The Response (aka that thing I knew I wasn’t meant to write about but wrote about anyway)

Weeks 10 – 12 – Advanced Screaming

The Festival Experience – In Review

In true Bridie fashion, the second the festival ended, I got very ill.  This is my body’s code for “rest my child, you have done well”.

When I first walked into The Backlot Studios (after about 20 minutes of being utterly lost), I was amazed.  The space was more beautiful and perfect than I had imagined.  The cheese platters, which I’ll admit I was skeptical about, ended up being the perfect classy snack.  I ended up sitting at the box office desk for most of the opening, and the ticketing system worked really well.  I was a little disappointed that around 20 guests didn’t show, but the cinema looked full enough without them there.  It was disappointing also because most of these were our VIPs and Media guests.  With this being said, I think the screening went really well, and we even had a good number of guests come to our ‘afterparty’ at Hats and Tatts (who were very kind and gracious).
Our Australiana afternoon was an honest surprise.  While we weren’t anywhere near sold out, so many more people showed up than we were expecting.  The audience didn’t look empty, it actually looked rather full.  The kombucha did really well (somehow) and the free popcorn Matilda and Megan set up ‘sold’ out immediately!  The Q and A with the directors was a little awkward but was ultimately a good time and I think a great experience for our young filmmakers.
The closing night was the highlight for me.  We made the space look amazing (it looked even better at night), there was the perfect amount of food and drinks, and we had some incredible guests.  Maxwell Gratton (executive director of Melbourne Queer Film Festival) and his partner came to this screening, which was extremely exciting for all of us.  This is probably the thing I’m proudest of.  I was able to create connections for so many awesome people in this class with the second largest film festival in Melbourne, and hopefully, these connections last a long time.

WHAT WENT WELL

DECOR AND CATERING
I cannot get over how good a job Matilda and Megan did at getting all the food and decorations together.  Everything looked so good, and while the RMIT cinema isn’t the greatest venue, they made it a space that was inviting, warm, and looked professional.  The food and drink setups worked really well, down to the touch of having donuts and tim tams for dessert after the closing.  They really created an excellent atmosphere.

THE FILMS
We had over 600 films to look through, and about 4 people to look through them all.  The fact that we were able to get 25, high-quality films that were unlike anything I’d ever seen before.  A week post-festival, I’m still thinking about some of my favourites, like Saturn in Leo, Count Your Curses, and Fuck Les Gars.  While I would’ve liked an All Ages screening (which we thought was happening for a while), the Australiana Afternoon was really well programmed and felt like an experience in itself.

PUBLICITY
PR and publicity was only running for about 2 weeks before the festival but it went so incredibly well.  Andrew pulled this together almost entirely by himself and it was truly a feat to get so many radio interviews and publications in the lead up to the festival.  I feel bad that we were all so resistant about going on the radio because it was one of our best marketing strategies.  At the closing night, I met a couple who heard about the festival while listening to the radio one morning, and that is entirely Andrew’s fault.

WHAT WENT NOT-SO-WELL

SOCIAL MEDIA
I’m not sure why it took so long to get posts out.  With the short time span we had, we should have been posting every day, whether we had information about the festival or not.  Posts didn’t start going out until about a couple of weeks before the festival and even then they were so few and far between that they didn’t make an impact.  We only got followers on our Facebook page a week before the festival because we all invited everyone we knew.  I feel somewhat responsible for this, as I work in social media outside of uni and know what it takes to grow an audience.  In the future, we should post from the very beginning of the process and not worry so much about curating a perfect feed, as the design of the feed was thrown out pretty quickly (and honestly, people don’t care that much about the perfect Instagram page over individual post quality).

TEAMWORK
Time to be #controversial!  There are a group of 10 to 15 people who worked extremely hard on this festival.  They were always looking for new work and trying to help each other out.  But there was a disconnect between a lot of the sectors up until the day before the festival to the point where people were repeating jobs that had already been done.  On top of this, there are people who really didn’t do a lot.  I love everyone as people, but the number of times I sat at a table where people were complaining about coming to class when they had nothing to do while I was drowning in work was ridiculous.  While we obviously could have used far more time to plan this perfectly, if everyone had pulled their weight, I feel like a lot of the last minute issues we had wouldn’t have been as major.

