1 2 3 4 5 STARS BIAFF 2013

[Dave Watterson]

Col

Just to be clear: you are not, I hope, complaining about films in our international festival coming from other countries. You are concerned that they sometimes seem overrated.

IF entries from overseas are assessed too highly, that is a problem with the judges, not the film makers. Most of your comments in this thread seem to be about the quality of the judging.

I have sometimes thought that in all international contests judges give the benefit of the doubt to films they do not fully understand, whether those are films from a different country / culture or are "arty" or experimental films. I did not see all the films you mention so cannot comment directly. I just note that the difference between "the top end" of 3-stars and "the bottom end" of 4-stars is inevitably close.

Jan asked Simon Sumner about the film with the sync problem and he thought it was probably OK when they received it. We must assume, therefore, that the sync issue was a problem when transferring the film to hard drive for presentation.

You and I will probably never agree about the need for judges at this level to be top film makers.

That is hardly ever the case in any of the arts. The best artists are making the films (paintings/music/dance/plays etc) and the judges are people who appreciate the results. Frankly why should the audience, including judges, care how hard the film maker worked, which skills they had to use? All that matters is the result on the screen and through the loudspeakers. You deprecate your own film about the Yorkshire Sculpture Park as something you tossed off quickly. The judges didn't care about your attitude when producing it. They enjoyed and felt moved by what they saw and heard.

At club level it may be more appropriate to have judges who understand the practicalities of film making, so that they can pass on practical advice. But at higher levels of competition the artwork itself is what is considered not the amount of hard graft - great or small - of the artist.

On Present from the Past and Mindbreak we are agreed. What amazes me is that both were made by relatively young film makers. Florian Arndt, maker of Mindbreak was in the 16-21 age group! What chance for us old-farts?

Dave

[TimStannard]

Col with regard to foreign entries at BIAFF receiving proportionally more top awards than UK entries, my first reaction was that it was inevitable - but Dave had already posted the reason. By way of example I submit most things I make to NTR and only those I think worthy of 3* and above to BIAFF. I will not consider entering a foreign festival until I'm fairly confident of what might be a 4* or better at BIAFF.
Similarly, whilst it should always be the end product which is marked, rather than the effort required to make it, I would imagine it would be very difficult for a judge to totally discount the extra effort in translating a film into English or subtitling. We then have the difficulty of subtly different cultures. Whilst I would have no difficulty distinguishing between a film which is acted well and in which the lines are delivered well and a film where they are simply "OK" from a UK film maker, I am not so sure I would be able to make that distinction in a film shot in a foreign language with English subtitles. If the film is dubbed - the same problem. If the film is acted in a non-native tongue, then no matter how hard one might try, I suspect I'd be hard pushed not to make allowances.

Dave may also be right about judges giving the "benefit of the doubt" when they don't fully understand the film.
Because of this "lost in translation" factor, perhaps it is possible that you have missed something and this is why you saw several 4*s a 3*s.
One thing seems certain, we "punters" will always find reasons to disagree with the judges ranking - irrespective of the country in which the film has been made.

On the subject of judges being film makers, I'm not sure I agree with you and Dave. How many critics are film makers? I'm much more of the opinion that the audience's reaction is the best judge of the success of a film - although I recognise that the gaping hole in THAT argument is that the biggest audience reaction must be YouTube and therefore the best film ever is likely to feature a cat playing a piano! Surely we make (or should be making

However, i would want to receive comments on how to improve from accomplished film makers.

So, my impossible dream: Winning films - audience vote. Comments: fellow film makers (preferably four star and above, though they don;t have to have received that in this years' competition)

[tom hardwick]

Lee Prescott says, quote: A film should be judged on its individual merits not against others!
I contest this. BIAFF is a film competition. In any sort of competition there's a first, second and third place. When you enter BIAFF you're in competition with others. The fact that the judges spend time writing careful appraisals is a bonus.

If you want your film judged on its individual merits, fine. I'm all for that, and I'm always willing to do this for people who ask. But BIAFF is not the place for this. You've only got to read the rules to find this out.

tom.

