Week 3 Check-In

Goodness, it sure doesn’t feel like it’s been three weeks. Seems like we have been in school longer than that, but at the same time I can’t believe this much time has already passed. Whoa. At our programming meeting this past Monday at 6, we talked a lot about the dirty dozen. Kevin helped Daryl and I figure out what we wanted to base ours on, and we decided we should all focus ours on judging the films. I posted the dirty dozen on my blog after we discussed that and made sure the time was right since Blogger kept setting my posts to Mountain Time. On Tuesday I paid my book fee and thought our film debates in class that night were hilarious! However I also realized how hard of a time we are going to have choosing the final ones that we decide to screen. Lots of talent so far! On Wednesday I started judging the films and was once again amused and amazed. I got through a lot of them on Thursday and hope to finish up this second round before the end of Monday. Yesterday I entered the information of newly submitted films into our programming list which, proved to be difficult at times since several came from overseas. Before Tuesday I do plan on figuring out how to sort those submissions into their appropriate category since the spreadsheet was confusing me again. Got a lot going on for this class, but I’m managing it along with everything else I’m doing. I can definitely tell my time management is improving, though things aren’t nowhere near as busy now as they’re gonna get. Oh boy. 

Dirty Dozen

   1. What is the project supposed to achieve?

·         Judging of the films and papers so that our department can get back to the filmmakers and writers as to whether or not we are including their work in Visions6.

   2. Who is the customer?

·         Our classmates as well as the filmmakers and writers.  

   3. What are the deliverables of this project?

·         A complete list of works to be included in Visions6 Film Festival and Conference.

   4. What is the budget?

·         This does not require a budget since the films and abstracts have already been submitted to us.

   5. How long will it take?

·         About 3 to 4 weeks.

   6. What specific skills are needed?

·         Time management, organization, and an open mind. I don’t always catch on to what a film is about at first…

   7. What special resources are needed?

·         Passwords to the private films and information on the filmmakers and writers so that they can be contacted regarding a decision. A laptop or some sort of access to internet might also be helpful so that the films and papers can be viewed/judged appropriately. 

   8. Who is working the project? What is each person’s job?

·         The programming team.

                                                               i.      Kevin- Leads decisions and makes sure team is on track

                                                             ii.      Daryl- Helps lead jury conversations and runs the reports in class

                                                            iii.      Jessica- Also helps with jurying conversations

   9. What is the schedule?

·         1/26 – Jury Round 1 of Films

·         2/02 – Jury Round 2 of Films

·         2/09 – Jury Round 3 of Films & Jury Papers 1-6

·         2/16 – Jury Round 4 of Films & Jury Papers 6-12

·         3/01 – Finalize Final Films & Papers

   10. What are the risks? (Small vs. Large Impact, Likely vs. Unlikely)

·         Judging the same film twice or missing an answer. Not understanding a film.

   11. How will you communicate with your team?

·         We will text, email, message, and talk about what films we are judging and make sure the team, along with everyone else, is on track.

   12. How will you determine if the project is successful?

·         Each week Kevin will put up the round with films to be judged and our team will keep track in class to make sure all of the films are being properly judged. 

Week 2 Check-In

Boy, this has been one long week. Even though we had MLK Day off, I still somehow managed to not get enough sleep. Despite it being a rather tough week as well, I managed to push through and still get a lot of work done. This past Monday I took my first minutes at our department meeting. Though I was late after having traffic problems when coming from downtown, I wrote down everyone who was there and what had been discussed before I arrived as well as what we briefly talked about while I was there. After class on Tuesday I really didn’t do too much aside from a little bit of reading for my leadership class. On Wednesday I spent an hour or so watching some of our films from the first round and viewed a couple more Thursday morning. I have enjoyed the films ten times more than reading the abstracts. I’m not a huge reader overall, but I am glad on Tuesday we decided which papers we will judge to have programmed. The ones we chose looked cool from the abstracts, so reading them hopefully won’t be too bad. For the films though, I have enjoyed seeing what film students from around the world are capable of. Some films have been much better than others of course, but even the contrast between the different filmmaker’s styles is interesting in itself. Aside from the films, on Monday at our meeting I will take minutes again and should be on time since this past Monday I had something going on that is not a weekly occurrence. We will discuss the dirty dozen at this meeting too since we ran out of time in class on Tuesday. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this semester is going to be ridiculously tough. But I chose to have a hard schedule, so therefor I have no right to complain. Yes I am already tired and a bit overwhelmed sometimes by the seemingly never-ending work load, but I’m good at being productive when I am busy. Visions too seems like an awesome experience thus far, and I’m already learning a lot about the festival process. I’ve still got a lot to learn before the end of semester, and who knows where it’ll take me.  

