To what ends do we launch and sustain film festivals, with what means, and driven by what motivations?
Pondering this question of intention and actioning our inspirations surrounding it led us to this: a mostly successful and relatively smooth running inaugural edition of the only International Youth Film Festival in Melbourne.
Is this sustainable for years to come? I would like to think that our demonstrable success with these limited financial means, resources and connections can only be a positive affirmation of this intent.
Whether it will happen again is another question entirely, but it’s certainly a possibility for the future. The interest we had in our concept (from both business partners and potential audience members) makes it appear likely that this interest could develop and grow into a more reliable figure with the addition of a stable relationship and brand identity developed for exposure externally.
Achieving this would probably require (in my view) acting upon the constructive criticisms provided a couple of weeks prior by Rohan Sprong and Erin Rosenberg in our crits session regarding our festival’s visual design collateral and brand identity. The logo, while its visual nods to an RMIT association is cutesy, I find to be mostly unnecessary, distracting and a little clunky. It’s sharp and well put together, but it fails to excite or broadly appeal to our targeted Melbourne youth-based demographic. In line with this, all associated marketing collateral should likely follow suit. Posters, flyers, social media content, the website and the physical program could all benefit from a more thematic and vibrant appearance. I believe this would help grow our audience significantly. When people first come into contact with our festival, usually the first impression would be made (and sometimes solidified) by the visual presence of any/all of these elements. If we aren’t striking an audience through these means and compelling them to be intrigued to learn more than we may have lost them. Bigger, bolder, brighter — these remarks and points of guidance are vague, I understand this. Alas, I’m no graphic designer.
This leads me to an underlying issue with our physical program: we collectively failed to get it to print on time to effectively distribute it to use as further marketing. A film festival is nothing without the obvious addition of films, and without being able to introduce the films we planned on showcasing to potential patrons of our festival, their interest may not have piqued beyond an awareness that our event exists in some form. The program, apart from online media, should be a major cornerstone for festival promotion. Given that we only printed and dispersed copies of our physical program on the week of the festival, I can only assume its impact was very minor if it even had any at all. C’est la vie!
Additionally, if we could invest more into the appearance of the program, perhaps with the help from a printing partner, this would attract more interest.
Granted, we did have over 600 submissions to get through before finalising the program and only a few weeks to get everything off the ground. If all creative decisions had been finalised after the first week of class I dare say we could have effectively gotten the ball rolling for maximum impact, but that was never to be the case.
In keeping with this, I believe if our primary event was targeted to tie in more closely with the conception of our festival we could have made an opportunity to create more awareness for the main event. A traditional Program Launch, at which we could disperse a finalised program to guests and provide a sneak peak and introduction of our festival, intentions and films would have likely been more beneficial than a double feature on-campus screening of obscure films unrelated to our cause. Again, this would have required a fully produced program by the time of the fundraiser and that was never really likely given where we were as a class at that stage of production. A strict timeline and established goals and well-defined roles for all festival organisers would increase the likelihood of success for this in the future.
On the programming front, as a film festival with both “Melbourne” and “Youth” established in its name, I think we could put in a greater effort to activate the rich culture of film enthusiasts and creatives that is contained within Melbourne’s own youth. Supporting local filmmakers and an emerging industry is important and if our festival is to preach that acting as a platform for young filmmakers is our main goal, then there’s no better way to enact this than through providing a strong showcase and space for these Australian filmmakers. This would surely bring in more audience members as local filmmakers would come to see their works being screened and appreciated publicly and they would likely reach out and generate further awareness about the festival with the hopes to attract even more audience members and friends to attend. While our Australiana Afternoon and associated Q and A session was a good starting point, I believe that a greater localised focus would assist in the future. Being in touch with local filmmakers and appearing to be a festival that appeals to them directly will be key in successful fests to come.
This can be achieved, not only through a shift in branding, but through further engagement with local film schools and universities. Not only this, but also a greater attempt to solicit films to screen in our festival from both local and international filmmakers, ensuring a stronger line-up of films for audiences that can hopefully generate a modicum of buzz and excitement. Though this can be difficult in the short film game, where the films are treated culturally as largely disposable goods.
There’s a bunch of great stuff too, however! Our opening night went off with a bang. The Backlot was a great choice for a venue, it provided a great atmosphere in conjunction with our hired DJ and the provision of drinks and snacks available to our guests. We sold out, filled up the space and had a great first night. The films were seemingly well-received as well. A minor issue that arose is when a cursor came up on the screen mid-film — an unsightly distraction from and otherwise seamless and smooth running line-up of shorts. Though I may be drawing too much focus on this occurrence due to it having come from my own computer.
Our second screening, the matinee session with exclusively Australian content went OK. We were back on campus and while the cinema in Building 80 is a nice facility, it just doesn’t have the same feel to it as a commercial space. It’s also larger, which means it can feel emptier easier. We weren’t able to sell as many tickets as we’d hoped for this session in particular, but the show must go on. I think the addition of the majority of the class sitting in on the screening assisted with the vibe of the session. Additionally, this daytime session was originally pitched as a child-friendly screening. But some lapses in communication and the Programming Team’s desire to have an Australian-themed session led to the admission of some MA15+ content being programmed in the session. The content was strong and the presence of some of the filmmakers for a post-show Q & A was appreciated but we could not adequately sell the session as hard as we wanted to our desired youth-based audience as a result of these matters at hand. Regardless, some minors appeared to be in attendance with parental guidance as required. I hope they found Dirty Sing more funny than crude. Though as far as I’m aware we haven’t received any complaints for this slip up, I think the communication and inclusion of content warnings outside of the program guide would be more appropriate and professional.
Finally, our closing night event went well! We had a considerable drop-off in attendance from the cohort, but I suppose that’s to be expected. Life’s for living and all that. This was largely forgiven by an uptick in guests and SPECIAL guests for this session in particular. My feeling is that this session sold better than the previous session, not because there was no Australian content programmed and Australians hate our own film products, but because there was an influx of beer advertised as available from our sponsor, and also because it was an evening session — I feel like people are more willing to take a chance on a special cinema events when it’s at night. Not sure on the data on this suspicion. After 2 minor glitches in the screening prior (1 per screening) I was pretty concerned with how this final session would go. The stakes felt higher; the session was longer and the films were received as larger files relative to the films shown prior. I had done multiple tech runs to ensure stability but I was worried my computer wouldn’t be able to handle the films as well as it needed to. There were a couple minor frame skipping instances in each tech run, but miraculously and thankfully not a single error occurred throughout the entire run on the night. I was so impressed. Not only this, but the enthusiasm in the cinema was palpable throughout the Closing Night screening. Greater attendance would have been fantastic, and definitely achievable — in fact we sold a bunch of tickets to people that didn’t end up attending — but the event went as well as it could have with all things considered.
Despite my running commentary of critiques and notes for improvement I feel pretty positive about the production of the festival as a whole and how it all came together. We made something out of nothing, and I’ve learned that it’s easy to do just that (with a bit of stress on the side and the help of a great team). Our intentions were productive and in an already flooded market of film festivals and the like that is Melbourne, we collectively identified what is an apparently as of yet (or until now) untargetted niche that has immense potential for growth in the local film culture.
