Last week we held an exciting fundraising event. Overall, this fundraising event was very successful. I am very pleased that we have successfully attracted many audiences. Maybe you can understand this feeling. At that moment, I am a mother. The child I have been bred for a long time is finally born, and very cute and charming. It’s really hard to imagine that a group of people who don’t know about the festival, even some people have never been to the film festival, but everything is going on smoothly.

We made the RMIT Media Portal as warm and cosy as we could, some warm lights surround the handles, and some cushions and blankets are placed on the stools. The sweet and delicious popcorn taste filled the audience. I think this is a wonderful night for everyone here.

It must be mentioned that Ben is definitely a very good leader. Holding a fundraising event is definitely a little difficult thing. But Ben showed his absolute enthusiasm and confidence. He influenced everyone in the media potral and the atmosphere at the scene was getting better and better.

We think this fundraiser event is totally successful, because all the work is properly allocated, everyone also performs their duties. We selected a reasonable theme, contacted the filmmakers and obtained permission from the other party – they were able to show their films and set the scene. But there is still room for improvement. For example, in the aspect of advertising, I learned that the ad group have encountered many failures, but fortunately the final result is still satisfactory.

In the production of trailers, we also encountered some difficulties. Our ten-second trailer was forced to give up because the actors were not invested enough. But we have not given up on us to have a new idea, and have already been shooted, I hope it can be accepted in the next class. This thing told us that we don’t despair and give up at the sight of difficulties, but learn from them and keep on moving.

After the holiday, everyone returned to the right track and started a new work plan. During this week, we discussed fundraiser and matters related to fundraising activities. With regard to the content of fundraising activities, we have had many different ideas through the discussion out of and in the class. But it is undeniable that the content of the event is mostly around the film. In order to attract more participants, the design team is also working on poster design so that we can sell more tickets. Until now we have sold six tickets. But the advertising team thinks this result is not ideal. Therefore the advertising team have suggested paying for social media advertising — on Facebook — in the hope of attracting wider interest from the local communities. They said that the great thing about Facebook ads is that it really lets you narrow down your target audience to a very specific range of people. Everyone is looking forward to the effectiveness of this advertisement delivery.

The Manager of Venues at RMIT asserted that he would do his best to organise any extra materials we may need including seating and a microphone so that we are prepared. In terms of wider production for the main event, the programming team are currently working on categorizing the films. So far, I think everyone is working on their own work and paying attention to it in an orderly manner.

Finally, we also showed our Chinese trailer to our team members. Ben made some suggestions for our trailer. The first one is that there is too much noise in our background sound. He suggested that we find ways to reduce the noise. The second one is the problem of fonts. He thinks that the color of our existing fonts is not clear enough. I hope that we can change colors of that. After listening to his comments, we made some changes after class. Ready to show up in class next week to get more reviews and suggestions.

reference:
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. 97-114.

Holding a film festival is a new thing for me, but shooting clips is not. This is why I chose to participate in the trailer group. This week, we started for our mini Chinese Trailer. The reason for making Chinese trailers is to make our advertisements more diversified and attract more people to participate in our film festival.

Before we started working, we thought it was a simple job. Because this trailer is only 10 to 20 seconds long, and the language is the Chinese we are familiar with. But in the course of our work, we have encountered many problems. For example, when shooting a paper airplane segment, it is very helpless for the paper plane not to fall exactly where we need it. After many trials, this problem has not been solved. In the end we can’t help but give up on this idea. After giving up this idea, we discussed it again and developed a new plan. Finally we re-photographed two trailers. One is 10 seconds long and the other is 40 seconds.

The above is my summary of this week’s trailer filming. Through the discussion in class, I learned that we have confirmed that the fundraising event held on the evening of May 9 determined the venue and general concepts. We will have holding the event on campus, in building 14 in a large lecture space——media potral. I think this is a good place to hold our event, because I believe students who live nearby / in the city centre are our target market for this event and we will have better chance of securing numbers if we approach this as our ideal audience. At the same time, choosing film is keeping going on. “Programming for your festival should be purposeful, not random. It is important to nail down topics and themes before you begin looking for films” (Bartosova, Kulhankova & Rausova 2015, p 27). All in all there has been a lot to learn along the way from this particular job role, something which I am proud of when others ask what my responsibilities are in regards to the film festival.

Reference:

Kateřina Bartošová, Hana Kulhánková & Zuzana Raušová, “Knowing Yourself and Your Audience: Programming and a Humming Rights Film Festival”, in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 27-46.

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.

Through the fifth week of study, I learned more about how to hold a film festival. In this week’s class, the budget of the festival was seriously considered. We discussed budgets for many things, such as venues, poster production, and some advertising. In the process of discussion, I found that everyone is very responsible and careful. We are each divided into different groups and we do our own work under the leadership of the group leaders.

I don’t have a lot of experience in organizing work, but I think Tessa in our group is a good leader. She is well assigned to everyone’s task so that no one is wasted. I was assigned a clip and wanted to make some small trailer production tasks. For these tasks I am also thinking about how to perfect it. Because I am an international student, at the same time, we also hope that our film festival can attract more people not only local people. So we decided to make some small Chinese trailers, so more Chinese students can be attracted to and participate in our film festival.

“In order to make the festival successful, you need to let people know about your event and make them want to become part of it. Even though your team has worked hard to put together a rich programmed, you can lose potential audience members if you Try to introduce the festival to the public in all its complexity.” (Rambousková, 2015). We are working hard for the film festival we want.

During the course discussion, I learned that there are already many talented film creators who submitted their original ideas. However, we are also carefully screening their work to select the best ones for our film festival. Finally, I will also summarize my work. I already have two or three ideas about the trailer, which will be discussed in the next week. I have some concerns about one of these ideas, because I use posters in the trailer, I don’t know if the graphic design team can complete the poster design before I shoot.

Reference:
Bohdana Rambousková, “How to Successfully Promote Your Festival. Links to an external site.” in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 97-114.

In this week’s study, we start to learn about how many people does it take to organise a festival and what do those people do. First of all, production manager is an important role in organising a festival. Production decides the look of the festival and arrange everything about the festival. Also, the technical coordinator or the PR and graphic design people are also needed. Before the actual work, we need plan and prepare a lot of things, such as manpower, materials, and money and so on. As the permission of some special venues, the term of capacity and convenience must be considered. A lot of questions should be asked ourselves before organising the festival. After the classmates’ discussion, the most important thing of organising a festival is budget and resource.

This week, the Melbourne International Youth Film Festival has gone live, and we are now accepting submissions for the 1st official Melbourne International Youth Film Festival! We decided the topic and goal of our film festival. The main objective of this campaign is to educate the people about MIYFF and attract a larger audience to the event, as well as to get young filmmakers to submit their work. Raise awareness, increase attendance, get submissions. In our festival’s plan, because we designed our festival logo by ourselves, so there is no budget on the part of graphic design. On the same time, we can do the trailer by ourselves too. So the budget of this can be saved. We have a operation sheet and it shows that the position of everyone in our team. Furthermore, what things have been done or not can be seen on it as well. I’m learning a lot more than I thought I would. It has been a hugely beneficial process for me. I am looking forward to exploring the next step of our festival.