every year at the end of the festival the awards night acknowledges the best entries of 2009. i saw a lot of films this year, and maybe 2 of them were worth recommending, and for sure those two films were bought and are being prepped for wide release. the awards night took place in the Racquet Club venue. its amazing how the place is just tennis courts transformed into an elegant closing event.

huge stage lights being set up under the covered tennis courts

just about ready

view from back stage

DJ on stage for the party after the reception

honestly, celebrities are no big deal to me anymore. the entire week of the festival park city was littered with well-known individuals and bands. i had a few good moments with the celebs, didnt get pictures of all of them, but i’ll at least tell you about em (if you believe it or not)

of course, Robert Redford

Simon Baker, star of The Mentalist on CBS

John Cleese, Monty Python, Q in James Bond, many other things

Ashton Kutcher

Pierce Brosnan

Denise Richards

Steven Soderbergh, director of Oceans 11-13

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Airlines, Virgin Records, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Galactic, etc.

James Gandolfini, actor and on HBO’s The Sopranos as Tony Soprano

Chris Rock, i actually got to talk with him for a little bit.

some people i didnt get pictures of were:

Michael Madsen, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, etc.

Michael Cera, Juno, Superbad

Paris Hilton. believe it or not, but i actually tripped her. i see this girl in pink walking down with cameras all over the place, and im just working, sorta just let out a foot and she stumbled, keeping a smile on her face because the cameras were everywhere.

there were others like The Goo Goo Dolls, Damien Rice, Wyclef Jean, and many more. if i forgot anyone, ill update the post. there were plenty around and couldnt keep track of them all

when we first arrived, seeing what mess we had to get into.

it was the sketchiest way how they put up these tents. that pole they are setting up is just a piece of wood used to prop the tent up to its full height. that thing was bucklin and almost snapped. we definitely let the other workers who stuck around do that one.

putting up the walls..

this location was called Temple. i think it actually was a temple, brand new with heated sidewalks around the perimeter of the building so that the snow just melts off. this theater was constructed from an empty room since this obviously isnt a movie theater most of the year. it’s crazy what they can do with an empty room.

The Egyptian. this was Robert Redford’s first and only theater back in 1985 when he started sundance. it’s the main place to go for people who wanna see the history behind the festival. 

Eccles. this is the largest theater sundance has and seats roughly 1250 people. there are two tiers and believe it or not but it’s the auditorium for park city’s high school. all the premieres are screened here first with the directors and actors.

Prospector. this is another empty ballroom, used for business conferences, turned into theater. this building is actually where our production office was and spent most of the time here when not out doing work. 

New Frontier was a place open to the public where they can check out cool new things that are coming out in the future. for example they had a system on display that worked like the screen Tom Cruise used in Minority Report. other things like high def projection systems, new laptops, and new Sony video cameras were all on display with representatives on hand to answer questions. it was a really cool place to hang out, especially since it’s free to the public. 

there were other locations out there that i just never got a chance to take pictures of. Racquet Club was a racquet club turned into movie theater for the month of January. it also held the sundance awards night reception and party at the end of the festival. i have pictures of that place, just in awards night form, shown in later posts.

this picture above shows some of the vehicles we have to work with. currently we have nine vehicles in our fleet. too bad im the only one not allowed to drive because im not covered under the insurance (21+).

this is our living room, about 13 of us living in this awesome ski lodge. there’s flat screens in every room, projector in the living room, game room downstairs with surround sound systems all over the place. in the picture above in the living room you can see the computer monitor, a huge 37in flat panel. the production department at sundance apparently has a huge reputation for being on top of everything thrown at them, therefore they get the best accommodations. it’s a rough life out here in park city, but someone’s gotta do it. 

one day i was asked to take a ride up to a place called the Sundance Resort, basically a town called Sundance that Robert Redford bought [in its entirety] and created for a program he puts on year round called Summer Labs. people submit script and what not to this institution and if they’re chosen they get flown out to sundance, utah, to work to make their project a reality. around 2000 people apply a year and they only pick like 12. it’s definitely an awesome program. i for sure plan to volunteer or work the Summer Labs one summer. they house you in a crazy five star places for the summer, feed you, AND pay you just for working. the picture above was on the way to the resort. Redford bought all the land in and around the resort to make sure that it would stay s secluded with no store chains in sight. 

