Category: film

Your Name Here Presents

Big ups and mad props to everyone making donations large and small to Sita Sings the Blues. This is really our film, not just mine – a community project. Most films are financed by big corporations, perpetuating the top-down model of American entertainment: they dictate content from above, and audiences consume what they’re handed below. But Sita seems to be funded by viewers, individual human beings who want to see it get out there. The audience is financing this film! It’s not just touching, it’s thrilling to be part of this. Thank you!!

Everyone who donates gets their name in the credits. Donors of $1,000 or more (like lenders of $2K or more) get a credit of their choosing!

Update: Credits are locking Tuesday night. Big, big thanks to you amazing generous kind wonderful donors – a post of pure gratitude is coming soon.

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Money needed, like, now

So the good news is, Sita is in the Berlinale. The bad news is, she’s programmed in a theater that doesn’t do Digital Cinema. That means unless I have a 35mm print by February, her one and only World Premiere will be on, well…video. I can’t let that happen.

The 35mm master will still cost about $30,000 – more if we do surround sound, which is much better audio. I still need to raise $20,000. I’m looking into bouncing credit card debt – you know, putting it all on a few credit cards, then continually applying for new credit cards and shifting the balances from one to another. It would be much better if some rich person just lent me the money. Or if some supernatural being just gave me the money – but honestly, a loan would be plenty. Big ol’ credit in the film, you can attend the Berlinale with me as part of the film team, my undying gratitude…

Here are Sita‘s Berlinale screening dates, just in:

11.02.08 17:00 Kino Babylon
13.02.08 11:30 Kino Babylon
14.02.08 19:30 Kino Babylon

Let’s give all those broken-hearted Germans who are seeing the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told on Valentine’s Day the real 35mm experience!

Tax-deductible donations (not loans) can still be made here.

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Got Accent?

We need some VOICE EXTRAS for a last-minute crowd recording for Sita Sings the Blues. If you’ve got an authentic accent from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or anywhere else in South Asia, or even Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia or Indonesia (all of which have Ramayana traditions) and can come to a recording studio in Manhattan this Thursday Dec. 20 around 7pm, please email ASAP. No $, but you’ll get a credit in the film. nina underscore paley at yahoo (dot com).

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Render Unto D-Cinema

exportingqt1.jpg

So I haven’t raised enough money to make a 35mm film print (yet). But I did raise enough to make a Digital Cinema Package, because the Stuttgart International Animation Festival offered a deal. And I borrowed enough to buy a new computer to re-render the entire 82-minute feature at a suitable higher resolution.

See, when I started Sita Sings the Blues, I couldn’t afford the processor power or disk space to work at the ideal resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels. Instead I compromised at 1280 x 720 pixels, which in spite of being half the ideal resolution looks almost as good. The 35mm film test I did of Battle of Lanka looks great, anyway. But film has a natural grain, plus film floats around the screen a little, a result of analog frame registration (aka sprockets), both of which mask and “warm up” digital flaws. D-Cinema, however, has rock-solid registration and no grain, making it potentially less forgiving than film. Meanwhile computers and hard drives have gotten predictably cheaper since I began the project, and December is a “lost month” in New York anyway, it’s not like I’d have any freelance gigs or make any headway on promotions, and everyone gets lazy at work or leaves town, so… here I am, watching little blue progress bars for hours and days on end. Boring? You bet! But it will make the movie look infinitesimally better, so it’s all worth it. Also, D-Cinema supports 6-channel audio, so my sound designer is planning a super-duper surround-sound experience, which will make the picture look a lot better.

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