The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Staff
DATE: June 1, 2003
PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)
EDITION: Home; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SECTION: Arts
PAGE: M1

FESTIVAL PREVIEW

Atlanta Film Festival

Friday through June 14 at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts and other metro Atlanta venues. About 130 works will be shown, including Friday's opening-night feature, "American Splendor" ($10-$15, includes after-screening party), the top prizewinner at this year's Sundance Film Festival. All-access festival pass, $75-$100. Festival box office and headquarters are at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, 80 Forsyth St. N.W. 404-352-4225, www.imagefv.org, www.ticketweb.com.

Just before the new millennium, at the dawn of digital cinema, the experts said the emerging filmmaking equipment would revolutionize the industry, becoming far cheaper to use than celluloid and allowing anybody to make a movie.

So today, meet Kyle Keyser, 29, Atlanta resident, Emory University employee and the film festival circuit's latest anybody.

Keyser, whose day job involves coordinating international programs and conferences for the Lillian Carter Center at Emory, never studied film. Never dreamed of being Spielberg, Kubrick or even Ed Wood.

But he did have the pluck to muster up $4,000 for a digital video camera and a burning desire to follow his favorite musician -- moody, often glum rock soulstress PJ Harvey -- on tour. He then presented himself to her management as a documentary filmmaker and got permission to film parts of her concerts.

"I figured it was a good way to fake my way toward a better chance of meeting her," Keyser says.

On Saturday, Keyser's often funny, at times erratic first film, "Stories From the Road: A Film About Following PJ Harvey" (10:30 p.m. at the downtown Atlanta-Fulton Public Library auditorium), will make its American debut at the 27th annual Atlanta Film Festival -- a collection of roughly 130 films that will be shown beginning Friday with a screening of this year's Sundance Film Festival winner, "American Splendor" (8 p.m. at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts).

"Stories From the Road" is one of dozens of works that will play at this year's festival that were shot on digital video (DV), digi-beta, high definition (HD) or mini-DV, all relatively inexpensive roads to filmmaking. With digital equipment, films can cost only thousands of dollars to make, as opposed to hundreds of thousands or millions with the industry's traditional celluloid. With digital, there is no physical film to process, multiple takes of scenes can be done without extra cost, and the small size of the camera eliminates costly and time-consuming setups.

The digitally made films in the Atlanta festival touch all genres.

There's the documentary "A Certain Kind of Death" (first showing, 12:30 p.m. June 13 at the Rialto), a frank examination of what happens to people who die without close relatives or friends. "Death," which won a special award this year at Sundance, was shot on DV by former Atlanta resident Grover Babcock and his film partner, Blue Hadaegh, both 35.

"Zero Day" (9:30 p.m. June 12 at the Rialto), a full-length feature about a fictional high school gun massacre, was made by Ben Coccio, 27, of New Milford, Conn., on DV and later transferred to film. And the short "Petunia" (8:30 p.m. June 10 at the downtown library auditorium) is a wry, energetic musical shot on HD by Atlanta cinematographer Bob Clark.

Other digitally made films to be shown include the documentary "Hip Hop Hope," involving New York artists talking about black culture in the wake of Sept. 11, and the nationally honored "White Bitch Down," an Atlanta-made short written and filmed on mini-DV in two days as part of the Washington-based 48-Hour Film Project.

"In some respects the digital revolution is a whole new world for filmmakers and storytellers," says Paul Marchant, director of the Atlanta Film Festival. "For us, it means submissions go up."

In his two years at the festival, Marchant has seen a leap in the number of filmmakers wanting to show their movies there. Submissions this year approached 1,000; the previous high had been around 750.

In the past few years, the number of film festivals has also increased. Georgia saw new festivals spring up, such as the Dahlonega International Film Festival, which will hold its third event this summer, and the Downstream International Film Festival, which began last year in Gainesville but will move this year to Decatur.

There's the Clone Digital Film Festival in Finland and another digital festival in Memphis. The once-renegade Nodance digital festival, which offered alternatives to Sundance in Park City, Utah, is approaching its seventh year and is now considered a mainstay. And a new international digital festival, featuring low-cost works from 23 countries, emerged in April in sun-splashed Gibara, Cuba.

