Early in the semester, Cerise modelled a few program booklets from past or current film festivals to the class, all with gorgeous design and thoughtful contents. One that caught my eye was the Europa! Europa! Film Festival booklet – I loved the font, layout of text and motif of framed film stills on each page, which has inspired the use of semi-circular framing in our own booklet. In my growing collection of 2023 program booklets including the Birrarangga Film Festival, Europa! Europa! and Melbourne Women in Film Festival, I noticed that they all have something in common – an Artistic Director’s Welcome and a list of the festival team. As there’s been a big crossover in duties within departments, I felt that it would be fair to have an overarching Production Team Welcome, which will be put together in the next week. Due to this crossover in duties, its hard to pinpoint what role belongs to everyone, as some have jumped departments or taken work off other people’s hands to keep things running smoothly. This commonality across the booklets suggests the importance of recognition, as we all deserve to be recognised for our hard work, and having your own name tied to a film festival is something worth being proud of.
The data of each film in the program booklets has provided a template for our booklet to follow, with a title, director, location, year of release, language, subtitles, classification (if any), and runtime. This template has grown since presenting to the MIFF panel in week 9, who noted the importance of including a content warning where necessary and looking into the difference between open and closed captions. Closed captions would be more appropriate for an online festival, considering our audience won’t have the option to turn captions on and off as you would on a streaming service. Open captions/subtitles are something we can advertise for non-English features and short film submissions in the program, as English subtitles were a requirement for FilmFreeway submissions. Noting whether the film will be screened with subtitles is important for accessibility, and providing a content warning is a way to be honest with our audience and spark conversations.