A Little Green Man has sent Father Geek the following report on a wave of the future, a scientific breakthrough that holds the possibility of cheap film distribution for those filmmakers who cannot afford to strike 100's nay 1000's of prints to compete in the theater marketplace. Well, we'll see how it goes with this one, check it out.
Coppola and Lucas talked about it for years, but it's the true independent filmmakers that are doing it...
THEATRICAL DISTRIBUTION IS REINVENTED ON OCTOBER 23, 1998 with the first ever national satellite theatrical release of a feature film, The Last Broadcast.
On October 23rd cinema history will be made when The Last Broadcast becomes the first film to be released nationally via digital satellite technology.
"This historic event is an exciting combination of indie ingenuity and technological innovation," says Lance Weiler co- founder WAVELENGTH RELEASING "Instead of transfering our digital feature to celluloid and releasing it via traditional mechanisms, we took stock of the new digital distribution possibilities and founded a company WAVELENGTH RELEASING. We then formed the alliances necessary to release films nationally to theaters and homes, without film at all"
The film's theatrical run will kick off at: the Cable Car Cinema, Providence, RI; The International House, Philadelphia, PA; The Encian, Orlando, FL; The U Film Society/Bell Theater, Minneapolis, MN; and The Hollywood, Portland, OR, with subsequent markets to follow.
"In laymens terms The Last Broadcast, will be encoded , taken to a network operations center and then beamed up to a satellite which is approx. 22,300 miles above earth," Says Esther Robinson Co-Founder WLR, " from there the signal is bounced back to the movie theaters. A satellite dish receives the signals and passes them through to a localized server placed in each of the theater's projection booths. The server sends the signal directly into the projector which in turns projects a large screen image to the theater audience below."
The film will be distributed to these, and subsequent, markets via modern satellite technology provided by CYBERSTAR- A Loral Company, and state-of-the-art digital projection systems provided by Digital Projection Inc. in conjunction with enabling Digital Light Processing (DLP) technologies provided by Texas Instruments. Additional sponsorship for the theatrical release will be provided by the The Independent Film Channel, The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers and IndieWire.
The Last Broadcast is a smart who-dunit that details a filmmaker's search for the killer of three television personalities murdered in a remote forest during a live broadcast. Hours of seemingly revealing videotape and internet logs obscure the truth more than reveal it. In this film by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler, "Reality Television" itself becomes a character, revealing the social static of a world in which seeing should never be believing. The film, hailed as "the first desktop feature film" was produced for under $1,000.00 using digital camera technology and non-linear editing on an at-home PC.
The Last Broadcast has received critical acclaim at major festivals, including South By Southwest, the Cleveland International Film Festival, and the Chicago Underground Film Festival.
"While The Last Broadcast is the first film to be released via satellite, we formed WAVELENGTH RELEASING to broaden the horizon for all films," says Stefan Avalos Co -founder WLR, "This is a glimpse at the future of cinema. THE LAST BROADCAST is in a fact the first, the first of many"
WAVELENGTH RELEASING was formed by producer Esther Robinson (the FUEL TOUR, Home Page, ALIVE TV) and digital film pioneers Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler (co-directors of The Last Broadcast) specifically to address new forms of production, distribution and exhibition. With the first ever theatrical release of a digital feature film via satellite and the first video-on-demand releases in the United States and Singapore, Wavelength Releasing is helping to propel entertainment into the 21st century.
A Little Green Man
