The 48 Hour Film Festival Launches a Month of Film in Pueblo

The 48 Hour Film Festival Launches a Month of Film in Pueblo

The Pueblo 48 Hour Film Festival invites filmmakers to shoot, edit and submit a film within 48 hours. The judging panel, consisting of industry professionals, will evaluate the submitted films the week before the festival. The short films that receive the highest scores will be screened during the Red Carpet Screening in the InfoZone Theater (4th FL). Audience members will also vote on their favorite film during the main event and the People's Choice winner will be announced with all other category winners at the end of the evening.  

Films are judged and viewed at a public screening. Winners will be awarded with free admission to the 2020 StoryMode Independent Short Film Awards (SISFA) and winning films will be screened during the SISFA Festival in Pueblo, Colorado on April 17-18.

AWARDS

• Judge’s Choice

• Best Cinematography

• Best Script

• Best Performance

• Best Musical Score

• Best Youth Production (16 yrs and under)

• Best Film Shot With Smart Phone

• People’s Choice

RULES

1. Films must not exceed 6 minutes and 30 seconds (including credits).

2. Thematic elements such as a genre, character, prop and line of dialogue will be announced on Friday, Mar. 27th at 5 p.m.  All elements must be incorporated for the film to be judged.

3. All submissions must be an original film created in the allotted 48-hour timeframe between March 27 at 5 p.m. and March 29th at 5 p.m.  Any creative work in advance of the competition is prohibited.  No films or film segments created for other projects may be submitted.  Animation and special effects are allowed, but must be created during the official 48-hour timeframe. 

4. The only work to begin prior to the Official Time Period is: organizing crew, organizing cast, securing equipment and scouting/securing locations.

5. All films must be uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo and submitted by sending the link to filmfestival@pueblolibrary.org.  No hard copies, jump drives or discs will be accepted.

6. Any type of filming equipment and/or cameras may be used.  Multiple cameras are permitted.

7. Any stock photos or music used in the film must be original or the team must acquire rights for use.

EVENTS

Producing 101: How to make the most of every hour by planning ahead  

Saturday, Mar. 21, 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m., RA, Ryals Room (4th FL)

Film production has three phases: pre-production, production, and post-production. A 48 hour filmmaking competition gives you a chance to experience all three in record time! This workshop will take you on a brief tour of what to focus on in each of the three phases, so you can maximize the quality of your film. Topics will include: what makes a good script; how to plan your shoot with a shot list and storyboards; crew roles (who’s who on set); and best ways to organize your footage for editing. Led by Polly Washburn, an award-winning film producer and director who organized the first Toronto 48 Hour Film Project.

Lights, Camera, Action: An introduction to film equipment  

Saturday, Mar. 21, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m., RA, Ryals Room (4th FL)

A look at different types of cameras, lights and sound gear that you can use to make a film, from using your cell phone and available light, to using a DSLR to renting higher-end equipment.

Led by cinematographer and editor Adrian Montgomery of Distant Peak Productions, who is currently editing a feature-length documentary that he recorded all the video and sound for, in 9 interviews around the country. Adrian participated in a 48HFP in Denver a couple of years ago, so will also offer his top tips on what to make sure to do, as well as what to watch out for.

Thematic Elements Reveal Party

Friday, Mar. 27, 5 p.m., Solar Roast Coffee (3206 W. Northern Ave.) 

Come find out what the required thematic elements will be for the 2020 Pueblo 48-Hour Film Festival!  The announcement will also be shared via Facebook Live.  Tune in to PCCLD’s Facebook page for the livecast. Co-sponsored by Solar Roast and the Pueblo Regional Film Commission.

Film Submission Deadline

Sunday, Mar. 29, 5 p.m.

All films must be submitted by 5pm on Sunday, March 29th. Please upload your film to YouTube or Vimeo and share the link to filmfestival@pueblolibrary.org

Screening of Previous Winning Films

Friday, Apr. 3, 6:30 p.m., RA, InfoZone Theater (4th FL)

Join us for a celebration of short film on the big screen as we honor past winners of the 48-Hour Film Festival! The screening in the InfoZone Theater (4th FL) will feature some of our favorites from the archives!

Red Carpet Screening and Awards

Saturday, Apr. 4, 6:30 p.m., RA InfoZone Theater (4th FL)

Join us for the screening of this year’s 48-Hour Film Festival submissions and submit your vote for the 2020 People’s Choice Award!  The film screening will be followed by an awards ceremony to recognize the work of filmmakers of all ages and skill levels.  Popcorn provided. Co-sponsored by the Pueblo Regional Film Commission. 

