Reflection (week 10 – week 12)

Finally, the final week is coming, we finished preparation of our film festival and going to have our first film festival, I’m so exciting when I just type this down. It was not easy to organizing this event, but it definitely an incredible memory and experience for me and all people who contributed to this festival preparation.

Until now, design section made a great booklet and we printed them out, several trailers have also uploaded on YouTube, the tickets are on sale, everything seems going properly and certainly, but only we know how hard and how much effort we made behind these ‘certain’. In these final weeks, I strongly feel the strength of a team, we all have our own things in charge of, but all of us work hard and made our own work perfect, which is a extradentary collaboration.

Since this is the first film festival, and we all are no-experienced, there is a cruel but real trouble, that there are just few tickets been sold. So, I tried to post some of our progress and the film list on Chinese social apps and my own Instagram account. Also, I tried to send out the festival booklet on street, but the result was not good, probably because people instinctively reject the leaflet on street. The reaction of social apps advertising was good, many of my friends shows their interests of the indie films and how we organize a film festival.

This is definitely a special and unforgettable experience, now I know how to organize a film festival, how important of teamwork, this course give me more than I can imagine.

In the class of week 9, we gave a pitch for our special guest panelists Rohan Spong and Erin Rosenberg and the whole class, also I receive many effective advice from Rohan and Erin.

I was nervous about this pitch, because that’s the first time we show our trailers to the whole class, I’m not sure about whether they can understand, so the nervous feeling had sustained until the trailer has been played. The short trailer which acted by two male figures did not show their interests about the film festival, actually when I watch that on the big screen, I didn’t think that will be a persuasive promotional video. The second video got the teacher’s approval, which is attractive and shows their interests of film festival. The trailer from the local group has also got some valuable advice, that Erin mentioned the music and scene is too slow to make them like an advertisement of Nikon, and also that’s not like a promotional video for a film festival, that suggestion was also useful for me, because we decided to make a new trailer that more interesting and attractive, so we will get rid of the slow music and focus on promote the film festival.

Form this criticism cession, I had a direct viewing that how’s going on each section and what we completed, I also realized that when we getting together, and allocate the work orderly, make a film festival is not that impossible. It was a valuable session that we receive many professional advice and also showed and saw the progress of each section.

Week 10 (Final reflection)

It’s getting to the end of preparation of MIYFF. Last week we gave a pitch to Rohan and Erin, to show the progress and got some professional advice from them, through this pitch, we showed our trailers to the whole class, and get some very useful advice, also, when others showing their progress, it was the first time I see a rudiment of our film festival intuitively, I was realized how strong when we work as a team, we did what we can and share our idea, but together we organized a film festival! As a fundraiser for our film festival, we had a small size event named ‘The Canned Film Festival’. When I was getting there, many people has already set up the preparation, some were making the unique T-shirt for MIYFF, some were arranging the table and desks. Actually, I was really want to help them, but seems all things were arranged properly, Ben and Tessa made an effort for our first event, they plan so well and give everyone a section to in charge with, I printed the poster and put them up outside of our building for the final promotion. In the end, I believe this event is a successful small film festival, although there aren’t many people here, but it’s the first time we organize a film festival by a new team that has no experience before, that made me realize again when we getting together, nothing is going to be impossible.

The next I need to do is redo a new trailer as soon as possible, now I’m really excited about the start of MIYFF, I want to see what new things we can make in the future!

Week 8

After a long break, people seems bring lots of new things to our class, all trailers had finished shooting, Chinese trailers had finished the initial version, and our group members gave us some advice, like a background noise can be fix, and may change the subtitle font to make them clearer. Actually I’m not really satisfied about the mini trailer we made, So, me and my Chinese group member decided to make a new trailer that more attractive and more interesting.

During the class, we are focusing on the production fundraiser, and we got an extra week and move the fundraiser to next week. Then, we have more time to get on our own work. Unfortunately, I didn’t attend the risk assessment meeting during the break, because we when out to redo our trailers.

Overall, at this week, when I see my classmates are so active about the fundraiser, I realize that I didn’t and even don’t know how to help at fundraiser, I see the lack of my ability to organize a festival, which is a necessary ability when we have a job.

From the readings of this week, I learned the classification and rating of films, which is an important point for a new film festival team. It is interesting to see each rate has a clear rule of themes, sex violence and coarse language. (Guidelines for the Classification of Films 2012)

Reading:

“Guidelines for the Classification of Films 2012: Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.” on Federal Register of Legislation website, accessed 28 April, 2019.

Week 7

This week we had started to do some shooting for the trailer, what we in charge of is to produce some Chinese trailers to attract some Chinese students and make the advertising video be diversified.

When we plan to do that I thought that will be a simple work, 10 to 20 seconds, in Chinese. We made several ideas to our group, and then we decided to start. However, when we start to get down to that, there are many troubles we face. At the first, we got many novel ideas. For instance, we plan to make a short story that a mystery man flies a paper plane which made with MIYFF poster, and in the other side, there are some students sitting on the grass and hit by the paper plane and they are interested to that film festival. During the shooting, we found it was difficult to shoot how the paper plane flying and it’s hard to control the direction because of the wind.

After the failure of the first time, we had a discussion and made a new plan, we decided to do two trailers, one is about 40 seconds and the other one is about 10 seconds, that will be a normal trailer that include some details about our film festival, and the other will be a mini trailer. After we finish the shooting and editing, and we discussed with our group mate, then I found I’m not really professional with editing, although when I choose this to get in charge I thought I would create an interesting work for my group, there are many things I can learn.

Over all, this week I finally finished the trailer, and I realized I need to get into the discussion with my group and talk more to get more idea.