Los Angeles is synonymous with entertainment and creativity. It’s Movie HQ in fact. The place to be if you’re interested in film festivals or anything movie related. In fact, LA abounds in film festivals, which is to be expected of the global entertainment industry’s epicentre. Indeed, with such a wide selection of festivals on offer, you’re definitely going to be spoilt for choice. Which ones you attend really depend on what you’re interested in because there are film festivals covering just about every conceivable genre, production style, and subject matter.
For people that love story and technology as well as ‘new media’ buffs, the 11th Annual New Media Film Festival® is an excellent place to start. To be held on the 3rd and 4th of June next year (2020), the New Media Festival isn’t just any ‘old’ film festival. Rather, it’s the product of a group of individuals interested in honouring stories worth telling by celebrating and encouraging the creative use of modern technologies to tell stories in a unique and innovative way. These technologies allow artists to give full rein to their creative talents and the results are startling, inspiring, and unique. Not to mention well worth the trip to Los Angeles to experience them!
What Is New Media?
New media in entertainment is about using evolving technologies in highly creative ways to produce products that expose audiences to new dimensions in theatre or immerse them in the story itself. The technologies allow filmmakers to experiment with new possibilities and new ways of telling stories. Interactive technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for example let the audience plunge right into the action in ways that have not been possible in the past.
Speaking of the past and new media….
Cinema and media entertainment has come a long way since Eadweard Muybridge set up a series of electrically controlled cameras to record a sequence of chronophotographic images of a galloping racehorse back in 1878. The photos were then shown on a zoopraxiscope, a device with a projection lamp and glass disc onto which the photos to be shown were painted. When the disc was rotated, the photos displayed in rapid sequence and thus created a motion film effect. One can only imagine the reaction of audiences of the day to this advanced technology! Today we’d call it an animated GIF.
Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope so he could turn his chronophotographic photos into a ‘moving’ display of various animals and birds in motion. The galloping horse series was the first to be presented like this and was done to answer a burning question at the time – do horses simultaneously have all 4 feet off the ground when they gallop. The series of photographs demonstrated that they do, and at what point during their stride it happens. However, of far more significance is the fact that the photos, when spun as a sequential series in the zoopraxiscope, produced what is generally accepted to be the first known piece of motion film footage.
The zoopraxiscope is also regarded as an important predecessor of the film projector and, like the ‘motion film’ it produced, would have been considered ‘new media’ for its day. Innovations like this paved the way for many of the entertainment mediums we take for granted today. Today’s innovations likewise will be taken for granted by future generations as technology advances further, pushing boundaries as it does.
Pushing Boundaries In Media
The New Media Film Festival® has certainly pushed a lot of those boundaries since their inaugural event back in 2009. As a recent press release points out, the Festival was the first to “celebrate ‘innovation, story, mediums and platforms’, screen AI created film, show collaborative virtual reality content, host an AR International Art Exhibit, and distribute micro content.” That’s an impressive list of achievements, and boundary pushing!
The festival has also helped launch the careers of an up and coming generation of exciting new filmmakers. This is a group of very talented individuals from around the globe who are challenging boundaries about how entertainment media is produced, and in some cases, even the way we watch it. They are fearlessly experimenting with 21st century technology to tell stories that will draw audiences in and take them along for the journey.
Augmented Reality (AR) is a good case in point. It’s also just one of more than 20 different categories of new media promoted by the New Media Film Festival®. AR first began to capture the imagination of the public with Pokemon Go. Where Virtual Reality (VR) projects someone into a simulated world, AR goes a step further and enhances ie augments, the real world with superimposed visual overlays and holographic displays.
Technologies like AR are changing the way we interact with entertainment media
There are now many notable examples of interactive AR. One of the most interesting and informative is the way the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza uses it to take visitors on a tour of Ancient Egypt. They don a pair of HoloLens and the surrounding scenery morphs into what it would have looked like thousands of years ago. The now eroded Great Pyramids of Giza are magically sparkling new again for example. In this way, visitors can get a real feel for the past whilst standing in the present.
Using Modern Technologies To Provide Interactive And Immersive Entertainment Experiences
Today a whole generation of moviemakers are utilizing the same types of technologies to take audiences on some amazing journeys and the New Media Film Festival® makes it possible to experience these first hand. However, you do have to get to the festival in person for that to happen.
Once there, you’ll find Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and a delightful smorgasbord of other technologically innovative categories on offer for your viewing delight. There’s media created using Artificial Intelligence, 5D, and Drones along with Digital Comic material and more. If you’re more of a traditionalist at heart, there are also old favorites like Animation, panels with producers, Q & A at end of each screening session, feature films, documentaries, et al.
You can also enjoy a range of genres from the very brief Sniplers – 30 second pitch® through to Pilots, Podcasts, Web Series, Shorts, Music Videos et al. In fact, if it can be made using innovative media techniques you’ll likely find it at the 2020 New Media Film Festival®!
Further, if you’ve always dreamed of attending a movie World Premiere this is your chance! Many of the works are having their first public showing at this Festival whilst for others it’s their first showing in LA. Audience members can also participate in voting for the Audience Award. In fact, there’s $45,000 in awards for the winners of the Grand Prize, Best in Category, and Audience Award. In other words, there’s plenty of reasons to add the 11th New Media Film Festival® in LA to your bucket list for 2020.
For more information about the Film Festival, and for booking details, head to their website – http://www.newmediafilmfestival.com/
When: June 3rd and 4th 2020
Where: The Landmark, 10850 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, California, USA