New Legislation to Create Transferable Tax Credits for the Film Industry in Colorado

Representative Bri Buentello, 47th District

Dustin Hodge, Bri Buentello, Donald Zuckerman, Gregory Howell

Daneya Esgar, District 46

Dustin Hodge, Daneya Esgar and Gregory Howell visit Representative Esgar at her office at the Capitol.

NEW LEGISLATION TO CREATE TRANSFERABLE TAX CREDITS FOR THE FILM INDUSTRY IN COLORADO

On February 12, 2020,. Dustin Hodge and Gregory Howell represented the new Pueblo Regional Film Commission during a visit to the Colorado State Capitol in Denver to meet with our legislators to discuss a new bill coming to the floor of the legislature. Donald Zuckerman, Film Commissioner, and Mariel Rodriguez-McGill, Deputy Film Commissioner of the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media (COFTM), joined the Pueblo delegation as we met with Senate President Leroy M. Garcia, Representative Daneya Esgar, HD 46 and Representative Bri Buentello HD 47. We discussed the existing film tax incentives, workforce and economic development, and ways to recruit and keep creative industries in Colorado through a transferable tax credit for film which would be a tremendous boost for our industry.

Just hours before the first meeting, the Denver Business Journal published a lengthy story aptly titled The End? which discusses the near collapse of our film industry in Colorado which is on the brink of extinction. The current state of the film industry requires bold and thoughtful measures to ensure a strong and sustainable future for creatives and the industry.

The new bill would pass into law a $5 million/year transferable tax credit (TTC) for film, television, and media, helping our state's film industry get back to opening new businesses, building infrastructure, and providing career opportunities for Coloradans. '“TTCs, which are used in other states, are credits based on a percentage of a qualified spend that a producer can use to offset tax liability or can take to a bank or private-equity firm to sell on the open market to a company with significant tax liability. In states like Georgia and California, such credits can fetch about 90 cents on the dollar and are attractive because of their portability and flexibility” according to the Denver Business Journal article. This tax credit program would work alongside the current cash rebate program, which, although much smaller, continues to be helpful to smaller local productions. Last year, 100% of the $750,000 in the rebate program was spent on productions by Colorado-based production companies.

Legislators indicated they're open to a new tax credit program, but they need to hear from constituents to understand its importance to the state. The Pueblo Regional Film Commission felt the urgency to personally meet with local legislators in an effort to get the bill passed. We as a community need to tell our state legislators why this new tax credit is so important. We encourage all interested parties to sign up here and when it's time to act, we'll email everyone a prepared letter for them to send to their legislators (along with the names and emails of each person's legislators). Once you have signed, please share the link with friends and colleagues within the industry – and with anyone outside the industry whose business or career has been helped as a result of film production.


We welcome the help of any organizations whose members stand to benefit from the increased economic opportunity that would come from this bill. Please encourage all to share the link with their members and partners, it will greatly help our chances of getting this bill passed.

Anyone interested in other ways of helping this cause should email John VanWyck at jvanwyck@gmail.com or his colleague Samantha Sigler at ssigler3@gmail.com.

Thank you.

Documenting America - Organizing Impactful Film Festivals - A project for Russia

On Friday, February 7, 2020, the Pueblo Regional Film Commission was honored to host a group of Russian film industry professionals in conjunction with the US State Department and the World Affairs Council Colorado Springs. For over 80 years, the highly competitive International Visitor Leadership Program at the State Department has been ranked as the elite professional program for visitors coming to the USA from around the world. Our guests included film festival organizers, professors of film, public relations and marketing experts from Moscow to Vladivostok (see bios below).

Our two hour morning program began with a lot of snow and smiles from our Russian guests who felt very much at home. We offered self-introductions around the room which was followed by the origin story of the Pueblo Regional Film Commission including the goals and objectives from film recruitment to workforce development. We also Illustrated how to organize and promote film festivals in a variety of venues, particularly documentary and independent film festivals. Pueblo is home to the 48 Hour Film Festival, SISFA Film Festival and MountainFilm. We also discussed the task of managing staff and volunteers for these special events.

