The Huffington Post takes a great look at the daunting task of Sundance in this piece by Marshall Fine, as the grand festival is creeping up on us all. Continuing reading for this interesting perspective on how even industry heavy weights must calculate how to approach these festivals which boast the greatest films out there:

Sundance 2012 begins tomorrow (Thursday 1/19/12) but, really, I feel like I’ve already been there a couple of days. I mean, I go in having seen a half-dozen films already, either from other festivals (Toronto or New York) or from advance screenings.

(Among the better ones: California Solo, a touching drama by writer-director Marshall Lewy that gives that marvelous actor Robert Carlyle a great character part into which he can sink his teeth.)

But if you asked me what I was most interested in seeing, I would have to shrug ignorantly. I could page through my daily schedule, but that wouldn’t help because the titles have yet to make an impression on me.

I usually spend a few hours on the weekend before I leave for Sundance (or Toronto, for that matter) figuring out the schedule. I start by plowing through the dozens of emails I’ve received about films that are at the festival, then move on to the festival catalog and schedule themselves. I’ll read the names of the director and cast, then the synopsis and running time (90 minutes or less is perfect; anything over 120 minutes — like Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer this year — is subject to analysis, in terms of investment of time).

I’ll devote a page of the legal pad to each day, page after page on a pad. Old habits die hard; indeed, they only get more elaborate. I plot the screenings on my chart for the specific day, choosing between columns for press screenings, versus public ones to which I think I can find a ticket: title of film, theater name, running time — and, if it’s a public screening, the name and contact of the film’s publicist.

So now I’ve got a chart which, in all likelihood, has two or three titles at many timeslots: Some may have boldly drawn parentheses around them, indicating that’s my strong preference for that time on that day. Even then, I probably couldn’t tell you what most of the films were, based on being told the title.

But that’s the best part of any film festival: not knowing and then discovering. Seeing a movie without the slightest preconception of what you’re going to see is the purest form of film-going, the place where excitement is born.

It was no trick to discover The Descendants when I was at the Toronto Film Festival last September; it had been shown a few days earlier at the Telluride festival and was the buzz of the Internet. But God Bless America, a film directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, and Butter, which quickly developed buzz of its own, were films I saw without knowing anything about them. Both of them knocked me out in a way that The Descendants, my favorite film of last year, couldn’t — because they had the element of surprise.

Of course, there are Sundance films that already are being talked about, buzzed about, built into an event before anyone has really seen them. I couldn’t tell you what they were. But, once I get to Sundance Saturday night, I can offer my thoughts on the movies I’m discovering in the theaters of Park City, Utah. Stay tuned.

Christina Warren is a writer, speaker, podcaster and video host. Christina is Mashable’s entertainment editor, where she oversees the site’s coverage of television, film, music and social games and the intersection between new media and technology.

“Twitter has fundamentally changed the way I make films,” film director, actor, writer and producer Edward Burns told me. At first blush, that might seem like an audacious statement, but in an era when full productions can get funded on Kickstarter and feature-length films are shot on consumer DSLRs, that boldness gives way to practicality.

Thanks to social and digital, the independent film movement is in a sort of renaissance. Not since the rise of the “indie” movement in the 1990s — when unknown filmmakers like Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez rose to prominence — has there been so much disruption in the business of filmmaking.

It’s a world that Burns knows well. In 1995 Burns’s debut film, The Brothers McMullen, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Shot for just $28,000, the film would gross over $10 million at the box office, becoming one of the biggest independent films of its era.

Sixteen years later, Burns is still making films without the aid of expensive crews, big studio contracts or pricey equipment.

Burns’s latest film, Newlyweds, is now available on VOD and Vudu. It comes to iTunes on Dec. 30, 2011. Although the film will have a small theatrical run in Chicago and San Francisco next month, VOD and iTunes are the delivery methods of choice.

We spoke to Burns earlier this month as he prepared for the Newlyweds film release. He talked about the changing nature of making film and the importance of social media to tie it all together.

One of the more remarkable aspects about Newlyweds is that it was shot in 12 days for $9,000. Burns laid out the budget process on Twitter and explained the process on his YouTube channel.

Burns used the Canon EOS 5D Mark II to shoot the film, along with a few stock Canon lenses. The quality of the output that filmmakers can get from prosumer DSLRs like the Mark II is stunning. Furthermore, he believes we’re only two or three generations away from having cinema-quality video sensors in our smartphones. The film director further reduced costs by using natural lighting and having cast members wear their own clothes and do their own makeup.

Burns talked about the very real implications these changes are having on young filmmakers.

“When I was in school making McMullen, I had to scrimp and save to buy film stock. You usually got poor-quality film stock or ends of other reels. That’s why movies from that era have that grimy, grungy look. A kid coming out of film school today won’t have that problem.”

Of course, lower barriers to entry also mean increased competition. Still, Burns doesn’t see this as a bad thing. “Why shouldn’t filmmaking experience the same disruption that every other industry has experienced?” he asked. “It’s happened in music and literature. Why should filmmaking be any different?”

The Growing Importance of Social

Edward Burns credits Ted Hope for convincing him to join Twitter. Hope, a prominent independent film producer in New York City, explained to Burns it was crucial that he find 500 followers to share and promote his message. Hope’s thesis — which he has since revised to include 5,000 fans — is that connecting with the people that really care about your work is the most effective way of getting things seen.

