During the talent lab we had the pleasure of meeting a film festival panel, this came at an incredible time of our university journey, straight after our research and development films and directly before our major film, this gave us the opportunity to have one on one’s with the panel themselves. First of all we had a lecture where they spoke to us on how to apply to the film festivals.
Jonny Bradshaw the Grim Fest programmer, for me this was one of the most inspiring people to listen to due to him only have left the same course as I’m currently on only a year beforehand, to see how far he has come made me so much more confident on my future, His advice was that while he was in his final year at university he realised he didn’t want to make films but loved watching them, quote: “if you don’t like making films, go into programming”, he expressed that there is a life after university, don’t be scared, and don’t worry about your grad films, this eased my mind a little due to the stress around that time of planning my major grad film.
We then had the opportunity to speak to Adrian Barber who is the Bolton film festival programmer, he explained he was in fact pushed into making a festival by his girlfriend, they decided to start getting money together to start a festival, a festival that would feature only short films, allowing under graduates, graduates and post graduates to apply there films, the selection process is huge, last year 850 films, yet only around 200 films were worth looking at he expressed, he stated that before submitting your film book out a projector and watch it, imagine yourself as the programmer, would you choose your film? Don’t be biased.
Finally we spoke to Isabelle Castle who works for HOME film festival and push film festival, before working there she worked at corner house, she spoke of the festivals she had ran and how she goes about picking the films, she spoke of festival in which we should consider applying and they go as follows:
· THE BAFTA
· BFI LONDON
· EDINGBRUGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
· SHEFFIELD DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL
· WILDSCREEN FESTIVAL
· GALSGOW FILM FESTIVAL
· ROTTERDAM
· HOME FESTIVAL MANCHESTER
· GRIMM FEST
I then had my opportunity to have a one on one with the festival panel, they gave me some incredible feedback on my film, as it was a personal film on stalking Adrian expressed his wish that my then titled film “OFF THE RECORD” would in fact express that it was a young teenager being stalked as he said that itself would make him ant to take on my film, after watching 60 seconds of my film the panel expressed they would take on my film to there festivals, this for me was huge and gave me so much confidence in what I was doing.
They gave me so much feedback on my film and then information on how to move on in the future, first to watch as many films as possible 2-3 a day, attend as many film festivals as you an and start to build up a network and take an interest in online shorts such as “short of the week.com”