Panasonic has announced the AU-EVA1 Share Your Vision Video Contest, open to video professionals throughout the United States and European Union countries. To participate, contestants should register at https://eva1contest.hscampaigns.com/ and submit videos shot with the Panasonic EVA1 cinema camera from 25 seconds to five minutes in length from June 1 through August 24, 2018.
[Editor’s Note: Mark Smith is the owner and director of photography for Oh Seven Films, the production company he started in 2001. In this exclusive guest column he talks about the documentaries he's made about the search for Amelia Earhart.]
Over the years, my company has been involved in productions that span the gamut, from creating ads and television programs to documentaries and indie feature films. Though there’s certainly a lot of variety in our work, we focus heavily on documentary projects. For example, for the past 17 years, I’ve been the documentarian for TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) on an ongoing project to discover what happened to pilot Amelia Earhart — work that has resulted in a couple of Discovery Channel programs.
While trying to keep her boyfriend’s surprise birthday party on track, Katie’s day takes a drastic detour after picking her brother, Seth, and his daughter up. Realizing Seth has relapsed in his heroin addiction, Katie drives him around town trying to find a detox center that will admit him. 6 Balloons was written and directed by Marja-Lewis Ryan and shot by cinematographer Polly Morgan, BSC (Spinning Man, The Intervention) with VariCam 35 cameras. The Netflix feature film, which stars Abbi Jacobsen and Dave Franco, had its premiere at this year’s South by Southwest film festival in March and began streaming on Netflix in April.
Donbass, a new movie by Ukrainian writer/director Sergei Loznitsa, is to be shown as a work-in-progress version at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Post-production was to a tight timescale – shooting only wrapped in March – and Bucharest facility Digital Cube used a Baselight grading suite to ensure delivery while retaining full creative control over the look.
AlphaDogs has completed work on the new WWII short film Krieg. Directed and produced by Jeff Fry, Krieg follows the journey of a Waffen-SS officer who chooses to do the right thing while serving on the wrong side of a world at war. His remorse for inaction in the face of murder compels him to risk all in order to protect a wounded enemy airman.
Post-production finishing for Prospect, the acclaimed feature debut from directors Zeek Earl and Christopher Caldwell, was completed at Umedia in Vancouver. The film, which is co-produced by Depth of Field, The Realm and Ground Control and had its world premiere this month at SXSW, has drawn rave reviews for its genre-bending tale of a teenage girl and her father who travel to a remote, toxic planet in search of riches.
The Women’s Film Preservation Fund, a project of New York Women in Film & Television, is accepting submissions for its film Preservation grants for this year. This is not a production grant. The deadline is June 15.
Digital distribution company Alchimie is extending its partnership with Unified Streaming. Alchimie, headquartered just outside Paris, advises rights owners who are dealing with companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung, and Orange to name a few. Unified Streaming has worked with Alchimie since 2015. By installing their web-server plug-in Unified Origin, Alchimie says it has been able to offer stable, scalable live and on-demand streaming to all its partners, who, in turn, can unfailingly satisfy their customers as the final users
For the second year in a row, Arts Alliance Media has been chosen to provide cinema software to the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. AAM’s Theatre Management Software is also powering the cinema screens of six Sundance Institute venues throughout the festival.
Powster has launched the official movie platform for Unrest to support the filmmaking team, promote the movie and increase ticket sales.
