Reflections on class

I think this class and the fundraiser was without a doubt the most worrying but weirdly satisfying day/night that I’ve had all semester.

After Rohan’s concerned comments about the pretty evident lack of organisation when it came to the fundraiser, I think the entire class was pretty worried about how the night would turn out.

Although I wasn’t really directly involved in the fundraiser apart from offering Ben and the others supportive words, the programming team were busy in working on the program. With the deadline being next week, and all of us actually coming to class at the same time, we actually made serious inroads into our finished program. With the inclusion of two really impressive shorts that Alice had solicited from VCA students, we were all really confident with our selections and were pretty much finished what was a funny, interesting, formative and also kind of terrifying experience.

Fundraiser

Having been to many screenings organised by friends, publicists and distributors with hardly anyone in attendance, including a word of mouth screening that I set up for a film that no one was particularly keen on last year (which will forever remain nameless) I wasn’t very confident going into this screening.

You’d think that a lot can go wrong when screening two films that sounded impressively terrible in a space that is usually reserved for impromptu hip-hop dance troupes but quite miraculously, it went pretty well.

Looking back on the preceding classes, it actually made sense that despite there not being many people in attendance which is very understandable bearing the circumstances, it was still very much a success and proof that we as a collective, can hold an event. I think it’s hard to look past the organisation of the setting up team in the hours before the fundraiser, despite not being directly involved in much of the events pre-production, it was evident that everyone working on the event knew exactly what they needed to do, and when they needed to do it.

This was evidenced by everyone involved on the night, including Sean on the technical duties, Ben on hosting and general manager duties, Megan and Matilda on catering and Alana on t-shirt duties and Arnie and the guys on the door. It was actually a really impressive and pretty fun time.

I think that our fundraiser, despite how disastrous we all thought it was going to be, was a great affirmation that it is possible to hold a festival. If you look back to Andrea kuhn’s piece on the pre-production of a festival, Andrea outlined the a successful festival needs both an emphasis on the small things importance of small things when organising a festival, including planning, job delegation (both admittedly quite big things when it comes to event production), decorations, screening material venues but also a strong, dedicated and efficient team, which I definitely think we have.

AG