Search & The 2011 Sundance Film Festival

The annual Sundance Film Festival is about to converge here in Utah January 20-30, 2011, with Bing.com and YouTube as Leadership Sponsors.

Bing is the official search engine of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival website, and YouTube has two special channels for the event, the main Sundance Film Fest channel, and the YouTube Screening Room, featuring 12 short films from this year’s festival, which will only be available on YouTube until February 3.

Bing Continues To Cozy Up To Hollywood

Earlier today, the Bing Entertainment team announced earlier a special new video site: BingSundance.com (which just redirects to: https://www.bing.com/videos/browse/Sundance) to bring users live coverage of film events, actor and celebrity interviews by Ross Matthews and afterparty coverage.

Special video discussions with stars like Susan Sarandon will be a part of the “Bing Decision Maker Series” and music performances from Grammy nominated guests are promised as well.  Until the festival officially begins, users can go back through and watch 2010 coverage from the “Bing Bar” including the interview with Bill Gates. For 2011, the Bing Bar will also serve home to E! News and On Air with Ryan Seacrest for daily interviews, and SPiN’s exclusive events

YouTube’s Social Movie Experiment

Back in July, YouTube announced the Life in a Day project, which resulted in 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries uploaded by users being turned into the first professionally produced (by Ridley Scott, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) and directed (by Kevin MacDonald, State of Play, Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void) feature length documentary created from user generated content.

Twenty of the films top contributors (with 26 in total named as co-directors) will be on hand for a Q&A session with MacDonald at the SFF premiere. The film will premiere at Sundance and simultaneously on YouTube on January 27, at 5pm PST, on the Life in a Day channel:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xfl_1QjxRM[/youtube]

Last year at Sundance, YouTube rolled out a number of Weinstein Company films (a mixture of both independent and major studio releases) available for premium rental as part of its slow progression into streaming rentals.

Social Stalking At Sundance

To keep up on the latest film news and the celebrity happenings at the 2011 SFF, you can follow the official festival Twitter account @SundanceFest, search for the hastag #Sundance, or follow the location based service @GoWalla, who has  rolled their airstream trailer into town for the event.

I’ll be headed to Park City for the premiere of Life in a Day, and may drop by some of the social events throughout the festival as well – I’ve already got my Sundance Mobile app ($4.99) downloaded on my Android phone. So you might see some live tweets from me in PC – that could include from the slopes of @PCSki, because as any good local knows, the trails are nearly empty when Sundance comes to town.

Like any good marketer, I’ve also got tickets to see The Greatest Movie Ever Sold by Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) , a tongue-in-cheek mockumentary if you will, “as he examines the world of product placement, marketing, and advertising by making a film financed entirely by product placement, marketing, and advertising.”