A CineForm first : driving the 48 Hour Film Project to HD and beyond

For each year the 48 Hour Film Project has come to San Diego, CineForm has entered a team; we even won a prize last year (see the full story for 2006.) After each event, we can't help thinking that CineForm needs to sponsor this competition, as these cutting edge indie filmmakers are our target market. But as we lack the funding of past heavy weight sponsors Avid and Panasonic, we had to be inventive.

This year, we are making the San Diego division of the 48 Hour Film Project the coolest of the 60+ international city circuit, by being the first city to present HD by providing services in exchange for CineForm sponsorship. CineForm is providing all the back-end format conversion and mastering of all 40 to 50 films to 1080p HD, all within 2-3 days of the competition's completion. Then CineForm, with the help of Wafian, is providing the projection server and staffing to present all the submissions on a Sony 4K projector at the Hillcrest Landmark theatres. To upconvert 50 short films from a huge range of formats to 1080p for projection is a marathon project in itself, plus we'll be entering our own team two days before, so we'll be flat out for few days.

Why are we doing this? Because we can. With our tools now being cross platform and CineForm being an ideal project format (yes, we have a digital theatre group adopting CineForm over the more pricey JPEG2000) we have all the tools to pull this off. Plus, it's going to be a lot of fun, particularly to see our work on a 4K screen.

If you are an HD indie filmmaker and you're in or near the San Diego area, you should consider joining this competition to see your work in its full resolution on the big screen. Sign up while you can.