Early on in the production of MOFF there was a key focus on primarily the usage of the projectors in the Capital and the professionals that would help us run them. We communicated primarily through email with the projectionist but we did speak with him during the initial tour of the capital. With the swift change to an online setting within the last few weeks before the screenings there was a shift to introducing the streaming platform. This presented a new variety of challenges that would also have to be quickly remedied through the tech testing section that the team and I performed before the first screening.

We placed significant focus on finding someone who had a computer and internet connection that could easily stream. This is primarily due to a lot of students not having the correct technology for the job, like my small laptop. This would also require a computer that could stream and run zoom at the same time as they would be needed simultaneously for the interview portions. The reason I think the tech testing portion is so crucial to the streaming of the festival is due to the need to hammer out any potential problems. This included making sure that zoom calls actually appeared on stream and that their sound worked, seeing if the stream came through smoothly, arranging smooth transitions and adjusting any potential faults that could appear potential failures during the stream.

The short films that were tested were successful and streamed easily enough during the testing but when it came to the film ‘Body Melt’ it caused some significant problems. YouTube has an algorithm that watches for copywritten material and will flag such if found, only a few hours before the first night of the screening the stream was flagged. This threw a wrench into the works as the we had to scramble to find a replacement that was both effective and easily accessible. I suggested some potentials that were used by other festivals but it was opted that we go for more simple one like switch. Which was done in time, but even with the initial trials and tech testing there was still problems with the first stream but it was significantly fixed during the second testing the next day before the second stream.

Original Twitch Account: moffrmit (Taken down)

Original YouTube Tech Test screening: (109) MOFF *test* – YouTube