THE TRAILERS
Not to continue my rage spiral from above, but I don’t know how the trailers ended up being as average as they were, considering how long people were working on them.  They were either of low technical quality, made no sense, or a mixture of both.  We only uploaded one to our website, and I don’t think it added anything other than an element of motion.  Again, this might be an issue of disconnect in the class, as they may not have been aware of the overall image the rest of the festival was taking, but there was still so much time invested in them for so little payback.

THE READINGS

I found myself especially drawn to Setting Up A Human Rights Film Festival, probably because it literally taught us everything we needed to know about this procecss.  I found the table in ‘Adding Water to the Soup Pot: Finding Resources for Your Festival’ that described the major donors for a new festival really fascinating.  I’m not sure how we’d go about getting international donors but based on our experience trying to get grants from the Victorian government, I doubt we’d do well trying to get grants from international sources, though I do wish we’d tried.  I also wish we’d been able to connect with more local film festivals.  We contacted a few and the relationship we’d created with Melbourne Queer Film Festival is one of the best things to come out fo the festival (in my opinion).  Given how many festivals there are in Melbourne, I think we could’ve gone harder on this element.  The next chapter, ‘Did We Do It Right? Evaluating a Human Rights Film Festival’ describes how to evaluate a film festival before, during, and after the process, and I wish we had done this more as well.  Using AARs throughout the process could definitely have saved us some difficulties down the road and could have increased communications between departments.  It’d also make us all a little more accountable.
The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival program was the largest inspiration behind our own program, though you probably can’t tell from the design.  The early drafts of the copy included pages similar to the “Our Impact” and “Accessibility” pages in their program, though in writing these I quickly realised we hadn’t actually planned what our environmental or social impact would be or considered accessibility to our screenings in any way.  In future, I would like to include these in the actual process.  For example, could we have found cheap glasses at op shops to cut down on the use of plastic?  Should we have requested all films (including English films) have captions to allow for hearing impaired people to enjoy all screenings?  In the process of programming the films, I’m not sure how much thought was put into making the program as diverse as possible, and while it certainly ended up quite diverse, there was a lack of disabled and gender-diverse voices in our festival.

IN CONCLUSION

This is, without a doubt, the best studio I’ve been a part of.  I felt like I was a real, working adult in this process.  I’ve seen many people from many other studios get opportunities to start their own radio show, or work on television shows, or be shown in festivals, and I’ve never really felt connected (despite having a comparable experience last semester).  This is the first time I’ve felt like the work we did was truly worthy of praise.  Everyone (or most people #controversy) worked so hard and we created something that was truly unique and spectacular.  Also, I didn’t mention them earlier but I think Maddy and Grace deserve major props for all the work they put in, taking on the jobs that no one else wanted and making sure that the festival actually happened.  And, of course, a major thank you to Cerise for starting this studio.  Not to be the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, but I’ve had the time of my life!

REFERENCES

Matthea de Jong and María Carrión, “Adding Water to the Soup Pot: Finding Resources for Your Festival (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.” in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 115-129.

Various authors (including MIYFF’s Brandon Watson), Human Rights Arts & Film Festival 2019 program (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, Melbourne, 2019, pp. 1-56.

WEEK 10
I decided to take on another job this week because, well, I love chaos and running myself into the ground.  I am now in charge of creating awards and finding a jury to decide which films get these awards.  This is based mostly on the fact that Lighthouse Rentals needed something to sponsor so we had to create a Best Australian Film award.
I’d be remiss in saying I wanted this job.  It was more a case of Cerise running around the room trying to find someone, anyone, to take the job and me being at the farthest end of the rotation to let my guilt really grow.  Luckily we have a tonne of interesting and film-orientated staff at RMIT and Andrew gave me some of his contacts from work, so it should be smooth sailing.  I managed to lock in Adam Ross, chair of AFCA, before the day’s end.