[Mike Shaw]

Hmmm. Not sure I totally agree with that Tom - I see BIAFF as a way of getting a film rated - I enter to get that rating and the judge's comments, not to win a prize. (Though miraculously and mysteriously, I have won on the (very) odd occasion). In an audience of film makers, most of them far more experienced than me, audience reaction and feedback from audience members afterwards is also an invaluable reason for entering. Comments can be as useful and instructive as training and coaching sessions in the 'art of film-making'...

As for judges needing to be 4*+ film-makers - I tend to disagree with that as well, sharing the reasons already given here. Until and unless one has done a BIAFF judging session, I don't think it is appreciated just how intensive it is, or how much 'work' it entails. An entire weekend is given up (with travelling at the judge's own expense) watching something like 35-55 films (a proportion of all those entered) - making notes on each and assessing it in isolation to other films that have been seen (the judge's job is to star rate a movie - it is the final three judges who award the prizes from the highest rated films). The films are seen with a continually changing rota of two other judges - one of whom is expected to write up the combined assessment and comments, meaning each judge will have from 15 to 20 critiques to write up after the weekend is over - a task that rarely takes less than a week of intensive scribing if it is to be done properly.

Devoting that sort of time to a (thankless) task is a lot to ask of anyone: I think it is remarkable that Dave Newman can find sufficient people to tackle the job each year.

There is, of course, more to it than I have just written - for example strong guidelines are given at the judging weekends so that everyone, theoretically, is singing from the same hymn sheet. And every year, without fail, people disagree with some of the results.

[tom hardwick]

Well said Mike, and I'll go along with that about the rating of films ... as that's what most of us will receive - a rating. Only the top ten (or so) will be placed.

But I'll disagree with your 'thankless' word. I've received many an appreciative email for the comments I've written, and heart-warming it is too.

tom.

[Mike Shaw]

Ah - by 'thankless' I mean the overall task of judging, giving up a weekend followed by many days of scribbling away.

Yes - getting favourable comments back on a helpful critique is gratifying, and goes a long way to making it a worthwhile exercise. The 'thankless' referred to the continual spleen splitting judges-are-crap comments that follow every competition.

And which I also indulge in - wondering how some of this years 4* films weren't rated much lower, and why some 3* films weren't rated higher.

[col lamb]

OK lets make it clear.

I welcome any movie from any source, my concern is that the vast majority of overseas entries that I have seen are rated higher than they should be, just because they are in a foreigh language and have sub titles does not mean that they should be given the benefit of the doubt. That is giving them preferrential status, and definately that should not occur.

My explanation about my own movie was in answer to a post on movies being awarded a higher score for effort and I countered that the effort I put into one movie was about 10x the other yet they both received the same rating. Effort does not matter, what matters is the final content and experience on viewing the movie.

I am not denegrating the judges, all credit to them for giving up their own time and the vast effort they put into the process, its the system that required tweaking to resolve the anomolies.

As for the movie where the lipsync was out that should have been picked up by the person who ripped it off disc, and most certainly when it was tested prior to the show, I transferred 18 movies for an IAC NW competition and they were shown in lipsync and were tested prior to the event. You cannot assume "all will be allright on the night" you have to test. I'll say that the movie in question was a movie called SOS Plumbers and it was by a country mile in my own opinion overated by a total of 4*.

Mike, Tom, I totally agree with you BIAFF is a competition and as such all entries should be judged by the same criteria irrespective of effort or source location.

I am now going to be openly critical of another 4* movie where I think that the got the rating completely wrong, have a look at Four Way Stop, it is a great movie until the shootout at the end when it all goes the perverbial.

Come on you guys who made this movie the punch line is the most important part of this movie you should have got it right and the judges should not have made allowances for the effort that must have gone into making it nor to the fact that it is another overseas entrant.

I know I am being overly critical but we have to set standards and judge accordingly and there were to many over rated movies.

[TimStannard]

Yes - getting favourable comments back on a helpful critique is gratifying, and goes a long way to making it a worthwhile exercise.

