Movies

Star-Filled Days (and Nights) at Starz Denver Film Festival:
Covering Red Carpets and Other Events at SDFF 33
Various Locations
3-14 November 2010

Ahhh. The wee nip of chill in the air, the bright lights, the beautiful people, the red carpet. Yes. It's November and the Starz Denver Film Festival is once again underway.

Filmmakers and celebrities – a range of people that's branching out to include Project Runway, Top Chef, and even The Bachelorette – arrive in the Mile High City for a 12-day overdose of movies. If that's not enough big city buzz to make Denver shed any lingering vestiges of hick town stereotypes, nothing will.

Well, yeah, Mayor Hickenlooper is now Gov. Hickenlooper, but he's a whole different kind of Hick – and he's a frequent walker of the SDFF red carpet.

While the red carpet is an opportunity for the media to ask a couple quick questions of the guests as they make their way into the venue, I keep asking myself one nagging question: What's the best way to capture these red carpet events? Photos and words can go a long way to bringing people along for the ride, but how about stepping things up a bit?

And so it is the 33rd Starz Denver Film Festival became Move Habit's first videographed red carpet event.

Yes, there were some technical issues. But that's to be expected when a print journalist upgrades himself from still photographer to videographer and has to learn to balance the fine art of eye contact, conversation, and camera holding all at the same time. After all, it doesn't matter where the voice recorder is looking. The video camera is obviously a different story.

Add to that a recurring element for this writer: I have a habit of dabbling with new technology, particularly new cameras, right before a big endeavor. It started years ago when I bought a new Pentax point-and-shoot on the way to the airport, prior to catching a flight to London that would ultimately lead to 10 months living abroad. That point-and-shoot was a marvel at the time with its cool panoramic feature.

That somewhat reckless approach has been repeated numerous times. There was a new camera right before a trip to China, another new camera on the eve of a trip to Egypt. And the first Digital Rebel arrived on the same day as the festival's first red carpet (that was back in 2004).

SDFF 33 carries on that fine tradition, this time with a digital SLR capable of full HD video arriving merely days beforehand.

During SDFF 31 I had the distinct privilege of interviewing Wally Pfister. It was a fantastic one-on-one chat that lasted nearly an hour. And I experimented. With that little Canon dynamo that documented Egypt and has since gone on to document numerous U2 concerts. Pfister's idea of experimenting was filming some scenes of The Prestige in IMAX, which led to filming portions of The Dark Knight in the huge-screen format. My idea of experimenting was making a video of the interview on a G9. Yeah, that's working on a much smaller scale, but the success was exponential.

The knee-jerk reaction would be to say all the kinks should've been worked out beforehand.

If only time afforded such a luxury. After all, life is not a dress rehearsal.

Sometimes one has to take action on the fly and make it happen.

And, looking back on the history made by SDFF's incredible assembly of filmmaking talent, I wish, seriously wish, I had the technology in hand back in 2006 when I interviewed Anthony Minghella, a personal favorite, on the red carpet.

That opportunity will never come again.

The future starts now. And at this point an elegant quote from a movie renowned for its imagery seems appropriate.

"Big things have small beginnings."
- Lawrence of Arabia

Now showing on this Web page is a collection of clips from SDFF 33, starring:

• Aron Ralston, the subject of 127 Hours
• Elliott Gould, the original Trapper John in the feature film M*A*S*H, also one of the colorful co-stars in the recent Ocean's Eleven and its two sequels
• A trio of talent from the independent musical-comedy Leading Ladies
• A snippet from director Alexandre Philippe's The People vs. George Lucas Q&A session
• Danny Boyle's humorous conclusion to his 127 Hours Q&A.

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