WEEK 11
I had a lovely call with Kaiju in the early class in which they pretty much locked themselves in as our beer sponsor, which was wonderful.  I continued the class on a complete high, working on several different tasks at once, such as helping Grace edit the program, helping Alana lock in the VIP guest list, and creating spreadsheets for the jury.  Grace and I decided to work through the break to get more done, so I tell her I’m going to grab some food and meet her back at the classroom in 10 minutes.
WELL.
Somehow, in the literal ten minutes that I was gone, Kaiju realised that we are Melbourne International YOUTH Film Festival and decided that no, people aged 18-25 should not be allowed alcohol and pulled out.  A week before the festival.  When they’ve known about the festival for over a month.  Cool.  Love that for us.  At this point, there was small group of us all looking for potential alcohol sponsors and sending off frantic but well written and polite emails.  I myself sent off more than 15 before days end.

WEEK 12
The screaming has both stopped and gotten louder.  I worked through the entire weekend helping to finalize the program, trying to get sponsors, and promoting the festival like crazy.  It’s all been worth it though!  The program is ready and looks gorgeous, Remedy Kombucha, Gage Roads Brewing Company, and JnJ have all come on board as sponsors, and our opening night has sold out!  This is actually happening!
Now we just have to stage the actual festival.  So stay tuned to find out if it went ahead…

Erin Rosenberg and Rohan Sprong came in a little late for me to take full advantage of their advice.  By the fundraiser week, I had already sent off a bulk of the sponsorship emails I would send off, however, I am grateful for the hindsight.

I was brought up to discuss the “25 under 25” slogan (which I feel it important to mention I didn’t come up with) but this received very little feedback as we were in the middle of discussing Katia’s advertising campaign and the actual name of the festival.  I do think that 25 Under 25 works better as a slogan overall as it (eventually) summed up what the festival was actually about.
I presented the sponsorship package and went over how I looked for potential sponsors and partners. (At this point my spacebar stopped working so please forgive any mistakes).  I then told them about sponsors we’d managed to land.  As I have previously discussed, I didn’t mention the layout of the emails, which I would come to regret.  Their critiques based mostly on the number of unnecessary words and statements.  The actual sponsorship information was good and the layout from there down worked but having three full pages of filler didn’t really make sense, which I completely agree with.

For their not-my-direct-work critiques, I found myself disagreeing more than I expected to.  I definitely agreed on their comments about the social media and poster design elements.  It just seemed a little too stale and dense, especially considering we are presenting ourselves as ‘youths’.  I would’ve liked to see more colour in both, but I recused myself from the graphic design team early on because…  I’m not good at graphic design.  I disagreed with their view of the trailers mostly.  I think that the technical level was overlooked, which considering most of our class is in our third year, feels a little odd.  While the Chinese trailers had a stronger story, they lacked the technical wonder of the ‘Armin running around in a park’ trailer.  That being said, the ‘Armin running around a park’ trailer was basically just an advertisement for Nikon or, as they suggested, erectile dysfunction pills.

Week 4 – It Begins

Week 5 – Sponsor Me Plz

Week 6 – Mia Solves All My Problems

Week 7 – Avoiding Scary Things Actually Works

The Fundraiser (!!!)

Before class, Matilda and I met with Maxwell and Spiro from the Melbourne Queer Film Festival for what can only be described as The Best Meeting Anyone Has Ever Had In The History Of The Universe!  They said that while they couldn’t provide us monetary funding for this festival, they’d love to support us for next years.  They’ve also been trying to build up Melbourne Queer Youth Film Festival for several years but for one reason or another, it has always fallen through.  They think that, depending on where we want to go with this festival next, we could come on board and assist Spiro in programming for a youth festival!

