Thoughts // Reflections

The criticism class featuring RMIT’s Rohan Spong and CHIFF’s Erin Rosenberg was a truly insightful experience but also quite an alarming one. Although the advice offered by both Erin and Rohan was extremely insightful and refreshing, I couldn’t help but think we needed something like this on an almost weekly basis.

Rohan and Erin mainly focused on aspects of the festival that I wasn’t really involved in such as design, the fundraiser, the trailer and video content and sponsorship, I was quite received that they were both receptive of the films that the programming team has chosen.

I thought that especially Erin’s thoughts on the logo and poster designs were really insightful and it was actually quite surprising that none of us had picked up that our lack of colour might be a little unremarkable. Although I thought it was pretty clever to have the same colour patten as RMIT, when compared to the CHIFF program and poster, it was obvious which one was more striking. Although this idea of adding more colour into our program and posters was really clever on so many levels , I feel it’s probably much too late to change anything now.

Another part of the festival that both Erin and Rohan touched on was our trailer, which I also was a little confused about. My initial reaction of the trailer was that is was quirky and funny, but upon a second viewing, I realised it was a little ambiguous. I think that the production of the trailer was really good and it’s looked really nice on the filmic level, but I thought that Erin and Rohan were both right in thinking that it kinda devalued MIYFF on a professional level.

I thought that Erin and especially Rohan’s worries about the fundraiser were at first, quite alarming, I always thought that Sean and Ben would be able to deliver the goods.

All in all, I thought that getting critical feedback from two experiences industry professionals was really refreshing for everyone in the class. I think that everyone in the class had been looking at MIYFF through a student lens rather than a professional one. Although it was at first a bit alarming to hear Erin and Rohan speak critically about a number of elements of our festival, I think having two professionals look and it was exactly what we needed.