Newport Beach Film Festival 2009

It's a funny thing being on the cusp of technological advancement in entertainment. It can seem like you're leading the way to a new frontier. You're setting up the template of how things will be done. You're immortalizing yourself as The One Who Did it First. And then it all backfires in your face because... well... if you knew the answer there would be no because. Case in point: Haze.

When Michael and Leslie Lanahan first approached Pete Schuermann and Rob Watt with the idea of doing Haze, the ideas began to fly. And when Pete and Rob got myself and Nancy Theken on board, more ideas took flight. Would the product be an informational video or a TV series? How 'bout a series of Webisodes or a documentary film? How would we shape it? Who would be in it? Why were we doing it? The process of creativity began. But this is all standard procedure so let's skip ahead to where the "charting new territory" part happened.

So we had this 82 minute documentary with a strong message that we all believed in. The goal was to get every parent and inbound college freshman to watch the documentary. At the same time we didn't want it to be labeled as a "school info video" that everyone would dread because they HAD to watch it. Our representation convinced us that the best way to achieve our goals would be through the internet. That way anyone with a computer had the ability to watch the film. It seemed sensible on so many levels. We all know that broadcast TV is a dead medium and the Inter-Thingy was going to take over and besides, most kids are already getting most of their entertainment online. But since we set out to do a documentary, Haze looked and felt like a documentary. As we found out, watching our documentary on LCD monitors in nearly-adequate quality in an area no bigger than an oversized envelope just didn't exude the same emotions to us. And then we realized that those watching movies on the internet are not necessarily the same people going to film festivals and vice versa which is an observation most film festivals haven't made, yet, and so it becomes a bout to knock the other guy out: Internet Film vs. Theater Film vs. Broadcast Television. Decisions... decisions... WE JUST WANT PEOPLE TO SEE OUR FILM AND HEAR OUR MESSAGE!

On Saturday, March 28th we saw Haze on the biggest screen at Landmark Magnolia Theater in Dallas. It was extraordinary to view it that way. We all saw the film in a new light even though that was the 3,652nd time we'd seen the darn thing. There was all these little things we hadn't noticed before and the emotion coming off the screen steam-rolled us and the audience. Then we started to question things... Did we really want to be the one's leading the way to that new frontier? Is it really time to move film distribution to the internet? Before you answer that, come see Haze on the big screen and then let's talk.