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Winners of the PAIFF-Talenthouse Short Film Contest Are Announced!

Alf | 7/8/11

Culled from over 174 wonderful entries, the winner of the PAIFF-Talenthouse Short Film Contest is a film from Mistra Bay, Malta: Cedric Vella’s YouTube My Facebook. The runners-up are La Cruz (Alvaro Victor Rozas Leiva), Match (Kate Barker-Froyland), and Thicker Than Water (Tommy Tripodes). 

One of the key points we want to emphasize at PAIFF is that we’re entering a new era of filmmaking in which everyone has an opportunity to tell stories. Through technology, people who participated were able to showcase their films; showing participants’ short films online created a virtual Festival in which viewers were able to see every entry. Each participant built an audience around his or her film, even if he or she didn’t win the contest. The excitement and energy that surrounded the contest was inspiring.

For many of us, Facebook is a familiar part of our everyday lives. The winner of the PAIFF-Talenthouse creative invite, YouTube My Facebook, is an inventive short that pulls the audience behind the quiet, still images of Facebook into the quirky narratives of Facebook users’ lives. Charming us with the reproduction of everyday sounds (Foley sound), Vella explores a great concept that is relevant to everyone, but particularly relevant to Palo Alto. In one sequence, the sound of a telephone ringing is accompanied by an image of a girl shutting off her phone and then moving to a picture of the frustrated guy who is trying to call her. Many entries included great visual content; however, this short uniquely addressed the relationship between soundscape and image.

The first runner-up, La Cruz, is a haunting short from Chile that viewers voted into the top 30 with 336 votes. Through the use of strong visual perspective and skillful animation reminiscent of a comic book or anime, Leiva leads us through a desolate landscape. It is a memorable film.

Shot on a high-definition Red Camera, our next runner-up took us in an entirely different direction. Match executes a beautiful, straightforward narrative about two sisters struggling to make a difficult decision. Although PAIFF has a special interest in technological innovation, this short is a runner-up because it evokes a powerful emotional response in a compressed time frame. In the digital age, many filmmakers give less importance to a script; Barker-Froyland’s film puts as much effort into telling a good story as it does technical aspects.

Thicker Than Water, is sure to be a crowd favorite. While there are many humorous children’s movies rendered in 3D, there are very few 3D comedies for adults. Tripodes’ short is a darkly-funny story about a man who meets the love of his life.

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PAIFF thanks the creative agency Talenthouse, for partnering on this successful contest. And thank you to all those who submitted and voted!  See you at the Festival!

Alf

PAIFF wins 3rd Place at the Chili Cook-Off!

Anita | 7/6/11

Between 7,000 — 8,000 people attended the 30th Annual Palo Alto Summer Festival and Chili Cook-off in Mitchell Park this 4th of July. PAIFF was one of twenty-two competing teams.

On the night before the Cook-off, we pre-soaked dried black beans in seven different bowls and gathered over two cars’ worth of ingredients and supplies. Teams drove onto the field at 6:30 a.m. They started preparing (chopping, dicing etc.) food around 8:30 am, but cooking over the camp stoves was only permitted after 9:00 am.  PAIFF’s goal was to cook 15 gallons of chili, a sample of which would be delivered to the judges at 1:30 pm.

Until we got going, we had no clue how much goes into the preparation of 15 gallons of chili. We had a vague notion that this was a mammoth task and we experienced some trepidation before the event, but we had no idea how complicated it is for 4 people to create 15 gallons of chili outside and then keep it simmering at the right temperature without having it lose moisture.

PAIFF’s entry was vegetarian (and vegan), so we had to use a lot of secret ingredients to achieve the “umami” taste that other teams could create by browning meat over a long period. Umami, most easily described as a delicious, savory quality was first specifically identified in the early 1900s and it is now one of the five basic tastes; the others are sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.  One of the reasons it’s hard for some vegetarians and vegans to feel satisfied is because it is more difficult to find umami in healthy vegetarian foods. 

Meats, cheese, mushrooms, kombu, and fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes all contain the L-glutamates that impart umami. (For a great read on the “discovery” of umami in both France and Japan, check out Jonah Lehrer’s first book Proust Was a Neuroscientist.) We couldn’t use any of these (except perhaps kombu). Because fermentation can create umami, we settled on soy sauce as one of our secret ingredients.

While other teams used cocoa and coca-cola to create complexity, we used smoky paprika, cinnamon, soy sauce and a combination of cubanelles and bell peppers grilled over mesquite charcoal. The heat in the chili came from a blend of serrano peppers, pimenton and smoked paprika from Happy Quail Farms (a wonderful pepper farm in East Palo Alto that you can find at the Farmers’ Market). To get the mouth-feel of meat, we used a combination of quinoa and Quorn (vegetarian meat grounds).

