Wildwood Film Festival: Trends in Filmmaking

The culture of filmmaking gets a lot of grief, and some of it is rightly deserved (see: last summer’s film worker awakening spearheaded by IATSE Stories on Instagram). But one of the positive aspects of our industry that I feel gets often overlooked is the willingness to take on apprentices and teach the younger generation of filmmakers the craft. 

I remember my first feature out of film school, working G&E on Feed the Fish, a romantic comedy shot in Door County, Wisconsin, and the fantastic lighting crew that took me under their wing. Those lessons and that sense of generosity never left me, and as I’ve gotten more established in the industry, teaching and giving back is something I’ve been very driven to do. 

One of the best ways I found to be able to do that was partnering with Wildwood Film Festival. Wildwood is an annual film festival, exclusively featuring films with a Wisconsin connection - those shot in WI, utilizing WI crew, etc. What sets Wildwood apart, is that it’s almost entirely comprised of short films, open to any & all skill levels, and due to the amount of films shown, has one of the best submission-to-acceptance ratios of any festival (to my knowledge) in the midwest. What this means is that Wildwood has become an absolutely fantastic showcase for emerging talent, giving students, new filmmakers, and marginalized voices a platform to share their art. 

I partnered with Wildwood almost 10 years ago to offer the full catalog of Haban Media Works’ camera and lighting equipment available as prize packages for lucky filmmakers, and launched a series of “Judge’s Choice Awards”. These awards were designed to be just as unique as Wildwood itself. Every film festival, Wildwood included, has its share of short films shot for $20,000 on RED or ARRI. This prize wasn’t for those films. What we’ve done is carefully assess films for what we considered filmmakers of considerable talent in telling stories, but for whom the technological component was lacking. By design, we were not awarding those who already had the resources to make amazing films, we were targeting those who would be given the largest boost to their careers by having these resources made available to them (a concept I very much hope more festivals will embrace)

Part of this partnership allowed me to sit on the jury for Wildwood. And by sitting on the jury, it was remarkable to see the emerging trends in filmmaking and to watch the adoption of new technologies.

My first year on the Jury was 2014. Around that time, the first generation of DJI’s Ronin 3-Axis gimbal was released. By 2015, more than a handful were featuring Michael Bay-esque 360-degree camera moves around a subject. Later that year, the Phantom 3 was released - the first drone with video that was worth a damn - and by 2016, it seemed every video was utilizing aerial videography. My prediction for the next few years is that we’ll probably see an explosion of RGB lighting among indie filmmakers, as manufacturer’s are greatly expanding their offerings of this technology, and price points are being driven lower. 

Now, I never said wide-scale adoption of these technologies was a good thing, but it was very interesting to see these technologies being integrated into filmmaking even at a student level. 

More positive developments have been advancements in cameras and LED lighting.  Cameras, sensor technology, and resolution have massively increased the quality of the footage being captured. When my first film, Bell Manor, premiered at Wildwood in 2009, it was shot on mini-HD tape. Now, 4K video is ubiquitous, and even some 8K cell phone video - as compressed as it is -  is miles better than the cameras being used back then. Additionally, along with the increase in resolution, has come the massive increase in bit depth and raw, uncompressed video. This has allowed for color grading that simply wasn’t even possible a decade ago. All this has given footage the ability to be a truer representation of a filmmaker’s artistic vision. LED lighting has also increased dramatically in quality, especially in the last 4 years or so. I think we all remember 1st generation LED lighting (I remember having to slap almost ½ magenta on the early models from aaydentech just to get them close to nixing the green). Even up to 4 years ago or so, anything less than the absolute top-end fixtures, and you’d be dealing with low CRI and green or magenta shifts all over the place. Nowadays, LED technology has matured, and become fairly consistent, with even the lowest-tier fixtures sporting 95+ CRI. It’s also been great to see the movement towards higher-wattage fixtures, such as Aputure and Nanlux’s 1200w, M18 equivalent LED monolights, and is going to be fun to watch how this impacts indie filmmaking for the better. 

However, it’s not just trends on the technological side of filmmaking, it’s also narratively. 

Beginning in 2015, and continuing through 2017, there was a real narrative shift towards darker, almost nihilistic tones in films. Films about zombies, domestic abuse, and random acts of violence seemed to be overarching tropes. Was this a product of America’s stagnant economy and troubled political times leading up to , and in response to, the 2016 Presidential election? I hesitate to say one way or the other, but it did seem more than coincidental that the tone on-screen was reflective of the tumult of the era. 

Later, in 2018, came the walking montage. Again, like I mentioned with the tech side of things: not all trends are good. Try being a juror for a festival and seeing 50% of the entries have walking montages. Just shot-after-shot of a character walking from one location to another. I get the point of montages, I really do. I also get that the intent is not to show a character moving from one place to another, but to show a progression of the character as they develop, grow, and move on from an event. But in a short film, where time for development and story are at such a premium, there are better ways to do so. Ultimately, this trend felt a lot like people abusing tool - in this case the low cost of digital capture, storage, and editing - to shoot way more than they needed. 

Curiously, the walking montage matured, and morphed into something slightly different: the lone journeyman. Starting in 2019, and accelerating in 2020, films featuring a lone protagonist became the norm. These films, almost completely lacking a traditional 3-act structure, feature a lone protagonist on a journey through a moment in their lives, and are incredibly introspective. Again, it’s hard to pinpoint a reason for this narrative shift. But if it was due to the growing isolation of individuals in society, then I’m morbidly curious to see how this will evolve as more post-pandemic content comes out. Or maybe it will shift into something altogether new, like films that are a celebration of life. I can’t really say. 

Looking back on Wildwood Film Festival through the years, thinking back through the hundreds of films, it’s interesting to see the shifting trends and the adoption of new technology. Almost like digging back through the tertiary layers of geologic history. It’s interesting to see us as an industry progress. 

As the industry continues to progress, and emerging filmmakers break through new barriers and discover new ways of telling their story, it’s great to think that there are festivals like Wildwood that are working to give them a platform. And as long as Wildwood continues to give a platform to these voices, Haban Media Works will be happy to provide camera and lighting packages, and production expertise, to these young filmmakers.