We also touched upon a series of topics in the world of film including :

• Understanding co-production during festivals

• Management of community engagement at festivals, such as workshops and speaking events

• Publicity, media coverage, media relations

• Fundraising, advertising

• Communication

• Branding

• American cinema history and theory at U.S. universities

• Latest trends in documentary

Special thanks to Dustin Hodge and Tyler Shown for sharing their experiences as filmmakers here in Pueblo and beyond. The Pueblo Regional Film Commission thanks Jamie Bequette, International Visitor Program Manager, for developing the itinerary and for including Pueblo in its storytelling effort. At the conclusion of the event, all guests visited the 4th floor of the former meat packing plant for a group photo to commemorate the program.

For more information, click the links below.

International Visitor Leadership Program

Russian Visitor Biographies

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Special thanks to Regan Foster of the Colorado Springs Independent for attending our event and submitting a story to The Wire. (Left: Cover art • Above: Tyler Shown of Jolly Mule Productions share his experience as a filmmaker with our guests.

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The International Light Painters Visit Pueblo

Photo by Ben Lutze

Aerial Aura Captured by Light Painters

Photographer: DYMedia
Light Painter: Russell Klimas
Aerials: Chris Wegert and Emily Wegert

Dan Chick

Light painter: Dan Chick
Model: Sylvia Ross — with Sylvia Ross at Watertower Place.

The Pueblo Regional Film Commission embraces innovation and creativity in the arts. Light painting takes digital media to a whole new level with a powerful mixture of visual and performing arts. Recently they descended upon Pueblo and explored the spaces at Watertower Place in the heart of the historic Grove neighborhood.

One of our primary objectives at Watertower Place is to encourage and foster a destination where art and engineering flourish. Recently, Watertower Place hosted Colorado Light Painting which is the largest group of its kind in the USA. Photographers, models, and painters from around the state descended on the former meat packing plant and created some powerful work which is too hard to explain with words alone.

The Origin of Light Painting

Light painting (also called light drawing) dates back to 1889 when Étienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demeny traced human motion in the first known light painting Pathological Walk From in Front.

The technique was used in Frank Gilbreth's work with his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth in 1914, when the pair used small lights and the open shutter of a camera to track the motion of manufacturing and clerical workers.

Man Ray, in his 1935 series "Space Writing," was the first known art photographer to use the technique. He made a self-portrait with a time exposure and while the shutter was open, with a penlight he inscribed his name in cursive script in the space between him and the camera, overwriting the letters with more cryptic marks. Historian of photography Ellen Carey (*1952) describes her discovery of the artist's signature in this image while examining it in 2009.

Photographer Barbara Morgan began making light paintings in 1935-1941. Her 1941 photomontage Pure Energy and Neurotic Man incorporates light drawing and realises her stated aim; "that if I should ever seriously photograph, it would be...the flux of things. I wanted then, and still do, to express the ‘thing’ as part of total flow." In making innovative photographs of dancers, including Martha Graham and Erick Hawkins she would have them move while holding lights.

In 1949 Pablo Picasso was visited by Gjon Mili, a photographer and lighting innovator, who introduced Picasso to his photographs of ice skaters with lights attached to their skates. Immediately Picasso started making images in the air with a small flashlight in a dark room. This series of photos became known as Picasso's "light drawings." Of these photos, the most celebrated and famous is known as Picasso draws a Centaur.

Peter Keetman (1916–2005), who studied photography in Munich from 1935 to 1937, was the 1949 co-founder of FotoForm (together with Otto Steinert, Toni Schneiders et al.), a group with great impact on the new photography in the 50s and 60s in Germany and abroad. He produced a series Schwingungsfigur (oscillating figures) of complex linear meshes, often with moiré effects, using a point-source light on a pendulum.

During the 1970s and 80's Eric Staller used this technology for numerous photo projects that were called "Light Drawings". Light paintings up to 1976 are classified as light drawings.

In 1977 Dean Chamberlain extended the technique using handheld lights to selectively illuminate and/or colour parts of the subject or scene with his image Polyethylene Bags On Chaise Longue at The Rochester Institute of Technology. Dean Chamberlain was the first artist to dedicate his entire body of work to the light painting art form. The artist photographer Jacques Pugin made several series of images with the light drawing technique in 1979. Now, with modern light painting, one uses more frequently choreography and performance to photograph and organize.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Steve Mann invented, designed, built, and used various wearable computers to visualize real-world phenomena such as sound waves, radio waves, and sight fields by light painting using computational photography.

Since the 1980s, Vicki DaSilva has been working exclusively in light painting and light graffiti. In 1980, DaSilva started making deliberate text light graffiti works, the first being "Cash". She continued these light graffiti photographs throughout the 1980s and eventually started using 4 foot fluorescent bulbs hooked up to pulley systems to create sheets of light. In the early 2000s she began making work with 8 foot fluorescent lamps, holding the lamp vertically and walking through spaces with it.