Festivals of Their Own Response

This article was lengthier than I thought, so I took more notes than anticipated, but it was rather fascinating. I had no idea the first standalone film festival was way back in 1938 in Venice. What's even funnier is the fact that Leni Riefenstahl's documentary Olympia won top honors. A couple of semesters ago I was forced to do a presentation on Riefenstahl where I basically learned she was a huge Nazi endorser and allowed Hitler to control what films she made. I'm just going off on a bit of a rage at this point since I hated that class along with that presentation, but I was proud of myself for knowing some film history for a second there. Though I had never done any research into it, I always assumed the first American film festival had started somewhere such as LA or even New York City, so I was intrigued that it was actually in San Francisco in 1975. It was sad to read that these festivals first showed a lot of experimental films but started to give them less and less screen time as the years went on. As a film student I unfortunately still don't have a huge liking for experimental films as they tend to have a deeper meaning that I never catch on to. In saying that though, I do believe that they should be shown to audiences as they can be extremely creative and different. I was glad to see that in 1978 a new type of film festival emerged to showcase underground films, and eventually became the well-known Sundance in 1989. On a quick random note, I was completely unaware too that The Blair Witch Project premiered there. Once again though, the further I read, the more disappointed I became as I saw that Sundance too followed in the footsteps of other festivals by giving less and less screen time to experimental films. Luckily, I wasn't too alarmed as I knew that more and more underground film festivals such as Slamdance and Slamdunk eventually became popular venues for experimental flicks. Something that sounded epic was the "Bring Your Own Film" film festival started by Michael Williams, and I find it weird that something like that hasn't become more of a thing over the years. Some really good advice in the article too was that as a filmmaker you should take the opportunity to have your films screened anywhere and everywhere since that will allow you to have a diverse audience. Another thing that sounded epic was the travelling film festival that Antero Alli first put together in 1992 as the Nomad Video Film Festival. Since that time, the Resfest Digital film festival and Microcinema International's Independent Exposure film festivals have traveled beyond America, which is also ridiculously awesome. I literally knew nothing about the history of or broadness of film festivals before reading this article, so to see that the Substream Film Festival since 2002 has presented a single festival that runs simultaneously in multiple cities just seems insane. I can't even begin to imagine how much effort goes into all of that planning...goodness! So to start wrapping up this blog, I feel that I should go over the random facts I collected from the overview of the film festivals they listed towards the end. The Bare Bones International FF in Oklahoma has a "Bonehead Award", and Cucalorus (whoop whoop!) was founded in 1994 by Twinkle Doon. DancesWithFilms was confronted by Orion Pictures who claimed the name of the festival was too similar to the film with the name Dances With Wolves. Meanwhile Orion has gone out of business and DancesWithFilm continues to thrive, so ha! The HiMom! FF was started in Chapel Hill (go NC!), and the No Dance Film Festival was billed as the world's first DVD-projected film festival. The interview at the end of the article reinforced how every film festival is different and rejection letters should never get you down. I also think it's neat that Josh Koury started the Brooklyn Underground FF that has the feel of an underground art gallery.