In class, there was a panel discussion with Erin Rosenberg from CHIFF and Rohan Sprong from Filmmaking.  I’m confused as to whether I’m meant to discuss their feedback or not, so forgive me if this is an incorrect platform.  I completely agree with them in regards to the sponsorship package.  Even as I was writing it, I was thinking “there are so many words and I have no idea why I’m writing any of them”, but I kept on going because that’s what the Women’s Film Festival did.  That being said, I should probably have mentioned the email that was sent along with it that gave a more succinct overview of the package.  As for the critiques they gave other departments, I shan’t comment but know that I felt extremely Loud and Passionate in my internal response to some of their comments.

As for the fundraiser, it went…  okay…
The space was set up really well.  It looked like it was our space, and the fairly lights and posters all around made it feel less like a university and more like a comfortable cinema space.  I definitely think that getting rid of the extra chairs was a good idea because Lord knows we didn’t need them!  The choice to serve free popcorn was a stroke of genius on Megan’s part, and having a couple of basic soft drinks complemented this well.

I found there was a bit of confusion between the door bois and the snack table.  I’m not really sure what they were actually doing because people kept coming down to show me their tickets and buy new tickets.  There were a lot of people who found themselves without something to do as well, so I wish we had co-ordinated roles a little clearer.

As for the film choices, the first one (Ben and Arthur) killed!  People loved it!  It had so many iconic moments and I only wish that we had kept it to this and not expanded to a double feature because the second Santa Claus vs The Martians came on the room died!  It was a flop!  It wasn’t good or bad!  Certainly not bad enough to be considered good!  I’m not sure Ben had seen it before he suggested it, as he apologized to the room post-viewing.
There was also an issue of noise.  The hallway near our cinema space are often used for hip hop dance practices (???) and despite people asking them to keep the music down numerous times, they just kept on going!  It was pretty distracting and killed the vibe a little bit.

I wish we’d had more time for this.  So many of us have been hyper-focused on the festival itself (me included) that this slipped through the cracks and ended up being very last-minute, despite the push back in deadline.

I am very concerned for the fundraiser.  Our Facebook event has plenty of “interests” and quite a few “goings”, but none of this has resulted in actual ticket sales.  I’m also quite concerned about the choice of films.  No one other than Ben has seen either film and while I trust that he knows what he’s doing, the fact that we are going with two little known, “so bad they’re good” films could turn off potential audience members.  If we’d found or gotten the rights to films like The Room, Birdemic, and the like, I think we’d be swimming in ticket sales by now, though this could’ve been difficult to do.

I’ve been sending out emails non-stop for a week and have received exactly 1 response from FilmInk.  I recognize this is likely because of the Easter break that is coming up but it is still worrying.  FilmInk has agreed to advertise our festival on their website for as long as we’d like in exchange for very little (basically just a mention on our website and in our program).  Dov seems like an absolute legend and I hope that this sets the tone for the rest of our potential sponsors.  We don’t have our spaces locked in yet and this is making it harder to send accurate information.

Very few people were in our 5:30 pm class.  I get that it’s right before the Easter break and that it is very alluring to just go home and start the holiday early, but it’s not good enough.  Our fundraiser was meant to be the week we come back, and as a result of not enough planning and not enough people, we’ve decided to push it back a week.  I’m grateful for this decision but I’m still disappointed that there weren’t more people here to decide on it.

Mia Falstein-Rush came in to give us a guest lecture and also fix all the problems I was having with the sponsorships.  She has done literally everything I’d like to do in film festivals including creating the one-off Seen and Heard Film Festival which spoke directly to my little feminist heart.

Her lecture included a whole chunk on how to get sponsorships, how to write emails, she even included companies we could get in contact with!  I wrote up an email draft that is ripped directly from the structure she presents in her lecture that everyone can access quickly if they have a sudden stroke of sponsor genius!  I was honestly so inspired by this lecture, it really included everything I was interested in, everything I wanted to know, and again, everything that would fix the issues I’d been having.  This was easily one of the best lectures I’ve seen in my time at RMIT.

