Ethan Hawke Goes Digital

Hot off his surprise Oscar nomination for his role as an idealistic young cop in Training Day, the 31-year-old thespian attended the inaugural New York Digital Video Show this week to offer some training of his own--on how to be a digital filmmaker.

As the keynote speaker at the largest event ever organized for DV filmmakers, editors, cinematographers, hobbyists and other Industry folk, Hawke talked enthusiastically about embracing the digital format while making his directorial debut with the gritty ensemble drama Chelsea Walls.

Based on the play by Nicole Burdette, the movie follows five stories over the course of one day at New York's famed Chelsea Hotel and stars a who's who of actors, including Hawke's wife, Uma Thurman, Kris Kristofferson, Vincent D'Onofrio, Christopher Walken, Rosario Dawson, Steve Zahn, Frank Whaley and Tuesday Weld.

"I really felt that when I saw The Celebration [a 1998 Danish film made under the cinema-verité Dogma '95 principles] it was the biggest thing to happen in cinema since I've been working," Hawke told E! Online during the conference. "You're really challenged on your aesthetic, but it's also got a lot of other possibilities. If you have a good story, it really doesn't matter."

With a little help from his celebrity friends and the Manhattan-based digital filmmaking collective Indigent, Hawke was able to make a movie for $150,000 on digital video that would have cost a Hollywood studio millions of dollars to produce on film. Because of Indigent's readiness to enter into profit-sharing agreements, the company has attracted A-list talent to its otherwise low-budget projects.

"It really was the most enjoyable professional experience I've ever had," Hawke said. "Usually if you're getting paid a lot of money to act, it usually means you have a lot of dumb lines to say. But what you get for not getting paid is incredible creative freedom. So you get to do something really playful."

Indigent aims to produce 10 digital features in the next two years, thanks to funding provided by the Independent Film Channel.

The three-year-old company has several DV projects in the can (or the digital equivalent thereof), including the Campbell Scott-directed Final, Richard Linkater's Tape (featuring Hawke, Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard) and this year's Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize winner, Personal Velocity (starring Parker Posey, Kyra Sedgwick and Fairuza Balk).

Indigent founder Gary Winick also was named Best Director at Sundance for his Graduate-esque DV comedy Tadpole, which stars Sigourney Weaver and John Ritter and will be distributed by Miramax.

"It was an experiment to see whether or not the digital medium would be something that we could make happen and would audiences want to see films like that," explained Jake Abraham, Indigent's director of postproduction. "That's one of the cool things to come out of Indigent. Gary had a lot of great ideas going into it, but I don't think that anyone really realized what kind of group of people would come together."

It's doubtful the burgeoning DV movement will replace film anytime soon, especially when big-time directors like Steven Spielberg have vowed to stick to celluloid. But, with Hollywood exploring ways to distribute films digitally over the Internet, through satellite receivers and even digitally "beaming" them into movie theaters, DV will definitely play a more significant role in the future.

DV also democratizes the movie-making process, allowing anyone with a digital camera and a computer to become a director. And that pleases Hawke, who sees the new form as a liberating force.

"I couldn't imagine anybody giving us enough money to shut down the Chelsea Hotel, which is what we'd need to do [if we shot with a film crew]. With DV all that became possible," said Hawke. "You can make the movie so much more cheaply that you can also be much more experimental."

Chelsea Walls opens in limited release in New York on April 19.