Week 8 Reflection

Reading some of the blogs on The MediaFactory website documenting the 2022 and 2023 Festival Experience studios and film festivals—the Séance International Film Festival and the Debut International Film Festival—was quite insightful and interesting. It was fascinating to gain perspective on the different roles and executions of teams and tasks for these past film festivals and learn about how they approached them, such as Ricky Chen’s experience creating a promotional trailer for the Séance International Film Festival or Amy Maher’s experience crafting a press release for the DIFF, which I found particularly helpful considering I am also drafting a press release for the And Scene Festival! Like Amy, I feel a bit intimidated by the role of creating a press release, especially because I am not very familiar with them and what they should or should not include. However, learning that Amy still managed to pull it off and garner some media coverage by ArtsHub was really encouraging and also gave me some insight into whom I should keep in mind to include in our mailing list. From these blogs, I was able to gather some important tips for creating a successful festival, such as the importance of communication not only within our team but also with outside partners like Darren at The Capitol or liaisons with the studios whose work we will be showcasing. I think one of our main “roadblocks” at the moment is not knowing exactly what each studio will be producing or how much time is needed to showcase their work. This information is crucial to help us understand our festival programming and determine if we will need to incorporate a third festival day or not. Overall, it was really helpful to learn about the individual tasks taken on by team members of these past film festivals and see how, despite their inexperience with certain things or small hurdles, they all still managed to produce exciting and successful festivals thanks to determination, teamwork, and creativity! This definitely gives me the confidence that our team can make the And Scene Festival an event up to our collective hopes and standards, even if we all feel a bit overwhelmed by all the work (and money) required to achieve our goals.