BLOG 15 - Inspired by festivals
Or:
Why I decided festivals weren’t for me/I wasn’t for them
2017, I had finished my 2nd short film, ‘Bitz - The Whippet Made from Random Stuff’. I set myself a 3 month deadline so I could enter it into my local Manchester Animation Festival (MAF). This festival had started in 2015, the year I began animating, and had given me a lot of motivation (you can catch up with my thoughts on this in my earlier blogs). The first film I made in 2016 was not accepted into MAF and I realised that it had a lot of issues - being too long and ponderous was a main issue. With this film I tried to keep it moving along, plus I tried to improve my animation techniques while still keeping my experimental repurposed vibe.
MAF is a well regarded festival. It’s very competitive, drawing entries from around the world; films made by teams of filmmakers, films with proper funding, films from universities, as well as film professionals and professional studios. This being said, there was always low-fi stuff on show, and I hoped my little effort would be accepted… It wasn’t. Never mind.
MAF is still a great festival and I hold no grudges, lol. And it’s one of the few that’s FREE to enter. There are other free ones that aren’t great quality and most film festivals all seem to charge an entry fee, regardless of weather the film is accepted or not. Fees vary from £3 to £50+ depending on the profile of the festival and when you enter. There are ‘early bird’ discounts the year before and the cost goes up the closer to the deadline. It’s easy to get carried away with entries after you’ve spent a lot of energy making a film. You are just eager to get your film seen to justify the time you spent on it. There is website called Film Freeway, though, which you can enter and keep track of your festival submissions.
I entered a reasonable amount of festival; in total I spent £310 on entries. Like I said, it all adds up and it’s easy to get caught up in it. Bitz was accepted into 11+ festivals/screenings in various places around the world and online. It got won a couple of awards, and was a finalist etc. It came 2nd in ‘The World Animation Celebration’ at Sony pictures, which was cool. This ‘Bitz’ poster has laurels for most of her festival screenings.
Nice as it was to know Bitz was being seen around the world, I found the whole thing kinda played upon a filmmaker’s dreams, and I became a bit cynical about the whole process. I felt bad spending so much money on screenings, especially after the crowdfunding campaign. I was not taking years to make my films, so spending money on festivals a few times a year just wasn’t sustainable.
The most rewarding part of sharing the Bitz film came from hosting my film on Vimeo and sharing on social media. The Bitz vimeo video has been viewed 10k+ times, which is nice to know. I put it on my Bitz Animation Facebook page and really enjoyed engaging directly with the the audience. I used this platform to find new followers, who could comment and give their backing to future projects. You can visit the original post on my Facebook again here - if you followed my back work, why not see if you you find your comment?!
I decided to try to design future projects with this sustainable, ‘non festival’ approach in mind…but that’s it for now. My next blog will look at the funding and making of the short sequel to ‘Bitz’ and how I tried to plan a longer term sustainable animation project.
Thanks for reading! Check out updates on my current work below.
Best wishes
James
CURRENT WORK
* FILM PRODUCTION* Rox’s film as begun in ernest. I have refined the initial idea and have done a draft story board. I will do a neater version with a few changes today and put together an animatic. I’ll use this animatic to mess about with timings and try to pace the film as best as I can before I pass it over to the composer to make a unique version of the score.
*MERCHANDISE/FUNDRAISING* Thanks to you all! Rox reached her target, the minimum needed to make her animation. I will leave the merch on the shop, so if you still want to get involved with badges and supporters packs please do! Every little extra helps. All products are in stock, but will only be posted out when the current lockdown/distancing measures allow.
*MODEL MAKING* An all black whibbit ‘Tux’ and a whibbit with a crash helmet and racing vest ‘Moto’ are available from my show. Any orders will take a few months to build… Wouldn’t it be nice to know a little friend is being made just for you during all this lockdown chaos. Visit my shop or message me for more info
