One of my favorite movies from the Sundance Film Festival this year ended up being "Like Crazy." The screening I attended followed just after director Jason Reitman ("Juno", "Up in the Air"), head of the festival's Grand Jury this year, awarded the 2011 Sundance Grand Jury Prize to "Like Crazy" director Drake Doremus.
Madisonians were among the lucky few to have the opportunity to see "Like Crazy" during the festival itself this past January, as part of the festival's new initiative to expand beyond Park City and bring festival films to local theaters around the country, complete with Q&A sessions with the director and cast. If you didn't catch it back then, "Like Crazy" is currently playing at Sundance Cinemas once again, this time in its national release.
"Like Crazy" is a beautiful film that honestly portrays the messy reality of romantic relationships, grounding itself in true-to-life details. It's one of the only films I've ever seen to accurately depict the fundamental role texting has taken in human relationships-something conveniently ignored by almost every filmmaker today. And beyond simply depicting the role texting plays in how we converse with our loved ones, it also subtly explores the frustration and alienation that can accompany this limited medium of connection. But "Like Crazy" is a game changer for filmmaking in a much more significant way than just tackling texting.
One of Doremus's central tools in crafting the naturalist-yet-intensely-personal visual vibe of "Like Crazy" was his guerilla shooting style that has a free roaming, almost documentary-style aesthetic and a penchant for intimate close-ups.
Central to Doremus' ability to shoot in this manner, even in close-quarters on location, was his choice of camera. Rather than shooting on traditional reels of 35mm film stock-the very symbol of Hollywood itself-Doremus chose to follow the path of most indie film directors these days and shoot with digital video.
But "Like Crazy", shot on an incredibly impressive budget of $250,000, didn't use the RedOne or any other professional-grade HD digital video cameras that can start at around $50,000 and climb steeply upward. Doremus shot the flick entirely on a consumer-grade DSLR still camera called the Cannon 7D that can be bought for $1,500-comparable in cost to an entry-level Macbook Pro.
The 7D is small and compact, as you'd expect from a consumer still camera, allowing Doremus the freedom to shoot by hand, move freely around the scene and achieve the film's characteristic close-ups. It also allows the attachment of traditional film lenses for complete control over the aesthetics of the footage.
The fact that Doremus could create such a beautiful film, and then proceed to win the Sundance Film Festival's highest prize, with a camera within the reach of average consumers, is surely a significant milestone for the world of moviemaking. We are coming closer than ever to the democratization of movie production.
Forty years ago, when aspiring directors were running around shooting with quaint Super 8 cameras, they had no hope or possibility of producing anything resembling the quality of those being produced by Hollywood at the time. But we are quickly approaching the point at which a dedicated and talented amateur director can produce movies to rival those of the mainstream industry, even on a shoestring budget.
The NEXT category the Sundance Film Festival has introduced in recent years is a testament to this emerging possibility. Every film in the NEXT category has a budget under $50,000-some substantially less-and yet every NEXT film I've seen so far, from "The Sound of My Voice" to "Bellflower", has looked on-par with any reasonably-budgeted Hollywood movie coming out these days. And all of them were shot on digital video-in the case of "Bellflower," a homemade digital video camera no less.
All this instills hope in me for the future of movies. Even though Hollywood may be stagnating, drowning in a flood of sequels, prequels, reboots and rehashes, hope springs eternal. With the increasing affordability of high-grade digital video cameras and the growing popularity of online distribution through both free venues like Youtube and commercial outlets like iTunes and Amazon's digital video stores, I wouldn't be surprised, if a decade from now, major studios faced steep competition from the artistic output of amateur aspiring directors working off their own time, money and passion.
Have your own ideas about amateur filmmaking becoming not-so-amateur? E-mail your thoughts to David at dcottrell@wisc.edu
