Thoughts
This semester saw two periods where I dedicated a substantial amount of my time to MIYFF, the first was weeks 3-6 when I was watching and choosing films to screen, and the other were week’s 11 and 12, where I was organising publicity for the event.
Overall, I thought that I did really well to get press for a completely unknown event that wasn’t actually 100% locked in. Having less then two weeks of lead time I knew that any chance of getting newspaper stories would be next to impossible and despite regretting not contacting press earlier in the semester, at the time I wasn’t comfortable contacting media without having a venue or program for the festival. Despite the crazily short lead time that I had, I did manage to get a bunch of community radio which I thought was actually really endearing. I managed to lock in interviews on RRR, 3CR x 2, JOY, Kiss, WYN, WBC, SYN and a couple of online stories, one of which on a website with over 20k followers.
Despite feeling good that the huge amount of time I dedicated to pitching stories and in some cases, asking media for favours, and actually getting stuff done in an insanely short amount of time, the trouble I had to get responses from classmates to actually do the interviews was really disheartening and kind of annoying.
I know that literally all of the class have a myriad of outside Uni commitments to attend to, but the struggle I had to go through to get some people to donate 5 minutes of their time to do a phone interview was really annoying and off putting and in the end, I decided to a number of the interviews myself. In my nearly two years of publicity experience, I have never worked on a project where it was harder to persuade someone from the team to do an interview than it was to actually lock in an interview.
Although I was really disappointed in the lack of help that I got from the MIYFF team in donating their time to do interviews, I found it really endearing that so many local community radio programs and online sites were happy to support our event. I think that if there was to be a MIYFF 2.0, which gave me a much bigger lead time and maybe a more impressive closing night venue, I’d be able to get some really great press.
Here’s a WIP of the publicity I managed to get for MIYFF 1.
MIYFF Publicity schedule
RADIO
SYN – Wed 22 May
Alice / Sean
Radio Wyn FM – Sat 25 May
Arnel
Radio WBC – Sun 26 May
Ben
https://filmreviews.net.au/melbourne-international-youth-film-festival-interview-with-ben-veress/
Radio Kiss – Mon 27 May
Andy
Radio Triple R – Tues 28 May
Cerise and Alice
https://www.rrr.org.au/explore/programs/breakfasters/episodes/7507-breakfasters-28-may-2019
Radio Joy – Wed 29 May
Andy
https://joy.org.au/jacqanddene/2019/06/01/miyff/
Radio 3CR – Thurs 30 May
Grass
Radio 3CR – Sat 1 June
Andy
https://www.3cr.org.au/onscreen
Online // Print
CBD NEWS – News article
https://cbdnews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/CBD54.pdf
The 8 Percent – Feature
http://the8percent.com/miyff/?fbclid=IwAR0e9rEk3bCt8naJNBp6YSZ2Tt5w13E2vP-qb0PGSVXOjGdzFWJOkcRDtjk
The Swanston Gazette – Feature
Catalyst – Feature
http://rmitcatalyst.com/what-to-do-this-weekend-melbourne-international-youth-film-festival/
LISTINGS
Weekend Notes –
Eventfinda – Editors Pick
https://www.eventfinda.com.au/2019/melbourne-international-youth-film-festival/melbourne/southbank
Arts News Portal – https://www.artnewsportal.com/art-news/the-melbourne-international-youth-film-festival-announces-its-inaugural-program
Evensi –
https://www.evensi.com/melbourne-international-youth-film-festival-backlot-studios/310430824
Whats On Melb –
Film Ink – Also shared event
Only Melbourne –
https://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/miyff
Daily Review –
https://dailyreview.com.au/events/melbourne-international-youth-film-festival/