The definitive image from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, opening Thursday night in Park City, might be shot with a camera phone and posted on the Internet.

Thanks to camera phones and video-sharing sites such as YouTube, everyone can be a cameraman and everyone can show a "film" to the world in an instant. And celebrities, like those who will flock to Utah's mountains for the 11-day festival, are a favorite target - just ask "Seinfeld" co-star Michael Richards, whose racist ranting on an L.A. comedy-club stage was seen around the world.

It's a situation Sundance's organizers view positively, but with caution.

"Does it mean I don't do anything strange in public? Yes," said John Cooper, the festival's program director.

The rise of YouTube, said festival director Geoffrey Gilmore, "really opens up the sense of what we're presenting at the festival to a whole other audience. . . . Anything that gives a platform for this and visibility to this, that's a good thing."

Sundance's exposure on YouTube may mirror the Internet coverage of last September's Toronto International Film Festival, where attendees recorded their personal experiences and uploaded them for everyone to see.

"It's sort of a meta-document. It gives us a grass-roots chronicle of it," said Noah Cowan, co-director of the Toronto festival. "There's something about this new technology that's diary-like. And for big events like Sundance or Toronto, people have a lot of urgency about having their diaries read."

Video clips from one Toronto event, Sacha Baron Cohen's in-character question-and-answer session after the premiere of "Borat," have racked up more than 200,000 hits on YouTube.

"The Q-and-A was a magical moment," Cowan said. "It was wonderful for us to share this vital cultural moment with people who weren't able to fit in the Ryerson Auditorium. . . . It sort of announced to the world this amazing talent."

Cooper is curious to see how Sundance's events will be captured on YouTube.

"I don't think the coverage of the festival from the mainstream media has looked like what we look like, either," Cooper said. "I don't think the covering of Paris Hilton in front of a building is what I see in my festival. I'm actually kind of excited to see what you get from the grass-roots level."

The combination of camera phones and video sharing may do more than produce news at Sundance. Some filmmakers are using it to produce art.

In November, Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford announced a pilot project with the GSM Association, a collection of mobile-phone companies, to commission five short films that will be distributed exclusively on mobile phones. Starting Friday in Park City, Taiwan-born video artist Shu Lea Cheang will organize something called "MobiOpera," in which mobile-phone users will collaborate in writing and shooting a daily soap opera, with episodes available to be downloaded onto any cell phone.

YouTube is working with filmmakers, comedians and musicians to create dedicated pages linking artists with their audiences.

Filmmakers are posting clips and trailers, "trying to connect with an audience, find out what an audience thinks about it, even while it's still in production," said Michael Powers, senior projects manager for YouTube.

San Jose animator M dot Strange, whose surreal debut film "We Are the Strange" will premiere in Sundance's midnight-movie program, has found that connection on YouTube, posting not only clips but caffeine-fueled video diaries of the film's production.

The audience, Strange said, "would be more likely to pay for [my movie], and see it multiple times because they really get to know me. They're going to buy a film from their friend, not some filmmaker who's in their golden palace."

The trailer for "We Are the Strange" - a freaky tale of two animated characters battling evil while on a quest for ice cream - was posted on YouTube on Oct. 18 and got a prime spot among the site's featured videos.

Since its first posting, the trailer has had more than 630,000 hits - eliciting more than 3,000 comments from viewers.

"Surprisingly it was all positive," Strange said. "What is this? Where can I watch it?"

Strange said YouTube provides "a real-time focus group" that has helped him rewrite the movie's final 22 minutes by helping him update his video game terminology.

It's a symbiotic relationship that benefits both sides, he said.

"They're laughing at this weirdo with his dolls, and I'm using it to fine-tune my film," Strange said.

spmeans@sltrib.com

There are many ways to measure the effect of the Sundance Film Festival.

Economically, the festival drew 53,000 visitors last year, pumping $61.5 million into Utah's economy, according to a University of Utah study. Artistically, the festival has been the launching pad for such films as "Reservoir Dogs," "The Blair Witch Project," "The Full Monty" and "Napoleon Dynamite," - movies that have scored both at the box office and in Oscar nominations.

But knowing which films will hit and which ones won't is always a crap shoot. Here are five titles from the 2006 festival that took quite different roads out of Park City:

* "Little Miss Sunshine": Got standing ovations at Sundance, sold to Fox Searchlight for $10 million, earned $59.5 million at the box office, got two Golden Globe nominations and many other honors, and is considered a contender for a Best Picture Oscar.

* "An Inconvenient Truth": Earned $23.8 million at the box office (third all-time for a documentary), resurrected the environment as a political issue and Al Gore as a possible 2008 presidential candidate.

* "Quinceañera": Won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, got a distribution deal with Sony Pictures Classics, and then earned only $1.7 million at the box office.

* "Half Nelson": Picked up by indie distributor ThinkFilm, earned a paltry $2.7 million at the box office, but appeared on more than 60 critics' top 10 lists, and sparked talk of an Oscar nomination for Ryan Gosling.

* "Alpha Dog": Played the festival's closing-night slot, then was held up as the person who inspired the film - an infamous drug dealer accused of murder - sued to block the release, and opened this weekend to mediocre reviews.

- Sean P. Means

Source: Box Office Mojo