"It's obvious to me that film school now is a destination for a lot of people," says Babcock, the veteran filmmaker who made "A Certain Kind of Death" with Hadaegh. "In the mid-'80s, film school was a geekfest. Now it's indie filmmaking as social cachet. Film studies increase and the huge proliferation of film schools feeds into the festivals. And that, in turn, feeds back into filmmaking as a lifestyle."

Digital video and other cheaper processes have fueled the fire.

"I felt after making this documentary that I wished I had been put in a time capsule for 10 years after film school to a time when these tools were available," says Babcock, who has worked with celluloid on many previous projects. "It was a miracle for us to be able to afford this out of our own pocket and do something professional and take it to the highest level. We went to Sundance and won a prize for a film we made out of our own pocket and a little bit of debt. Before, that was not possible unless your name was Guggenheim or Rockefeller."

The downside, of course, can also be the proliferation.

"Not every story needs an audience," Marchant says. "In a way, I feel access isn't necessarily a means to an end. There's still so many people out there who shouldn't even be using cellphones."

Before "Zero Day," Coccio had filmed several projects on standard 35 mm celluloid, and he admits to having had some prejudice against digital.

"Growing up, I never thought of it as having the same cinematic quality as 35 mm, but it clearly can have its own dimensions and features and is provocative," he says.

He found it perfect to reflect his young actors' fictional visual "diary" of their plans to attack fellow students at their school.

"What I was trying to do was stage home footage that looks like home footage but also has its own cinematic poetry," Coccio explains.

Part of the charm of Keyser's "Stories From the Road," which cost $25,000 to make, is watching the novice moviemaker and his equally film-clueless companions figure out how to work their digital equipment.

Less than five minutes into "Stories," Keyser is shown kneeling on a performance hall floor in Munich, Germany, searching for the right plug to insert into Harvey's soundboard to ensure proper audio. Later, it's clear that he must have chosen wrongly.

"Stories" isn't so much a documentary about Harvey as a dissection of every mishap, chance meeting and sightseeing spot on the trip. While Keyser sets up one digital camera at a concert, fellow traveler Amanda Mazur is off with a video camera, recording "boobs, butts and crotches." Another in their group is buying beer.

"It's nice to get feedback from festival programmers and other filmmakers who are applauding my first effort," Keyser says. "They say things like, 'That's a good job if you didn't know what you were doing.' Some laugh and say it's a big, cheesy movie."

In April, "Stories" played to a sold-out house in England at the 17th annual London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. And Keyser sees his Atlanta gig as major. He'll turn 30 a couple of days before his film has its U.S. debut Saturday.

He says he was inspired to follow Harvey after she performed at Atlanta's Cotton Club and that the whole thing "just grew" from there.

When he decided to make a film about his adventures, Keyser researched digital cameras, went shopping and bought one for roughly $4,000.

"I picked the one that looked the coolest," he says. "I liked the colors -- red, black and white -- and I liked the big mike on top. It made it look like I knew what I was doing."

He says $4,000 "is expensive to me, but in the world of filmmaking it's damn cheap."

Funding for the movie came from waiting tables, his credit cards and, as Keyser puts it, "unsuspected use of my parents' credit card." Since the filming, he says, his parents have "changed their credit cards."

Despite the financial vagaries of filmmaking, Keyser has another project in mind. He'll use the same camera but wants to step up the process -- aligning himself with veteran cinematographers, editors and others and applying for lots of grants to help pay expenses.

"I'll consider myself a filmmaker when I've done the second one," he says. "Anyone can go out and shoot and put it together and have a fun story to tell, but stepping up to bringing the talent and fund-raising and having all the elements together -- that's a more proper film."

Photo: Former Atlantan Grover Babcock (left) and filmmaking partner Blue Hadaegh used digital video to make "A Certain Kind of Death," a frank documentary about people who die without close relatives or friends. The Los Angeles cemetery in the background figures in the film./ JOHN HAYES / Associated Press

Photo: When first-time filmmaker Kyle Keyser of Atlanta shopped for his digital video camera, he chose one that ''made it look like I knew what I was doing."/ SUNNY SUNG / Staff

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© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution