In Week 9, we had our criticism session with two guests from the industry: Erin Rosenberg (festival and marketing manager of the Children’s International Film Festival and the Australia-wide Jewish International Film Festival) & Rohan Sprong (RMIT Studio leader and Award Winning Filmmaker), listen to some of us speak about our film festival and the progress we’ve made since the start of the semester. Overall, it was good to get an outsider’s opinion on the work we’ve done so far because they don’t know what’s been going on since the start of the semester.

Some of us volunteered to explain what they had been doing on behalf of the class about the progress being made, in terms of our fundraiser that was happening that evening, what MIYFF is & the campaign and our overall festival. The feedback we received varied:

1. Both guests, but mostly Erin, believed that our promo video didn’t hit the mark with what we aimed to achieve. It was more professionally done and edited  well. The campaign idea was to get youths who would like to get themselves into the industry hence “it’s just the beginning” was campaign’s name. Erin believed our promo video was more of a Nikon advert or something to do with fertility. Which I thought was rather harsh. On the contrary, when the international students showed their trailer, it received positive comments even though it looked as if it was shot on an iPhone and quickly put together. Which I found shocking.
2. Continuing spreading the word through any social media platforms to get the word out of MIYFF.
3. Our Instagram page had very few posts and we had a low amount of followers.  The posts didn’t feel

So from that, the following things will happen over the next few weeks before opening night of MIYFF.

1. The PR team will start posting more content on a regular basis to build up momentum and hopefully, gain more followers. They’ve already got an aesthetic going on and decided not to change it up.
2. Some of us will start contacting other social media networks to help spread the word of our film festival on their channels.