The Utah Film Commission's "Living Room" venue and hospitality suite on Main Street, Park City at Sundance 2015. All photographs courtesy of The Utah Film Commission.
For Sundance 2015, the Utah Film Commission, under new management, wanted to try something new to help the thousands of film industry professionals who visit the state for the festival understand all the Beehive state has to offer any potential production. Taking an important lesson from the success of my work on Airbnb's 2014 Haus, My partner Matias Alvarez and I proposed building on the idea of Utah being the host state, and welcoming visitors "Home". The notion of Grandma's comfortable, familiar living room came to mind, where a weary festival goer could put their feet up in unpretentious ease, have a cookie and some coffee, and hopefully learn a little about Utah's almost 100-year-old film industry. Thus, the Utah Film Commission's "Living Room" was born. Here is our exterior signage and projection.
The Park City Museum normally has a historic fire engine parked in this glass double door. Matias and I saw it as a perfect sidewalk cinema. We commissioned video artist Conor Provenzano to cull countless hours from the hundreds of films made in Utah and create a 30-minute film loop of striking images from over a century of Utah cinema. Sadly a little dim in this photo, the art piece captivated curious festival-goers.
Inside the venue, we not only wanted to create a universally comfortable lounge that would remind everyone of home but to playfully deconstruct Grandma's house into as much a film set as a living room. Walls were flats that we gapped in order to show the studio void and lights beyond, on the walls of which we projected a distorted version of Conor Provenzano's beautiful film loop, creating an intriguing light and energy beyond boundaries of the familiar.
Another view of the Utah Film Commission's "Living Room" at Sundance 2015.
A good view of Conor Provenzano's brilliant film loop outside the walls of the Utah Film Commission's "Living Room".
The "Living Room" spilled outside the "set" we created and occupied more of the Park City Museum's gallery space. Les Booth perfectly decorated it in the same theme. And we found loads of historic posters from some of the Beehive State's long-forgotten film projects to adorn the walls.
Another view of the Living Room.