Week 1 Check-In

Alright, so this is my first official weekly check in…and there are so many more to come. –dun dun…DUUUNNN- Because this was the first week of classes, obviously I went to class. This semester I am in Sound Recording, British Cinema, Leadership, Visions of course, and I am also in an internship with etc. media. Though I wasn’t able to start at etc. this week, I officially begin on Tuesday and am excited to get more experience in production. I too am the Vice President for Wilmington Paranormal Research, so I am happily keeping up with that amid all of the other craziness. After class on Tuesday I read the job manual along with the descriptions, and though I learned yesterday that I read last semester’s because I couldn’t find the others, Kevin showed me where to find the correct ones. Since this was the first time I read what I was supposed to be doing, the descriptions seemed very overwhelming at first sight. However, I do hope that once we get more into the flow of things, though we will still be constantly busy, it will be manageable. Thus far I am liking all of my classes, and it’s looking to be a busy but great semester! I even graded the abstracts on Thursday, and though some of them were longer than others because they actually adhered to the word count, it only took me about an hour and a half total. I had to leave about midway through to get to a meeting with Kevin and Daryl, but overall it wasn’t too bad. Programming as a whole seems to be dare I say…fun. Of course there will be several overwhelming days, but I think it’s cool just how much Visions accomplishes. Daryl and I were assigned ten films each from the submissions to input information for. My section was very diverse in the schools from which the students were from, with one person from Poland. Yesterday, in all honesty, I didn’t do much for Visions except look over the blogs of some of our staff members to make sure mine was somewhat on the right track. Today though I shared the Cinemixer event with 25 friends on Facebook and am going to read the article “Festivals of Their Own.” I am still having technical issues with Trello as well, so I’m planning on tinkering with it some more today to see if I can get it to cooperate with me. Now, back to work I go! 

So I read the Manual and the Job Descriptions...

and there were a lot of words. They were quite lengthy but did lay everything out nicely with a lot of good tips. Being a programming assistant I will supervise the creation and administration of our schedule and budget. When our departments have meetings, I need to take attendance and turn them in to the Festival Director at the start of each month. Though I am not sure what to look for yet, I also need to review films that were submitted incorrectly on Film Freeway. Working with the directors to access and plan for the tech requirements sounds pretty cool too, since I feel I will learn a lot about equipment during this process. Another thing that actually sounds interesting is making sure the bumpers, trailers, and slides all play in the right slots. Something that makes me actually nervous is seeing that I should advise the projectionists on sound and other elements. I am looking forward to the sound aspects since sound designing has become rather intriguing to me. In terms of the aspect rations though, I'm really not sure how that's gonna go since I don't really know much about what works for what films. That'll definitely be a learning experience. On the day of Visions6 the program department should stay in the theater throughout the event to make sure everything runs smoothly and on time, so hopefully nothing catastrophic goes wrong. In the manual I saw a lot of things that we talked about yesterday in class along with other interesting things. For instance, it makes sense that film blocks should be run through DVDs since technology never wants to cooperate when you need it to. Also, I noticed that diligence was stressed throughout. This class is definitely going to be a challenge for me since I have other classes, an on-campus job, and an internship. Everyone is busy though, so that isn't an excuse by any means. I love being busy and being productive, so by being a part of this festival I plan on learning how to manage my time even more than I already have. My communication skills are also bound to expand as I meet new people and learn new skills. Last year when I volunteered I really didn't get to see much of the behind-the-scenes of Visions, which was quite sad. This semester I am really looking forward to getting all of my tasks completed and being on the inside of the festival rather than the outside. Though Visions is going to be one heck of an experience as I'm sure there will be good days and bad days, I look forward to going through this process with my team and working hard to get it all done so that we can put on a good show!

Randomness on Day 1

First class was tonight. Interesting initiation to say the least, but everyone seems cool and focused, which are both good things. Read the job descriptions for the Programming department and started on the manual but will have to finish it tomorrow since I am dozing off. Really excited (and anxious, not gonna lie....but definitely excited) to get more involved with this awesome festival and have an awesome event for everyone the day of.