Hope was right. Since joining Twitter, Burns has found numerous opportunities to answer questions from fans, share insights about his filmmaking process and, of course, promote his projects.

For his last project, Nice Guy Johnny, Burns was able to crack the top six in iTunes the week it was released. “This was a film with no budget, absolutely no money for marketing — outside of traditional morning show press stuff — that appeared next to major box office hits.”

Studios spend tremendous amounts of money raising awareness as to the digital and home video availability of their films. Edward Burns was able to accomplish that with Twitter.

Burns turned to the social web while working on Newlyweds as well. When it came time to get a poster for the film’s debut at the Tribeca Film Festival, Burns turned to the online community. Fans voted for their favorite submissions. The winner of the poster contest not only got to keep the rights to his artwork (he’s now selling prints and t-shirts on his own website), he also got flown in for the premiere.

When it came time find a song for the closing credits, Burns once again turned to the online community and then chose the winner from the submissions.

Although Burns hasn’t cast anyone directly using YouTube, he agrees with our assertion that online video is the new casting tape.

The Film

Watching Newlyweds, I would never have expected that its production budget was only $9,000. The film is endearing, funny and real, a story about a newlywed couple whose “honeymoon” stage comes to an abrupt end thanks to some unexpected drama from both sides of the family.

It’s very Woody Allen-esque, reminiscent of Husbands and Wives and Hannah and Her Sisters in its understanding of relationships.

After watching Newlyweds, I was struck by how difficult it is to find a good relationship film — be it comedy or drama — in the theater. Even harder to find are those smaller ensemble films. Once a staple in cinema, these types of stories are often pushed to the sidelines in lieu of franchise films, family comedies and big-budget action films.

Thankfully, in the era of iPads, connected HDTVs and more widespread indie distribution, filmmakers are still able to tell these types of stories.

Original Article Posted on Mashable.com.

Since Knee’s month-old accolades, Netflix management announced (1) a 50% reduction in projected third quarter subscriber growth, (2) an apology for prompting a million customers to abandon the service in response to price changes, and (3) a formal division of company’s services into (a) streamed video and (b) postal delivered DVDs.

The company’s abrupt status change from “new media darling” to “old media conspirator” among former Netflix advocates, underscores how the media landscape is shifting under our feet. I am reminded of Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday. Although published less than two years after the 1929 stock market crash, Allen skillfully contrasted how the Roaring Twenties evolved into a then-deepening Great Depression.

Impending changes in the media industry will be every bit as profound as the economic and social transformation described in Only Yesterday. Netflix streaming merely pioneered a new way of distributing established media content. So long as that is all they do, they will forever remain at the mercy of “Content is King” dogma. They’ll need to pay Hollywood whatever the studios demand. Significantly, the Netflix price changes imposed earlier this summer and the ensuing customer backlash demonstrate that Hollywood is demanding too much. It’s likely they’ll face much tougher negotiations with Netflix in the future.

In our analysis, Hollywood overvalues its content and underestimates the appeal of the Long Tail. The Long Tail refers to a probability distribution in which a large share of the population resides as illustrated. As applied to video the theory implies that while we share interest in poplar content commonly available on television, we also have more narrowly defined interests shared with viewer-groups too small to justify mass market distribution via conventional conduits such as television or motion picture theaters. But the Internet shatters such limitations enabling video content to be made available for vanishingly small audiences.

As for myself, I enjoy watching author interviews on YouTube and other websites. One of my sons is a devoted ice hockey fan who watches most games over the Internet. A friend who is learning to swim competitively spends hours on YouTube watching Total Immersion videos. Video recordings of cultural programming, such as opera, plays, and symphonic performances, have arguably already moved to YouTube.

In short, Internet video streaming is likely to induce a plethora of new programming. Efforts by conventional video programmers to extract ever higher fees for their content will only intensify a growing trend toward alternate programming. It’s one reason Netflix is attempting to develop its own sources by creating shows that have not appeared on TV or in movie theaters.

The one fly-in-the ointment is that the cable and telco companies could work hand-in-glove with conventional programmers in an attempt to maintain the status quo. Specifically, they can continue to make Internet access economical only to subscribers who take a packaged bundle of services such as a “triple play” of (1) Pay TV, (2) landline telephony, and (3) Internet access. They have a near-duopoly on Internet access and can simply price Internet-only service at unattractive rates, or impose usage-based pricing.

Unfortunately, monopolies and duopolies are seldom regulated in a manner truly beneficial to consumers. Typically, regulatory agencies become industry lapdogs, instead of watchdogs, with the result that innovation is too slow and prices too high. Competition alone is the change agent most effective for consumers.

Nonetheless the cable and telco companies may face intensified competition in the future. A growing number of subscribers want to disconnect Pay TV and landline telephony and instead require only high speed Internet access. Since the cable operators and telco’s are reluctant to discontinue bundled pricing, other Internet service providers have an opening.

Examples include Wireless ISPs as well as the ISP subsidiaries of electric utilities. Wireless ISPs normally provide Internet access from fixed base-stations to antennas mounted on subscriber rooftops. It’s kind-of an echo of a time when most television was received that way. Since the industry uses unlicensed spectrum they can move into any market where they can compete economically. Television Band White Spaces will further enhance their abilities. For more information on the industry see our research report, “The Wireless ISP and Cellular Offloading Industry: Analysis and Forecast.”