For many Angelenos who toil in entertainment, high tech or any cross-pollination of the two, it’s time to get out of town.
Calling them out of their relatively warm winter dens are three key trade shows, all connected to the creation and distribution of film, television and music now generally known as “content.”
The big three are the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, from Jan. 6-9, followed by the National Association of Television Programming Executives, which is billing itself as an “alliance of media content professionals,” from Jan. 22-25, and the longer Sundance Film Festival, unspooling from Jan. 18-28.
While the first two events are in Vegas, the latter gathering unfolds up the street Interstate 15 in this case in Park City, Utah. “Our nature is not to be another trade show, another lounge,” says Ian Calderon, one founder of Sundance.
Indeed, lots of people head out to Utah to do film business folks who aren’t even remotely connected to any of the movies in competition at the festival.
“Locals in Utah call movie folks PIBs people in black,” says Tom Traub, a former film development executive who used to make the trip. “It was easy for us to spot each other.”
So how do PIBs cope with having to pick up and head out the door so soon after the last Kwanzaa candle is lit?
“I’ve always hated the fact it’s in January, right after the holidays. It seems to not give you a break,” complains Kevin Foxe, executive producer of “The Blair Witch Project.”
That breaklessness is compounded by the fact that so many people do more than one event. Last year, lots of people were flying back and forth between NATPE then in New Orleans and Sundance. Among them was Atom Films founder Mika Salmi, who in that famous period of dot com frenzy, sat on one panel in the Crescent City, watched coverage of Sundance in his hotel room that night, then hopped on a plane to do a panel in Utah the next day.
Tom Winkler, a former animator for “The Simpsons” who is now an online-sensation because of his potty-themed Doodie.com Web site, is planning a similar doubleheader this year. He’ll be in Vegas for a week and then plans to drive “one night up to Slamdance.”
Slamdance, of course, is the oldest of the now-established “alternate” festivals that have developed around Sundance.
At least one local executive thinks there’s an even tougher crunch time than January’s trio of hardware and content shows.
“The January trifecta? This is child’s play,” says Stephen Liu, co-founder of Santa Monica-based Reelplay, which maintains an online site that tracks available film rights for world markets. “My hat goes off to Los Angelenos in the international film distribution industry in October who go to MIPCOM in Cannes, London Screenings in London, and MIFED in Milan.”
MIPCOM is like an international version of NATPE, and the latter two events are film business gatherings.
