Oh, boi.

Do I have a lot to talk about.

This Thursday was a complete rollercoaster and I’m sorry @Cerise but there’s no way I can stay anywhere near the word limit. Too much to say, too much to discuss. I’m a bit overwhelmed and I know I can get lost in the tornado of thoughts in my head right now, so I’ll turn to subheadings. Here we go.

Industry panel or sweet sweet validation

I know I’m not supposed to talk about the panel in this assignment, but I just can’t hold back. I’ll just briefly go through it and then do a detailed analysis in assignment 3.

Let’s start with the industry panel. Just for the record, I love Rohan Spong and I’ve had him as a teacher in 3 separate courses during my first year at RMIT, so it was great to see a familiar face. More importantly, it was priceless to get detailed face-to-face feedback from experts of the industry, especially because we are all students and we live off validation.

First of all, I was beyond happy with the positive feedback on my marketing strategies and MIYFF positioning. I know no one remembers it, but I proposed to base our festival around young aspiring filmmakers to maximise the response on day 1. Almost 700 submissions and now Rohan and Erin confirmed it. Felt amazing. And just overall, I love marketing and I put a lot of time and research into coming up with the “Just the beginning campaign” and justifying the target audience and positioning choice, so it meant the world to see that it was actually a good call. Nothing motivates me as much as validation.

Secondly, and I’ll stop obsessing over myself at this point, it was incredible to see that most of the feedback for every aspect of our festival was positive. Just to think about it, we are a bunch of students who have no clue about organizing a film festival. Hell, a couple of months ago some of us have never even been to a film festival. And now we are actually on track and are apparently getting a bunch of sponsorships and job offers. Mindblowing.

Of course, there are some things we need to work on and do better, like enhancing our visuals and making the poster text more readable. But all in all… I’m proud of us.

Love, death + teamwork 

I am not used to working in such large teams, so throughout the semester I really wasn’t sure if we are working well as a team or not. Sometimes it seemed like everyone knew their place and worked as a clock together, and sometimes it felt like utter chaos and reminded me of the absolute mayhem of the Battle of Bastards. In case you are not a nerd, it’s a Game of Thrones reference.

However, seeing how the Fundraiser turned out, it’s clear evidence that our team kick a**. We chose a topic, contacted the filmmakers and obtained their permission to screen their films, programmed the movies, made beautiful posters and Instagram visuals, launched a Facebook ad, organised all the necessary equipment and the food and set it all up in a matter of hours. Brilliant. The best thing is that the work was divided more or less evenly: someone handled the organisation, someone executed the design, someone made MIYFF branded shirts. It didn’t feel like 2 people were doing 90% of the work while others laid back and sucked on Margaritas with cute little umbrellas in them. It felt fair.

I was particularly blown away by the fact that we attracted quite an audience, considering our program. If we can screen what is probably THE worst movies that humanity has ever seen, charge people money for it and still get people to come, there’s nothing we can’t do. That’s it. That’s the proof of our absolute, universal, pervasive power and Jesus can suck it.

Lessons and takeaways

The main thing I learnt, apart from our collective almightiness, is that Facebook ads don’t work as well. I was very surprised and incredibly disappointed that we didn’t sell any tickets with the ad we launched. I understand that it’s an extremely niche interest and that our budget was virtually non-existent, but still. I had far more trust in it. For the future, I will find time and money to test first and maybe use other channels for advertising.

Another great insight came from Rohan. We should have absolutely tested all the equipment a week before the event. We got very lucky that everything worked, but it might not have been the case and we’d all be screwed. Whatever I find myself working on in the future, testing the equipment will be a very high priority.

And another important lesson is that everything doesn’t have to be perfect to work out eventually. We had a few setbacks and my ad failed tremendously, yet we still had a good turn out and, overall, I’d say the event was a success. It was yet another reminder that you don’t despair and give up at the sight of difficulties, but learn from them and keep on moving.

Pain is the weakness leaving your body 

I just wanted to briefly explain my nearly dead condition on the day of the event. I feel horrible for leaving the fundraiser and I tried to hold off for as long as I could, but by the end of the day, I could barely stand straight. I’m not going into details, but to put it in two words, I have endometriosis. If you don’t know what it is, you are a lucky bastard and I envy you more than Bill Gate’s wealth. In a nutshell, it’s incredibly painful and the pain is so intense that it can sometimes cause fainting and throwing up. Let me just say… I left on time.

Overall, go us! I think that we did an incredible job considering our limited time, resources, funding and experience. If we keep up the good work and learn from all the feedback and our own mistakes, we will absolutely kill it at MIYFF. I am proud of our team and I look forward to our festival.

Word count: you don’t want to know.