It was an unusually high-leveled panel at U of Colorado at Boulder last evening:

• Kevin Shand. Chair, Colorado Film Commission
• Diane Sieber, Faculty Co-Director, ATLAS Institute & Associate Professor, Herbst Humanities in Engineering
• Brad Bernthal, Silicon Flatirons Telecommunications Program
• Jill Pulver, USA TODAY
• Josh Weinberg, Co-Founder, First Look Student Film Festival
• Brit Withey, Program Director, Denver Film Society
• Emilio ‘Che Che’ Mata, SVP Creative Services, Starz

As Colorado Film Commission Chair Kevin Shand pointed out, “the panel truly represented a wide cross section of the industry and all brought different perspectives to the conversation. It was interesting to learn more about what is going on outside of the traditional filmmaking model and what is going on in the minds of America’s youth.”

As Adjunct Professor at the School of Law, Bernthal said that initiatives such as FYI Film Your Issue, which underscores user-generated content, “embodies one of the most important trends in technology: the power of pushing intelligence to the edges of the network.”

He elaborated: “Consider the many vectors that make something like FYI possible, which include: a move from an analog to a digital world; processing power which makes cameras and editing capability affordable and accessible; the ease of storing (recording) and moving (uploading) information. The net result of these and other innovations is that the film fan who used to be relegated the role of the passive viewer now becomes a filmmaker.

“Rather than network edges filled with passive viewers, technology has transformed network edges into interactive sources of content. FYI leverages this fundamental development and provides a platform where the images and voices of the edges are now seen and heard.”