A Utah filmmaker who filmed a low-budget movie in a small Utah town, then wowed Sundance Film Festival audiences with it, will lead a free online discussion about making movies outside the Los Angeles-New York system.
The Sundance Institute, through its Sundance Co//ab program, will host the online event, “Making It as a Regional Filmmaker,” Wednesday from 4 to 6:30 p.m., on the program’s website, collab.sundance.org. The Utah Film Commission is supporting the event.
It will feature a virtual conversation between Mike Plante, senior shorts programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, and Robert Machoian, a Brigham Young University professor and a filmmaker.
Machoian directed “The Killing of Two Lovers,” an intense and intimate drama about David (Clayne Crawford), who is having difficulty adjusting to the idea that his marriage to Nikki (Sepideh Moafi) is falling apart. The movie was filmed in the small Utah town of Kanosh, on a barebones budget, with Machoian’s own children appearing as David and Nikki’s younger kids.
In the workshop, Machoian and Plante will discuss how regional filmmakers can establish collaborations and connections, take advantage of area resources, develop a small film crew, and finance and allocate a tiny budget. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A, and presentations by groups (including the Utah Film Commission and Kickstarter) that support emerging filmmakers. The event will end with a virtual networking session.
The event is free, but registration is required. There’s also some homework: Sundance has prepared a short list of links to Machoian’s past work (about 25 minutes in total), which Machoian will reference during the workshop.
