The Digital Revolution


2013 update. In summer, 2007, I took a Flip minicam and started making short videos. A few summers later, I shot an entire feature film, The Farewell Wake, with the Flip and a budget of ... ZERO. God's truth. I made it with actor friends, mainly to show it could be done. You can see the results of all this activity at my online archive: http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/ssv.htm

The best short films are Deconstructing Sally, The Heirs and Karaoke Tonite!


Another consequence of the digital revolution is the movie The Anniversary Party (2001), co-written and co-directed and co-starring the wonderful actress Jennifer Jason Leigh and shot entirely on video with the incredibly low budget of under 4 million dollars. The budget is especially extraordinary when you hear that the movie stars such "high price" stars as Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Kline, who obviously worked for a friend for peanuts.

What we have here, in essence, is the "star" equivalent of the film student's low budget movie. Many of the same constraints and story strategies apply. The entire story has one central location, the house where the anniversary party takes place. The story is character-driven, an ensemble piece. There are no special effects and less visual storytelling than is common in a Hollywood movie. The film, in fact, definitely has a "stage play" feel to it.

The Anniversary Party is a play-like, character-driven ensemble story -- with Hollywood stars in all the roles! Only digital technology makes this adventure possible, and it will be interesting to see what other stars use the revolution to make the journey from actor to writer/director.

It also will be interesting to see how this movie and others like it do with audiences. If they do well, then it's a point for the kind of character-driven, slowly developing story that in the past has been the mainstay of theater but difficult to market to Hollywood. In other words, new story strategy options are being offered to mainstream audiences now, and if the audiences react positively, this might permanently affect the way stories are told in Hollywood.


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