate holo-experiences with performance and things like that."
Nokia president talks Ozo and the company's big VR bet
"We had some projects in augmented reality. We had projects in the camera. We had projects in head-mounted displays," says Nokia Technologies president Ramzi Haidamus, speaking to Engadget at the Sundance Film Festival about the company's virtual reality pivot. "We had projects all over the ecosystem, so to speak. And it was a combination of: How good are we technically? How well are we protected from an IP perspective? And finally, where is the area where we're going to get the biggest advantage from the time to market?"
Funny or Die makes a fart joke in VR
The news itself sounded like a joke: Funny or Die, the irreverent comedy video site created by the likes of Will Ferrell, among others, was to premiere its first-ever virtual reality short at the Sundance Film Festival. Except this wasn't some Onion-style spoof headline; it was very much true. The piece, Interrogation, debuted last Friday on Gear VR at Samsung Studio, a pop-up VR lounge the company installed in Park City, Utah, for the duration of the festival. It stars Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel, faces better known for their work on FX's The League, as two cops trying to get to the bottom of a heinous crime. It is, in essence, an extended and immersive fart joke.
The future of entertainment's taking shape on a flying whale
When Alex McDowell tells me he's considering using virtual reality as "a new kind of literacy," as a way to educate using real science, it's clear that I'm dealing with a visionary. We're sitting beside The Leviathan Project, his "research project" that's taking temporary residence at the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier exhibit, and dissecting the shifting parameters that define this brave new media world. McDowell's a film industry veteran who's worked on production design with the bold-faced names that've directed some of cinema's most unforgettable blockbusters. From the likes of David Fincher with Fight Club to Terry Gilliam with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, McDowell's had a hand in guiding our imagination and steering our conception of the future for several decades.
Amazon and Netflix go on movie shopping spree at Sundance
As the streaming war rages on over original content, the most active buyers at the Sundance Film Festival aren't traditional studios and distributors. Instead, Amazon and Netflix, both of which tout portfolios of original series and movies, are behind a lot of the action. The 11-day festival started late last week, and so far, Amazon had purchased four films while Netflix secured three. While the latter company is said to have its sights on more, The New York Times reports that traditional distributors have been much less active.
How one illustrator forced Oculus Story Studio to redraw VR
During preproduction on its latest virtual reality short, Dear Angelica, Oculus Story Studio found itself in a peculiar situation: The chosen art style, illustration, had necessitated a design pivot. Rather than scan and rebuild the drawings of illustrator Wesley Allsbrook in CG -- a time-consuming process the studio felt would dilute her artistic voice -- the team needed a brand-new tool, one that would let Allsbrook draw directly within VR. And so engineer Inigo Quilez created just that. The end result is Quill, a new VR illustration tool that's evolving along with production on Dear Angelica and Allsbrook's needs and pushing the medium even further.
The VR arcade of the future will look something like this
I knew I was on solid ground. I knew that no matter if I misstepped, I wouldn't fall hundreds of feet, plummeting to my death in some CG-Egyptian ruin. And yet, I was shaky, desperately reaching out for a handhold to steady myself, unable to calmly place one foot in front of the other as I attempted to cross a chasm bridged by a collection of meager wooden beams.
Sundance's experimental New Frontier looks beyond virtual reality
Virtual reality found itself front and center of Utah's wintery celebrity village earlier this year, virtually dominating the conversation around this past Sundance Film Festival. The technology, a burgeoning new medium for artists, game developers, filmmakers, and journalists alike, had reached a cultural tipping point, with the Park City fest playing host to the announcement of a dedicated VR animation studio from Facebook-owned Oculus VR and ten VR projects that stole the headlines from Sundance's edgy, experimental New Frontier showcase."Last year was one of those historic moments where it was like the perfect storm," says Shari Frilot, chief curator of New Frontier's VR-heavy 2015 showcase. "Not only were there significant developments in the technology and a commitment by storytellers, content creators, filmmakers and journalists to grasp onto it, [but] there was also this ramping up of industry -- manufacturing, as well as kind of peaking of interest in more mainstream content creators. That all converged at the festival in a way that was really explosive. ... That's sort of the unicorn that came out of New Frontier."
