At the Seance Film Festival, I was in charge of developing and producing the trailers due to my background in film and video production. To make the Seance Film Festival look more impressive and attract audiences and sponsors, I created two trailers: one to promote the core values of the Seance Film Festival and the other to give a glimpse of our permitted films. 

Séance: Noun, a meeting at which people attempt to make contact with the dead, primarily through the agency of a medium.

Behind the Scenes (by Alissandra)

The Final

In keeping with the title, the first of our festival trailer follows the theme: to shoot a MEETING, following the Seance process. I wanted to express differently that I intended to let the audience know that we launched the festival in the form of a Seance. This short was shot using an open-end as a closing. From the beginning, when all were nervous and hesitant to start this Seance, until the moment it started, when the festival logo appeared in everyone’s eyes, to the end of this Short. Because of our festival’s unique features, we produced a unique style of trailer, which I was honored to be a part of, and one of the more prominent among the many festivals.

The second clip tends to be more of a showcase and a teaser for the films that will be screened at the festival so that the audience is evident on the source we are getting. After talking to the communication department and getting permission, I got all the films from the Film freeway and started production. It was a horror film festival, so the trailer clips were also made to be scary. In order to attract the audience, the editing process was done gradually: from the beginning of the crescendo to create a sense of mystery to the main moment to create a scary atmosphere.

Workflow

Pictured above is the official Seance International Film Festival ‘Best Of The Fest’ certificate, which was signed and awarded to Director, Ayden Boztepe, for his short film, Two Thin Lines, which premiered at the festival. There are many things that I could have used to convey my festival contributions, mainly as one of four program coordinators. I chose this certificate because to me it is the culmination of both the festival curation process and the festival as a whole (given that it was awarded at the closing ceremony) and therefore represents something more than just our team specific roles and how I endeavoured to be a part of an all encompassing Festival Experience with the entire festival team. I also designed this certificate on my computer, trying my best to adhere to the insanely good branding created by the design team. Hope I did ok!
Ps: Thank you to Cerise and my Seance festival cohort for such a wonderful studio experience! I am truly grateful and proud of what we have achieved 🙂

One of our major achievements in the production team was to organise and run the SIFF Fundraising Trivia Night (colloquially titled ‘Boooose and Ghouls!’). In arranging the event, we had a few different ideas of what form the fundraising night would take. However, our collective love of pub trivia prevailed, and thus our plan was set in motion. With the help of fellow team members Harrison and Henry, we drafted an array of rounds and questions for the evening. I devised the final set of questions as seen in the photo below, which explains the multiple references to the cinematic masterpiece Leprechaun in the Hood.

In preparation for the night, I asked Jeremy to produce the answer sheets that the teams would fill in. They looked fantastic — complete with our logo and tasteful font choice. I also organised the tech that was required, hiring and transporting the PA system and mics to make sure everyone could hear our lovely voices. We had some generous assistance from other department members in SIFF to spookify the venue. I helped with setting up the banners and sticking up our official posters. By the end of setup, we were all thoroughly pleased with the decor.

Harrison and I were appointed as the two hosts for the trivia night. As I was comfortable with speaking publicly and talking to strangers, I felt suited for the role. It was a joy to introduce the Seance International Film Festival to our guests. After all, this was our first public appearance as a proper film festival. Having the chance to take the stage and meeting our guests was a delightful experience. Overall, we grossed $485 in ticket sales and $85 in merchandise pre-order sales which was a massive success and helped with our future budgetary expenses. Most importantly, we gained publicity regarding who we were, what SIFF was about, and the dates and locations it was being held.

My small, yet-to-be-mentioned contribution to this film festival is my guerrilla marketing tactics used to bring in an audience on the third and final night of the festival.

Upon arriving to Building 80 of RMIT, it was looking bleak. Not a single poster to be found on the outside to attract potential audience members. Not one piece of Halloween decor to be found to signify the spookiness going on in the lecture hall inside. The lecture hall was a quarter-filled at best. I desperately searched the venue for tape. Or bluetack. Anything to stick posters to walls. Alas. All I had was the merch and my own cunning.  And so I took it upon myself, as the sole ticketer, to hit the streets (just Swanston street, really) and bring in as many interested guests as possible. Here I am:

I made sure to don the best SIFF t-shirt I had and brought with me an extra shirt and a tote. At first I stood outside with the tote bag on my arm, spinning it around like the best sign-spinner to work for an American pizza place had ever spun something. I proclaimed “Film Festival happening inside! Get your merch! Heavily discounted merch inside.” It was not heavily discounted. A man and his presumed wife approached me. I was ready to entice. He asked when the movie was starting. I said 2:00. He said that was too bad, he had a lunch reservation. I said that really was a shame, House is a great movie. He said he’ll give it a go later.

