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Willamette Week recommends the following sites for
viewing short films: greendogfilms.
com
bijoucafe.
com
insound.com
mumbleboy.
com
ifilm.com
reelshort.com
and
reelmind.com.
Many filmmakers have caught attention on the web through
media spoofs, a famous case being Kevin Rubio's 1998 COPS
send-up featuring Star Wars stormtroopers patrolling
planet Tatooine (www.
theforce.net/
troops).
Another recent spoof matched footage from the Superfriends
cartoon show with the Budweiser "Wassup" commercial (www.heylady.
com/tk/sights_
sounds/wassup.
html).
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It's a lazy, showery Portland afternoon, but Rebecca Rodriguez
is beaming. Less than a year ago, Rodriguez was a struggling
actress scarcely known outside Portland's insular film community.
But today she's a filmmaker whose name is bouncing around
Hollywood like a volleyball.
Rodriguez's fast lane to prominence illustrates an exciting
new marriage between short film and the Internet. Although
shorts can be as tantalizing and brilliant as any multi-hour
opus, until recently most have gone unseen outside of film
festivals and occasional screenings at places like the Northwest
Film Center. But the medium has found a new home on the
Internet, where its brevity makes for an easy download and
can hold a fickle web surfer's attention from start to finish.
Not only do the Internet and technology like iMac's desktop
editing software help do-it-yourselfers make and exhibit
short films cheaply, but it's also helped filmmakers like
Rodriguez find the kind of attention in a few months that
would normally take years. "I go from periods of extreme
anxiety to extreme elation," says Rodriguez of her experience.
"I'm trying to just enjoy this, but I have a really clear
sense that at any moment it could turn into nothing."
Log onto reelshort.com, a popular site operated by Universal
Studios, and you'll find a free download for Rodriguez's
Soul Collectors. Clocking in at seven minutes and
set on a damp, rocky swatch of Oregon coastline, the film
chronicles an alternate version of the afterlife where one's
soul is gathered up by what appear to be celestial garbage
men clad in coveralls. Like Rodriguez's other short, Floater--the
story of foreplay interrupted when one lover needs to take
a shit and the toilet won't flush away the evidence--Soul
Collectors emerges beyond its bare-bones plot with an
unbridled sense of perversity. Like an impish schoolgirl,
Rodriguez loves to stare down solemn taboos and laugh them
off.
Although Soul Collectors and Floater were
not do-it-yourself projects (Rodriguez employed an experienced
crew), she completed filming of both in a single weekend
and promptly sent them to the Seattle Film Festival, where
they caught the attention of reelshort.com and Atom Films.
Soon Soul Collectors was a fan favorite on reelshort.com,
and Cinemax began asking about Floater. That led
to meetings with Universal's senior vice-president of production
about directing a feature.
But while Rodriguez's rise has been meteoric, it's not
completely unplanned. "There are two really important aspects
to the process: Creativity and business," she says. "These
people aren't looking to discover the next filmmaker. They've
got a business to run. I thought about that before I made
those films. I wanted things to work to my advantage."
While there's no doubt the Internet has created exciting
new opportunities for filmmakers and film fans, many of
the well-known sites are, like Hollywood studios, geared
toward more commercial fare. Take 405, a fan favorite
on ifilms.com that chronicles a jumbo jet's crash landing
on a Los Angeles freeway. Made by special-effects technicians
Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt, 405 is dazzling, hilarious
and very smart. But it's also a calculated move to ascend
the ladder of feature filmmaking. You won't see these guys
on the small screen again anytime soon. "If you want to
just be a filmmaker and express [yourself] using film, then
go out and shoot a red dot for two hours," says Rodriguez.
"But if you want to get a meeting with Universal or Amblin
or whoever, if you want to get the big agent and get the
big movie deal, you have to position yourself. You have
to ask yourself what kind of film is going to attract attention."
Like anything else on the Internet, finding more challenging
fare outside the mainstream takes a lot of searching. But
for those willing to look, there are more opportunities
than ever for people to see the kind of experimental and
avant-garde film and video that in the past would never
have reached Portland. And it's not just for your computer.
There's a growing movement called "microcinema" that uses
web-streaming technology to view noncommercial film and
video in a communal, theater-like atmosphere. Here in Portland,
for example, Stumptown Coffee offers "Internet Film Night,"
where you watch webcast movies over cappuccino with friends.
Whether you're an aspiring Hollywood player, lover of film,
Internet junkie or underground dweller, the Web provides
an opportunity that can't be ignored. But the tension between
artistic integrity and commercial feasibility remains. The
Internet is just another arena for the ongoing struggle.
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