Week 4’s reading: Andrea Kuhn, “Who Is Organising It? Importance of Production and Team Members (Links to an external site.)” in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 71-83.
This week, I decided to have a crack at summarising and talking about the assigned reading: “Who Is Organising It? Importance fo Production and Team Members.” This reading basically talks about the pre-production side of a film festival. The long hours of weeding out all the submissions, getting the word out there of the festival on social media, talking to media companies to sponsor or help promote our event on their following/networks, creating adverts/posters/ flyers, creating posts on social media platforms about the festival etc. The reading gives bullet points of what is required and tips of the do’s/don’ts. For instance, one of the bullet points stated in the reading:
Use social media. Create a festival Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, and YouTube or Vimeo channel. Publish small pieces of information about how preparation for the festival is going, introduce members of your team and share funny stories from behind the scenes. Upload film trailers on your Vimeo or YouTube channel, as well as your festival promotional video, and promote each screening…
Personally, I feel like we haven’t really agreed on anything and everything is all up in the air which makes it hard for us to get the word out of our film festival. Yes, we have created social media pages (Facebook, Instagram & Twitter) but I feel like aside from asking for submissions, we should also be bumping out some posts that would inspire others to submit or even give the page a follow to stay tuned about the upcoming event at the end of May. Using Instagram as an example. In order to grow a following, there needs to be relevant content coming out everyday or as often as possible. Which I believe hasn’t been done whatsoever and that is what I think we are lacking.