Sundance and Jaunt are looking for VR filmmaking visionaries
Sundance Film Institute has announced a six-month residency aimed at helping budding virtual reality filmmakers turn their ideas into dynamic projects. To make this a reality, the institute has teamed up with VR firm Jaunt, most likely because of the company's "cinematic VR" platform which consists of a 360-degree camera and specialized tools for editing VR experiences. "We hope their unique voices, diverse perspectives and creativity will help define the potential of this new medium," said Sundance Institute executive director Keri Putnam. This isn't the first experience Sundance has had with VR, some directors have already shown completed projects to festival-goers. After giving rise to revolutionary filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Ava DuVernay, the institute is now looking to produce stories that are complex, visually stunning and also totally immersive.
Oculus Story Studio is the Pixar of virtual reality
Moments before Oculus Story Studio's new virtual reality short Lost reached its satisfying climax, I found myself in a compromised position. Sequestered in a private demo booth, I was involuntarily crouched down, covering my head in a defensive position and, I should add, squealing with delight. Lost, the first computer-animated work to come from Oculus VR's new film-innovation lab, is unlike any form of interactive entertainment I've ever experienced. And it succeeds in one very crucial respect: It's endearing. "I want to create emotions that are very appealing," says Story Studio's Supervising Technical Director Max Planck. "I want you to come out of virtual reality and have a smile. Or [experience] something very touching emotionally, just like Pixar films do."
With Story Studio, Oculus VR embarks on its Hollywood takeover
Around the time Oculus VR began experimenting internally with the creation of tech demos, investor Marc Andreessen, impressed with what he'd seen, urged Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR's CEO, to show them off to Hollywood. Andreessen believed the medium was a perfect fit for that industry. Iribe, in turn, showed his company's prototype Rift technology to an unnamed, major Hollywood director. That director, responding the way most do when they first encounter modern-day virtual reality, enthusiastically implored Iribe to join forces and create a feature film with it. Iribe immediately balked and shot down the offer. "I don't know the first thing about movies," he says of that initial conversation. That was then. Today, Oculus VR plans to figure out the entertainment industry in a big way. With Story Studio, an in-house innovation lab focused on exploring and sharing tools and techniques to craft entertainment experiences within VR, the Facebook-owned company is embarking on a different path. Outside "guest directors" will be brought in to work with the studio and lead Creative Director Saschka Unseld, a former Pixar director, in what is essentially a VR workshop. And along the way, Oculus hopes to refine what it means to inhabit VR on a cinematic level, beginning with its first animated short, Lost, which will debut at Sundance.
How a former Rockstar developer is leading a revolution in gaming
When Navid Khonsari left Rockstar Games after working as the cinematic director on several Grand Theft Auto titles, he was sure he wouldn't make another video game. Instead, he returned to his first love, documentary filmmaking and, in the process, stumbled upon the creation of 1979 Revolution. "A culmination of doing games, falling in love with narrative storytelling and now this new fascination with documentary really became the seed for 1979," he says. "That combined with my personal experience of growing up in Iran and experiencing the revolution firsthand."
The Godmother of Virtual Reality: Nonny de la Peña
"Print stuff didn't scratch the itch. Documentary didn't scratch the itch. TV drama didn't scratch the itch. It wasn't until I started building this stuff. There was no way I could do anything else. I just couldn't do anything else. I don't know even how to explain that. And I think sometimes I wanna shoot myself in the head that I can't do anything else because it just motivates me. [VR] drives me. This is such a visceral empathy generator. It can make people feel in a way that nothing, no other platform I've ever worked in can successfully do in this way." Let that stand as your introduction to Nonny de la Peña, the woman pioneering a new form of journalism that aims to place viewers within news stories via virtual reality. That vision has culminated in Emblematic Group, her content- and VR hardware-focused company that she runs along with her brother in Los Angeles.
Netflix and the Duplass brothers are working on four new movies
Last year at the Sundance Film Festival Mark Duplass implored indie filmmakers to "get their goddamn movies on Netflix" and this year, it's clear he'll be doing more of that. At this year's festival, Netflix announced it has a four-picture deal with Mark (The League) and Jay Duplass (Transparent) to make their small-budget films. The two parties have had a relationship ever since Netflix bought The Puffy Chair from the brothers ten years ago. The brothers have produced a slew of indie flicks ever since, and their show Togetherness is airing on HBO. Unlike Netflix's Crouching Tiger and Adam Sandler movie deals, Deadline reports these will premiere in theaters before they go to streaming shortly after. There's no word on what the movies are, but fans of flicks like The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, Safety Not Guaranteed and The Skeleton Twins should have an idea of what to expect. [Image credit: Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images for Sundance]
