PAH in the Press
REELCHICAGO.COM, 14/03/2008
Coppola’s weeklong digital PAH-FEST hits town with story capture, panels, awards"
by Ruth L Ratny
(summarized)Christopher Coppola’s one-of-a-kind new media PAH-Fest comes to Chicago this week! March 22 - 30!
Project Accessible Hollywood is intended to reach anyone and everyone and encourages them to tell their story through new digital media; including cell phones and digital cameras.
Columbia College and IFP are sponsoring the free-to-participate PAH-FEST, which closes with a presentation of cash prizes to the winners at Columbia’s Film Row Theatre.
Coppola kicks off the event on Saturday, March 22 at Millennium Park with the Circus Vision Challenge. Other events will include - Cell Phone Art, Mobilflicks and Digiportraits.
There will also be a panel on the creative process - participants include Nick Paine, President of EARSXX1 (Coppola’s new media studio) and Oscar and multi-award winning sound designer Richard Beggs ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," "Chronicles of Narnia" "Galaxy Quest" and 50 other movies, starting with Francis Ford Coppola’s "Apocalypse Now" as sound re-recordist and musician in 1979).
PAH-FEST has been a lot of fun for him, Paine says. “We go into very diverse communities and solicit participants from a wide range of demographics. We’re not looking for film students, but rather plumbers, lawyers, clerks, kids, from different ethnicities to make a short film.”
“We pair them up with a coach from the industry, give them pro-sumer cameras and video-enabled mobile phones and, with a coach, guide them through the process of making a 6-minute film.”
Finished pieces from the events are posted in the PAH-Fest theatre and judged by celebrity judges and the public. The winner in the Mobilflicks category will receive a $1,500 prize; $500 each will be awarded for the first place winners in the Cell Phone Art, DigiPortraits, and Circus Vision Challenge.