SXSW vs. Sundance
After a day in Austin, I've started to do the natural comparison between the SXSW Film, Music and Interactive Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. They are quite distinct and each valuable in a different way.
Sundance takes place in Park City, Utah. It's a tiny town, barely six blocks long. When the festival rolls in with it's 48,000 attendees, the industry swallows the community. Everything in the town is centered on the festival. Park City starts to feel like a "company town."
NOT SO at SXSW. Austin covers about 275 square miles and is home to over 600,000 folks. The second fastest growing city in the United States (according to the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau). While a lot of the activity is around the Austin Convention Center (ACC), I was wishing I'd rented a car. Some of the film venues are several miles from the ACC making it difficult to get between screenings. You'd never want a car in Park City because parking is impossible, the shuttles are great and everything is quite close. Next year, I'll rent a car in Austin.
So, the SXSW festival feels like something occurring in the town rather than something that takes over the town. The other thing that's quite different is how diverse the offerings are here. I am completely surprised at how many different types of panel discussions there are. There are film panels, interactive panels, mentoring sessions, keynotes, mini-meetings and DIY meetings. I can hardly wait for tomorrow because I've already chosen several panels that I'll be attending. Among them:
- International Documentary Co-Production
- State of North American Documentaries
- Mini-Meeting Doc Filmmaking
- International
- Documentary Distribution
- Serious Games for Learning
- Theatrical Distribution
- Latin Filmmaking's Emerging Talent
- Convergence & Advertising
Of course, there's also the Blogging About Film Panel that I'll be on with CinemaTech's Scott Kirsner, Cinematical's Karina Longworth, GreenCine's David Hudson, Movie City News' David Poland and directors Joe Swanberg and Doug Block. It should be very exciting. I'm definitely the Chihuahua that's running with the Blogging Big Dogs but it should be fun.
Lately, there's all this press about how "yesterday" blogging is and how it may no longer be viable business model. Of course, I've never made money with blogging so that isn't terribly important to me. At the exact same time, there's all of this press in the New York Times about the power of niche marketing and Slivercasting on the web. There's a Theatrical Distribution Panel at the same time so I'm hoping there'll be folks attending. More about that later.