I’m sort of disappointed that I’m not a part of the programming team.  This is where most of my interest lay when we began, and I did put my hand up to be a part of the team originally, however, I think my missing a week and a half of classes really put me at a disadvantage.  I’m glad I’m working on sponsorships now, and there is a LOT of work to be done, but I see how much fun the programming team is having watching films in class and I can only wonder what could have been…

I, unfortunately, missed the first class, but this gave me time to read!  Luckily, one of the readings for this week just so happened to align with my eventual job (spoiler alert).

Right now, we don’t have a whole lot of time to raise funds.  While the festival still feels lightyears away, two months will make it difficult to secure any kind of monetary funding, especially from international or government entities (which is upsetting, given we have chosen to be “Melbourne International Youth Film Festival”), and according to this weeks reading, festivals that are less than 5 years old are 88% funded by foreign funds and donors.  At current, I’m not expecting we’ll raise any money through sponsorship, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try!

When I arrived, I found out that no one has taken on the task of hitting up alcohol companies for free booze.  Apparently, there was some kind of moral quandary in doing this.  Personally, I disagree with the existence of alcohol in the first place and think that making money off of it is inherently wrong (I am aware that I sound like some fundamentalist Christian or something and feel the need to clarify that I do partake in the occasional bev sesh) so I figure that getting free booze is not only morally ok but also social justice.  I started out by looking up other festivals in Melbourne and seeing who sponsors them, and adding them to a spreadsheet that was helpfully already made up last week by Sean.  I also looked up other Melbourne-based breweries.

On top of this, I’m currently writing the sponsorship package we’ll be sending off to potential partners.  Again, Sean had already started this, so I’ll be using some of his wording in the end product.  A lot of this package will be modeled off the Women’s Film Festival sponsorship package from Indiana.  This should hopefully be finished by next weeks class so we can start sending them off ASAP.  The spreadsheet has other potential sponsors that we can try as well for other things like promotion and maybe even money.

RESOURCES
Matthea de Jong and María Carrión, “Adding Water to the Soup Pot: Finding Resources for Your Festival (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.” in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 115-129.

The week it begins just so happens to be the week that I am hit with extreme and undiscriminating illness!  I was unfortunately absent from both classes as a result but that won’t stop me from talking about the beginning of the festival like I was involved!

I somehow ended up on the graphic design team.  Now, to clarify, I have no graphic design experience whatsoever.  I have the artistic chops of a dung beetle.  But I also have the self-motivation and get-things-done-quick attitude of the dung beetle and started to design a logo.  Naturally, this lead people to believe that I was interested in doing this long term.  There is a very intense and design-oriented group chat that I am a part of, and in which I can contribute virtually nothing, so this is an excellent start to the festival for me.

As a result of my illness, I had time to READ!  Something that really stood out to me was the Fred Kramer quote “the proliferation of film festivals is not sustainable. There will be some kind of attrition very soon.”  This seemed to be the consensus throughout the article, from plenty of experts, and indeed from Richard Sowada in his lecture.  Despite my past two depressing blog posts (apologies for those), I think I disagree.  The attrition refers not to a destruction of film festivals as a whole, but to an abundance of bad film festivals.  I think what needs to be recognized is that quality in itself can be extremely subjective.  For example, a cult film such as The Room is of low quality, but people celebrate it and create screenings and rituals around it.  A dingy, dive style venue such as Yah Yahs is of low quality, but people go in abundance because they enjoy the atmosphere.  If we assume that film festivals are only great if they include the highest quality films, venues, guests, etc, we are actively ignoring some of the worlds greatest and most fun things.  To assume that the amount of planning that goes into these low budget, start-up film festivals is not of the same quality as the planning that goes into something like Sundance is to state that having money is equal to having taste, drive, ambition, or ability.  This type of mentality is similar to the mentality that ‘millennials are uncultured’ despite culture rapidly changing and the new ability to reach culture previously unavailable to us.  It just seems a little elitest.