Our group organized a meeting before the class this week. At the meeting we discussed how to shoot the trailer and determine their script. I was assigned to be a Chinese mini trailer. My idea is that the first scene of this trailer is full of mystery, making it easier for the audience to be caught their eyes and curious to explore our film festival. The image of the mysterious person is applied to my trailer. He flew out of a paper plane. No one knew where the paper plane was going. Until the second scene, the paper plane was picked up by a group of people who were doing nothing. When they opened it, they found out that it turned out to be a poster— obviously, this belongs to Poster for our film festival. After I put forward this idea, the team members are very satisfied and I look forward to the results after the shooting.
In the reading this week, Rambousková suggests being able to present a “clear set of information to present to media” (Rambousková,2015, p.g.97). In this week’s class we determined date of the festival, name, aim and who stands behind the festival. But we still need to decide the location of our festival. This is the most important thing for us to solve now.
What’s more, in class we heard from Mia Falstein-Rush, who discussed putting on her own festival as well as her role in programming at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Her speech is very interesting and she also gave us some suggestions on how to hold a good film festival. We should look to other film festival for example, such as the aspect of submission regulations, partnerships proposals, marketing collateral, website design, recruitment ads and press releases. Secondly, the relationship is also very important. I found Mia’s presentation to be important for our festival.
In Michaela Pnacekovas’ Bright Young Screens: Developing Intercultural Dialogue and Non-Formal Education Through Youth Film Festivals, it states “One has to bear in mind that the whole selection process is not about a programmer’s individual taste – the final result has to satisfy the audiences (and, preferably, guarantee some income!)” ( p8). We did encounter this problem, we received a lot of film production, but many of them did not meet the requirements of our film festival. In order to avoid this, we are prepared to add the submission fee in the next period. But more importantly, we will continue to watch films. In the process of choosing films, we will set aside personal tastes and work hard to find the best film works for our film festival.
Bohdana Rambousková, “How to Successfully Promote Your Festival (Links to an external site.) Links to an external site.” in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 97.
Michaela, P, Mirona,N & Melissa,P(eds), 2012, “Festival Programming and the Ways Young Festivals and Youth NGOs See it (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.” Bright Young Screens: Developing Intercultural Dialogue and Non-Formal Education Through Youth Film Festivals, NISI MASA and FEST, Espinho, 2012, pp. 6-9.