Judging from the number of film festivals running concurrently in Park City, everyone is cashing in on the indie cache. Former Monkey Brothers and co-directors Aaron Priest (International/ bicoastal Partizan) and Robert B. Martin Jr. (Palomar Pictures/Slo. Graffiti) won the No Dance Audience Award for Best Feature with Hip, Edgy, Sexy, Cool, while former Satellite helmer and X-Dance founder Kevin Kerslake packed the house at the Second Annual Action Sports Film and Video Game Festival, hailed as the new breeding ground for untapped talent.

Other notable commercial/music video directors in town for their feature debuts included Anonymous Content's Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) starring Robin Williams, Partizan's Michel Gondry (Human Nature) and Bob Industries' Peter Care (The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys).

Commercial folk in attendance also included agency creatives from FCB and a group of TBWA/Chiat/Day producers, as well as reps from production houses such as Crossroads, CMP, Headquarters, HKM, Partizan, Stiefel + Company and Tool of North America.

As the celebrities, filmmakers, and sightseers crammed into the bars and theaters along Main Street, it became apparent: the least recognizable were just a few cocktails away from box-office success.

In the search for such up-and-coming directors, Boards caught up with still-photographer-turned-director Brett Froomer, and co-directors Benita Raphan and Clayton Hemmert.

Froomer, of Santa Monica-based Stiefel+Company, is in talks with Atom Films regarding the theatrical release of A Stoner's Life, an official selection of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

The 60-second short is the portrait of Gus and Grace Ridley, a Venice, CA, couple who were married 64 years ago. In addition to abiding love, Gus and Grace share their stash. At 93, Gus is thought to be the world's oldest pot smoker, dabbling in dope since 1934.

Froomer met the Ridleys while shooting a series of portraits for his commercial reel. Originally, the director intended to interview the couple about the secret to their long-lasting marriage. However, when Gus lit up a joint with the camera rolling, Froomer knew he had struck gold (Acapulco, that is).

Froomer's recent spot credits include Jell-O Pudding's "Big Guy" through FCB, NY, Labbatt Breweries' "Rookie" out of Palmer Jarvis DDB, Toronto, and a three-spot campaign introducing the Busch "Simple Man" via DDB, Chicago.

As for Raphan, a visual effects artist at New York's Quiet Man, and Hemmert, partner and editor at Crew Cuts in New York, the timing couldn't have been better for the release of their experimental short film 2+2, which garnered much buzz at the festival. Documenting the contributions of Nobel Prize-winner John F. Nash Jr. (also the subject of the Universal Pictures Oscar-nominated feature A Beautiful Mind), the short fuses animation, design and compositing techniques to offer insight into the mind of a mathematical genius plagued by schizophrenia.

"We wanted to give a sense of the overlapping and layering of concepts and ideas, voices and hallucinations, all of what he was going through," said Raphan, who worked with the Inferno and Avid using PhotoShop and Illustrator. "We animated some of his exact mathematical theorems and layered the voices and the background to create a cacophony of concepts and illustrate what his life was like."

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