PAIFF ran out of its 15 gallons of chili around 3:00 pm. We were kept so busy in the booth that we nearly missed the awards ceremony in the concrete bowl. Despite tough competition, we placed 3rd in the corporate division in a blind taste test!  It was an enthusiastic, fun crowd and we felt honored to be a part of the festivities, competing against so many great organizations and individuals from the community. If you missed this year’s Cook-off, we hope to see you out there next Independence Day.

Anita

The Digital Natives Are Here!

Anita | 7/5/11

More than most places, Palo Alto can claim that its youth are true digital natives. They are not only growing up in a digital age, but are growing up in a place where many of the latest digital technologies are being created and developed.  Although there are many film festivals around the world with a youth program and even film festivals devoted entirely to youth, there aren’t many that try to embolden and spark experimentation in an audience of young people whose lives are already deeply woven with cutting edge technology.  

PAIFF has just announced the details of its 2011 Digital Natives Program, which addresses the creative and developmental needs of four Bay Area youth groups (ages 6—8, 9—12, 13—15 and 16—18).  From a socially relevant documentary short to whimsical and lovely animations, films screened in the Digital Natives program this year were selected over the last six months from among the best shorts and features shown at other film festivals. 

To curate this portion of the program, PAIFF staff viewed a large number of award-winning films for younger audiences that never made it to commercial movie theaters. Although some of these films exist online, they are all movies with strong visual content that should be seen on the big screen in an immersive environment. Each of the movies we will show this year was chosen because it tells a good story and demonstrates an artful use of technology.

Fortunately for our community, several local high schools have programs that teach filmmaking basics. Later this summer, we will be announcing three high school shorts from local high school students to be screened at the Children’s Theater as part of the Program. However, the Digital Natives Program will also offer practical workshops run by filmmakers that cater to all ages, with an emphasis on developing creativity, teaching new skills and building upon existing skills in iMovie and YouTube. We also anticipate announcing one or more additional workshops with animation gurus, so please check back.

For the program, please click here.

Film still from Fishing with Sam in our Shorts Program (ages 6—8).

Anita

Google+ for Creatives?

Jenn | 7/1/11

This week, our Silicon Valley neighbors at Google ventured into the world of social media with the limited launch of Google+. Google+ hopes to revolutionize social media and the way we shape our online world by bringing the Internet back to the most natural kind of human interaction: selective sharing. At PAIFF, we see big potential for Google+ as a creative platform. Here’s how we envision use of Google+’s five features as artistic tools:

Circles
Google+ allows you to categorize your friends into ‘Circles,’ simplified groups that allow you to share certain information with certain folks, without broadcasting details of your project to your entire social network.  When working on a creative project, this could allow for ease in sharing information with different parts of a team – ‘writing,’ ‘visual effects,’ and ‘funding,’ for example – or create one large ‘Circle’ for your entire team.  

Hangouts
Long gone are the days when collaboration required nearness. Drawing on the success of video platforms like Skype and Google Video, Google+’s ‘Hangouts’ are informal video gatherings that allow for easier brainstorm sessions, between people irrespective of their physical proximity. One-on-one scheduled Skype dates are commonplace, but ‘Hangouts’ are the first specific attempt to allow for low-key, multi-user gatherings,.  Imagine checking in on the Web after dinner to find that three of your friends are in a video chat together, and being able to walk right into the conversation and pitch an idea. Easy, fast, awesome.

Sparks
Sparks is like a Google-ified (read: neater, more organized) StumbleUpon, transforming your free hours surfing the web by directing you to cool links and updates on topics of your choice. PAIFF’s might be ‘art,’ ‘indie films,’ ‘tech innovation,’ ‘Bay Area,’ and ‘festivals.’ 

Huddle
Huddle is essentially group-texting. Scratch that, it is group-texting, which has been available on Blackberry, and in app-form on iPhone, for a while. Nevertheless, we’re excited about the opportunity to figure out movies and meet-ups with a whole bunch of people on one screen.

Instant Upload
Photos sent directly to your Google account, without the extra navigation of sending pics to e-mail, MMS, or Facebook, would allow for more direct documentation. With the rise of iPhone movies and contests like Nokia Shorts (check out this year’s winner, ‘Split Screen’: http://vimeo.com/25451551), Google+ could move in the direction of instant video upload – allowing content to be stored instantly on the web for easy access, editing, and sharing.

We’re excited to see where Google+ takes us and other creative groups in the weeks and months to come.  Who knows? Maybe you’ll Huddle your friends during PAIFF this September to meet up for drinks after a film screening, Instant Upload pics from the streets of Palo Alto, and add new acquaintances you meet at the festival to your own PAIFF Circle.

Jenn

About The Blog

At the Palo Alto Institute, new ideas and perspectives are explored and played with on a daily basis. Our blog is a place for us to share some of these ideas and insights with our community. We'll throw in the occasional recipe or other tidbit, too, just for fun. Enjoy!

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