I've wondered that. Do you actually like follow ups? Not just favourable comments. I didn't understand a comment about one of my films in the Guernsey Lily once and rather cheekily emailed Peter Roulliard. To my delight I received a very friendly email back in which he took time to explain what the judge had meant by the comment and how to avoid in future.
I can see how that might be gratifying to the judge(s) as well, (but presumably you wouldn't want loads of feedback and to feel that you were forever having to defend your position.)
I have a sort of first hand experience of this. I often comment on people's films submitted for critique on the Digital Director forum and I genuinely prefer it if a maker responds to what I've said, whether agreeing, asking me to elabortate or disagreeing. It means they have read my comments and are considering them. No response and you never know if they've read them or not and if they have whether they care.
Of course it's not quite the same as BIAFF where the difference between a 3 or 4 star award is somewhat more significant than what someone who's proud to be an amateur has to say about the film.

[Mike Shaw]

As Dave has noted previously, quite often the divide between a great 3 star and a scrape-through 4 star is marginal. It almost demands (almost - but not really) ratings like 3-, 3 and 3+, 4-, 4 and 4+ and so on. But I'm not suggesting that happens by a very long chalk. In fact, it would make matters even worse I fear!

I heard that one judge, at the end of his crits, would write something like "...This is just the opinion of the three judges that saw your film: another three judges could well have a totally different opinion"

That should, perhaps, appear on all crits as a reminder to the recipient that the assessment of his/her work is nothing more than the combined opinion of three people, however experienced and knowledgeable those three may be...

And I have to say, in quite a few instances there is heavy discussion between the three judges over what the rating of a film should be: hence the reason for three judges per session - if two agree, then the majority generally 'wins' - but it is also possible (and does happen) that the three agree to disagree and the film is passed over to another group for assessment.

[Michael Slowe]

I would just like to repeat what I wrote earlier. In my experience (nearly 50 years), the best judges of films are NON FILM MAKERS. If I want a sound judgement on a film of mine I show it to an ordinary cinema goer or TV viewer, someone who has never even considered picking up a camera. They know nothing of technique, 'rules' of film making or the difficulties we face. They watch the film and comment on how it affects them, what emotions it engendered, how they enjoyed watching it. Any technical faults will have an effect on their judgement - poor sound - bad pictures - bad acting - poor structure of the narrative etc. They might not understand why these matters were important but they'll feel the effect.

The problem with BIAFF's large entry and the considerable demands made upon the judges as illustrated by other posts, is that you won't find 'ordinary non film making viewers' willing to do the job. That's not to denigrate the splendid people who are willing to spend the time doing so, they do pretty well in my opinion, and the accent that Col puts on their film making abilities is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

[Mike Shaw]

In my experience (nearly 50 years), the best judges of films are NON FILM MAKERS

+1!

That's probably why I really like showing my films to general audiences - Guilds and Social Clubs of various flavours, because the reaction is generally favourable and enthusiastic (being polite?) - and they don't see the same filming flaws quickly spotted by the 'amateur' movie-maker in his/her strain for perfection on technicalities rather than creativity. General audiences tend to get absorbed in the 'story' - and if that fails, then they start noticing flaws and mistakes. Critical movie-making audiences on the other hand tend to think as they watch - "I wouldn't have done it that way" or "What's he doing using an obdy-doodah dioptric filter on that shot".

Never mind the quality - feel the width.

[col lamb]

What we are actually talking about is BIAFF, a movie competition held by the UK's leading organization and as such the standards should be high.

My point being that a movie maker should get the technical aspects of camerawork, audio, direction and post production spot on and then the movie maker can spend more time on the creative process after all it is that which really matters.

The IAC judges comments on a movie should be constructive and cover all aspects of the movie making process, for if the entrant is not advised of the technical limitations of their movie then how are they to know and to seek improvement

Surely an aim of the IAC is to promote, nurture and assist movie makers and constructive feedback is just one way

[Peter Copestake]

Someone has mentioned the info given on the results site as to what the stars mean. If 3*is 'basically good cinematography, signs of using pleasing compositions, sound appropriate and well balanced,. clear structure and planning, appropriate pace... it seems to me that a 4* should not have technical faults at all.

[tom hardwick]

Goodness Peter - lots of commercial films are riddled with technical faults but it doesn't stop them selling well and entertaining the public.

[col lamb]

But quite a few 4* movies at BIAFF were riddled with technical faults and yet they still did not entertain.

Well said Peter

A 4* movie should have no tech faults that detract from the movie