From the late 1980s Tokihiro Satō's photographs combine light, time and space in recording his movements in a series beginning with his “photo respirations” where his use of an 8 x 10-inch view camera fitted with a strong neutral-density filter to achieve lengthy exposures lasting one to three hours provide the opportunity for him to move through the landscape. When shooting in daylight, with a mirror he flashed light from the sun into the camera lens, resulting in points of light and flares that punctuate the image and track his movements, though his presence is not seen directly. For nocturnal or interior views he “draws” with a small torch.

Light painting as an artform enjoyed a surge in popularity in the 21st century, partly due to the increasing availability of dSLR cameras and mobile phone cameras enabling immediate feedback for adjustments of lights and exposure; advances in portable light sources such as LEDs; and the advent of media sharing websites by which practitioners can exchange images and ideas.

In March 2007, JanLeonardo coined the term light art performance photography (LAPP) which emphasises the performative aspect that is evident earlier in Satō's work, and used it to describe the creation of new figures and structures only with light. Following the original Greek meaning of Photography (Greek φῶς, phos, genetive: φωτός, photos, "light" (of the luminary), "brightness" and γράφειν, graphein, "drawing", "carve", "create", "write") it is a symbiosis of light art and photography. The main difference from other light painting or light writing, it has been claimed, is the role of the background in the photo.[clarification needed] Locations in the natural landscape or amongst buildings, such as industrial ruins, are carefully researched for distinctive backgrounds for each composition and LED-lamps are often used for contrasting cold and warm light to emphasise the existing structures. Collaboration is usually required in the performance of the work, with one person creating light figures and structures while the other operates the camera. In collaboration with Jörg Miedza, JanLeonardo founded the project LAPP-PRO.de that further developed the technique until in 2011, the pair disassociated. LAPP has grown internationally since its inception.

Light Painting at Watertower Place

Artist Paul Burns. (see works below) led the first group of light painting creatives at Watertower Place. Since then Watertower Place has hosted a variety of painters who continue to expand our understanding of the art form and the many applications that can be considered to achieve a heightened understanding of creativity and self-awareness.

Paul Burns

Paul Burns

Paul Burns

Paul Burns

In Pueblo we want creatives to thrive. Over the past year Watertower Place has enjoyed the amazing company of light painters who have taken over massive areas of the the former meat packing plant to showcase their amazing artistic and technical spirit. One of the light painters who visited Pueblo from the Boulder area is Margarita Rubiera and she recently released this video Welcome to Lucid Flow. Lucid Flow is more than just a photo or video booth. It is an interactive experience designed to empower you to become the creative through the making of your own unique light painting video and final image in a space adaptable to your event’s needs. To learn more about this powerful art form and to contact Margarita directy about light painting visit her website.

Pueblo Goes Global with Harley Davidson 2019 Model Release

The spark that ignited the creation of a local film commission was the arrival of Harley Davidson in 2018. Each year the iconic motorcycle manufacturer chooses a destination in the USA to shoot their latest models. Under top secret, the motorcycles arrive in a stealth-like operation behind oversized black screens. Initially Pueblo was to serve as backdrop for about 20 percent of the models, but in the end the final images showcased much more of Pueblo and its iconic landscape.

The images were seen on the Harley Davidson website by more than 20 million visitors and translated into more than 20 foreign languages. The images also found their way into 500,000 legendary calendar which were distributed throughout throughout the world.

The iconic Heritage Classic model captured in Downtown Pueblo in front of City Hall and the Vail Hotel. Here the website is translated into Japanese.

Shorty after the images went public, the Pueblo Chieftain published the full story of the project and the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media (COFTM) reached out to learn more about our efforts to recruit projects to Southern Colorado. COFTM invited a core group of Puebloans to Denver to discuss future endeavors and with their blessing and seed funding, we established the Pueblo Regional Film Commission as a Colorado non-profit entity.

Pueblo Regional Film Commission aims to help foster the growth, sustainability, competitiveness and business attraction of Pueblo’s film, television and digital media industry. This in turn supports economic development, promotes tourism, employs Puebloans and brings diversity to our regional economy. The film industry directly employs skilled local workers, with many other businesses being impacted by production-induced spending, such as hotels, caterers and lumber companies.

Read the full story in the Pueblo Chieftain.