this is the lobby of the Temple, one of the 14 theater locations part of the festival. the place is brand new, first time on the festival location list. it has heated sidewalks outside (automated snow melting) and state of the art equipment. fancy stuff.

this was a view from the Temple parking lot, pretty neat.

being part of the production team, we are all given a radio to keep in contact with everyone while we are on different errands. it also is useful to always keep up to date on everything that is going on with the other teams as well. sundance has a third party company come in called Mother who provides all the radios. it’s pretty crazy what they do. Mother is basically the last line of defense in the event that the festival suffers a major crisis or attack. they’re located offsite in an armored mobile headquarters. they bring in transmitter towers as well so that our radios can reach greater lengths.

these were two new honda insight hybrids that they were debuting or at least showing first models of here at sundance. they were all covered up until opening day.

my messy desk in the production office. its cleaner now.

there’s plenty more to post, i just need to find the time. stay tuned!

freshman year of college i participated in a three-day seminar with the Mill Valley Film Festival’s Youth Critic’s Jury. we basically covered a little of all the different aspects of film. and most of the people that spoke were pretty important people. i know for sure i met Andrew Stanton, Find Nemo creator; even got to hold his Oscar or whatever he won. after the three days of fun, i was one of the six chosen to be on the Youth Critic’s Jury. we screened a load of films, 200 seems to be a number in mind but i highly doubt we had that many. over the course of two days we chose our favorites and those chosen were shown to the public. it was a great experience. ever since then i’ve been volunteering with the festival, working in various positions, from ticket-takers to box office ticket-givers. it was fun, would get to see a lot of cool movies and meet a lot of famous people.

last year i signed up again as a volunteer, but was kind of getting tired of doing the same stuff over and over again. in a small little push, i decided to try and see if i could do more. the volunteer coordinator, Lauren, was really cool and basically said to her that if you needed anything special done then let me know, because the basic volunteer work was too repetitive for me. in short, by the end of the festival i moved away from being a volunteer and more towards being part of staff – knowing most theater managers and staff members. i was even invited to a bar in sausalito with the staff after the closing night party out on the hornblower. was pretty sweet. kinda just shows that with a little drive and determination, most things are fairly possible. 

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well fast forward to today, with me working at sundance. Lauren from Mill Valley Film Festival had a boyfriend, Erik, who was working sundance in January, put in the good word for me with the right people and now work with Erik and the production team.

i arrived saturday, jan 3rd, with my dad late at night and stayed at the marriott by the airport in salt lake city. the next day we checked out the area, bought some snow gear and headed up to park city for the first time. park city was also home of the past winter olympics, so there was remnants of that everywhere when we drove in. park city is like the la jolla of san diego, or the beverly hills of LA – the upper class of the area. we didnt do much, just checked into the park city marriott (which goes for $375/night when sundance is in town btw), went to go check out the small town, then ate dinner at ruth’s chris steakhouse; was good stuff. my dad was only here for a couple days, but we had a good time checkin out the new places.

monday all sundance employees were told to report to the park city library for an overview meeting, with a member of every department give a talk about what they do, what they’re responsible for and how to communicate with them if needed. it was great, you’d never thing there would be so many different elements to something like this when you just go as a movie-goer. some departments were marketing, corporate, press, customer service, ticketing, ice cleanup, and production, which i’m a part of. production covers basically anything and everything physically that needs to be done at the festival.

for example our first day we had to move hundreds of boxes containing film guides that will later be distributed to each venue. we’re basically the go-to people for the other departments to ask for things (e.i. 1200 kenneth cole jackets moved from one location to the other and prepped for distribution). its not a glamorous job at all, basically doing everything it takes to make this festival happen with the least amount of hitches. so far i’m lovin it. the first couple of days were really interesting. it wasnt exactly what i had in mind. at mill valley, i was more in charge of festival and production oversight – when something was wrong i would go fix it. i wasnt sure if i wanted to do this for a whole month. as of right now, ending day 4, i think ill make it  happen.

things are good in a sense that i’ve gotten used to it – the weather and work. i move into the production house tomorrow as well as getting my sundance jacket/uniform and credentials (with my picture on it!), so that should be an awesome day at least. saturday will pick up and there will be plenty of things to do then, i hear thats the big busy day when a big chunk of the festival offices have to be moved to new locations. it makes sense because sundance can only take over the city for a certain amount of days, so the production dept will be down to the wire setting everything up.

this is pretty basic post, im sure ill post more about the people and living conditions soon enough.