I was so close. So close to getting butts on those seats using my guerrilla marketing tactics. The Oxford bar was my next victim. I snuck up from behind a tree and stealthily lay a t-shirt and tote bag on their outside signs. Proud of what I had accomplished, I posed for a picture. This went on until just past 2, then I had to go inside because I really wanted to go see House and laugh at that funny witch cat. But overall, I’d say my contribution that day was huge, as I nearly got that man and his presumed wife to come in and see the movie and also because the worker at the Oxford came out and told me to take down the merch and it made me feel so anti-establishment.

Long live SIFF. Love y’all.

My role in the Program team was something of an information gatherer. I was often in there finding the information about which films were distributed by whom and who to contact by email or phone number. Most of this information I updated in an Airtable so we could keep track of it all and return to it when we needed it. 

As you can see when programming for features, we had a large number of features we considered. We had these views separated so we could easily discuss reviews of the films we had seen, and how well they fit into our program based on the information gathered. Eventually this led to the program being finalised with rights acquired for the films and the materials needed to screen them.

This organisation extended into our shorts program. Especially when it came to the selection among the variety of submissions we received. Filtering by the information we needed, we could organise the classifications, which ones we were going to screen before a feature and links to the films themselves. 

This information was also gathered to contact the filmmakers, mostly by email as most of the submissions were international. 

After the running sheet had been made and the festival was upon us, it was time to screen the films. The first two nights of the festival on the 2nd of June and 3rd of June were screened at the Capitol. Besides speeches it was a pretty hands off experience for us programmers as Capitol staff handled the projection of the films. 

However, Saturday the 4th of June was more of a hands-on experience. In Building 80 of RMIT we used the theatre’s technology to screen the shorts ourselves from a laptop. Even controlling the lights and the curtains.

Tomas organised the VLC playlist for the screening but ran into an issue when it came to the subtitles of one of the films. One of the submissions was missing embedded subtitles and the filmmakers were not replying to our emails asking for them. 

So desperate measures called for some alternative methods of getting what we needed. Inspect element is a surprisingly useful tool and I was able to get something called a .vtt that I could use to convert to a subtitle file.

From there I could burn the subtitle track into the video file using a program called handbrake. The screening on Saturday went smoothly, and we were able to finish off the festival with an awards ceremony where we were able to hand the awards to the filmmakers in person. 

Within SIFF I was a production team member and one of my main tasks was liaising and organising details with The Capitol Theatre. Many details needed to be organised and communicated to the Capitol but to us as well.

I was contacting Darren on many occasions about the DCP’s as well as the shorts. When it came to delivery of them as well as the conversion of the short films. I also did a couple of recces to plan out the layout of the festival and where we were going to setup tables and posters. This was also important as I was a relay at the end for final preparation information. Such as having to communicate to the design team certain details to produce advertisement and material to put up on the digital displays. Additionally, I was answering Darren’s questions as well as when it came to bump in and bump out times and relaying the running sheet towards him. I was also clearing up details about the candy bar situation and alcohol situation for the festival as well.

These images are times I have interacted with Darren over call as well as email. Though a majority of our contact was done through phone as it was easier and the most responsive place for both of us. These calls were important to the festival as liaising with the Capitol was necessary as it was our main venue for the festival. Moreover, details needed to be answered by both parties to ensure we knew what was happening and what we were able to do and that the Capitol knew what was going on. As, Darren said he felt a bit left in the dark before we properly started liaising.

I quickly realised as a member of the programming team that a large proponent of the work I was going to be doing was email based. The process of acquiring screening rights for a film begins with identifying the local distributors of the films which we would like to screen. This was sometimes a difficult process, and required making the right calls to the right places at the right times and then following up with emails and developing a conversation. The above photos are screenshots from my communications with Melissa from MadMan – who ended up offering us the rights to screening “A Girl Who Walks Home Alone At Night” and eventually a DCP copy for screening at the capitol theatre. But similar interactions were had with other distributors like Umbrella (who ultimately ended up sponsoring the event). This became a series of interactions over weeks where we provided each other with information for our eventual payment for acquiring screening rights. These interactions were drawn out, and sometimes I felt as if Melissa forgot that Seance International even existed, but these dialogues were always pivotal in the final result of the festival. Ultimately I acquired the DCP myself and dropped this off to the Capitol Theatre.

The main thing I worked on for the Séance International Film Festival was the SIFF website. I had some experience building a website through Wix before so I thought I’d take up the task. At the onset of the festival, we had to choose between WordPress or Wix. After careful research and seeing which platform would give us the best value and also the most freedom to be creative (which was a big thing for the Design team), we decided to go with Wix. I’m quite happy with how the website turned out.

My top priority was the ease of navigating through the website. I looked up several different film festival websites and past Festival Experience film festival websites which gave me a starting point and a guideline for what is the best layout of the information. The website targets people aged 18-55. As our first film festival, I wanted to reach as many people as possible. I aimed for the structure of the website to be clear for the site visitors to navigate through different sections and pages. I wanted the website to be familiar to encourage the site visitors to read about the festival and the team behind it, and avoid them from leaving the website too soon if the layout appeared overcrowded or too modern for the older demographic. The website is also the face for our potential festival sponsors and partners. So, I aimed to create a professional-looking website so that people can see that we are a credible organization.

https://www.seanceinternationalfilmfestival.com.au/

Due to the length of the domain and email addresses, we had to think of ways to make it easier for people to head to our website and contact the appropriate person based from their query. I learned from my research of other websites that they have different emails designated for a specific query which I thought was a really good idea. Daimian helped me organize these individual emails. There was a little bump in the beginning due to miscommunication, more specifically misspellings, for one of the emails. This caused some emails to bounce back as the wrong email was spelled out on the website. However, it was quickly resolved and fixed. The individual emails helped spread out the responsibility instead of only one person monitoring and responding to all queries. To achieve ease of access, I made each emails clickable which directs the visitor to their default mail app and email the appropriate subject. This is so the visitor won’t have to type in the email address. Moreover, I added a form next to those emails for anyone who doesn’t have a specific enquiry or aren’t sure which department it should go to.

The insights for the website traffic seems to have done well. Most of our site visitors came from directly typing in the email address, clicking the website link from our socials, or scanning the QR code from their phones. Most of the site visitors are from Australia which was good as our festival was hosted in Melbourne. The report is a great testament that the aims for the website was successful.

The poster was actually the first design that helped to set up the visual aesthetic and feel of SIFF. The programming team gave the design team a few images about the look and feel of how they envision SIFF to become. One of those images that I gravitated toward was the Suspiria (2019) poster design by La Boca Design Studio. It’s an iconic poster that consists of geometrical shapes and uses a colour palette of red, white and black.

The use of symbolism was a major factor in the poster design for SIFF and something that I’m personally interested in when creating my own projects. I began researching the origins of séances online and pulled inspiration from books that I own about symbols and archetypal images. These helped me to sketch up a few images and compositions of how I envisioned the poster to look in my mind. Rather than including all the information about SIFF on the poster, I wanted it to feel more like a poster for a film so I refrained from using information that was very text-heavy. Instead, I decided to add a QR code to direct viewers to the SIFF website which has all the information about our film festival. I personally like the idea that someone would hang up the poster on the walls of their bedroom and hoped that the design was good enough to do so.

By using a similar colour palette and geometrical shapes, I wanted to give a modern feel to the poster by adding gradients and textures. References relating to our horror/occult theme include: séance activity in the centre, evil entity lurking in the shadows in the background, the triangle and the circle reminiscent of the Illuminati symbol and of the occult which was also inspired by Hilma Af Klint’s ‘Paintings for the Temple’ which she painted by channelling spirits (very fitting), and an arched window with a blood moon which can be represented as an evil omen. Overall, I wanted to give our SIFF poster a somewhat ominous feel.

The feedback from my peers as well as from liaisons communicating with our sponsors and publications were well received, with some noting how the strong visuals doesn’t feel like a university student-run film festival. Several film festival goers during our event commented on the poster as well as the displayed graphics and how it encapsulates the theme of SIFF perfectly. I was quite happy with the outcome of the SIFF poster as this was the first time I’ve created a poster for such an event and I hope to work on more in the future.