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Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 10:03 am
by Jill Lampert
One of the films submitted had a voiceover in a foreign language - German, I think - but NO SUBTITLES. I do wonder how it was judged? I think it got at least 4 stars.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 7:36 pm
by Michael Slowe
Must have been judged by Dave Watterson, he's fluent in German!

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 11:21 pm
by Dave Watterson
I was not judging this year ...

It is possible that the judged saw a subtitled version, but we were shown a different one at the festival.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Thu May 06, 2021 11:20 am
by Michael Slowe
Always a sensible answer from Big Dave!

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Fri May 07, 2021 4:43 pm
by John Simpson
I was one of the judges for "Elisir" which is a drama spoken in Sardinian with English subtitles.

I liked the film, and the subtitles were done well, it is 25 minutes long, having the responsibility of judgeing it was an intense watch, not wanting to lose the story line. I see the BIAFF Four Star Film Laurel is at the front of the film now, that's great!

There is no easy answer to watching films with subtitles but, maybe the more it is done the easier it gets.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Fri May 07, 2021 5:49 pm
by Dave Watterson
Thanks for the tip-off, John. That was not available for embedding on our website when I assembled the collection of films to watch from BIAFF 2021. I have just added it.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Fri May 07, 2021 6:17 pm
by John Simpson
I think it will only be available temporarily, so probably not worth putting it on the website. What is the proceedure for getting the BIAFF Laurel Wreath on a film, does anyone know? What award do you have to get to warrant it?

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Fri May 07, 2021 11:13 pm
by Howard-Smith
With regard to Laurels, the only official Laurels issued for BIAFF films are for 5 star and Diamond Award winners. I received mine from David Newman as both white on black and black on white designs. (I think John Roberts is the man who creates them.) I choose not to display my laurels on the actual films but it would be easy enough using your video editing software to insert and resize onto a black or white background. I’ve had curved glass trophies made of my 5 star awards, the same size as the CEMRIAC trophies.

If you register on FilmFreeway, they provide the facility to create your own Laurels, so any BIAFF entrant who had any of the star ratings could make their own.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Sat May 08, 2021 9:34 am
by John Simpson
When you see a "short" with lots of laurels on the thumbnail it gives the feeling that the makers are serious about their efforts. Ofcourse part of their crowdfunding budget has been for entering their film at festivals, I think some of the entry fees can be quite high.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 9:47 pm
by TimStannard
Geof, welcome to the forum. good to have you aboard.
I'm finding judging with subtitles is becoming easier with practice. At home Wwe watch a lot of foreign series on Netflix and these often come with a choice of subtitles or dubbed English. We do dip our toes in the "dubbed version" water from time to time, but always revert to the subtitles. It's not the failed lipsysnc which puts us off, rather, no matter how good the dubbing, the lines fail to convey the same emotion as when delivered in their native language.
It seems delivery is every bit as important as the actual words.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 9:54 pm
by TimStannard
John Simpson wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 9:34 am When you see a "short" with lots of laurels on the thumbnail it gives the feeling that the makers are serious about their efforts. Ofcourse part of their crowdfunding budget has been for entering their film at festivals, I think some of the entry fees can be quite high.
It actually puts me off when I see a film plastered with laurels. If feels to me like vulgar showing off. I wonder if anyone else feels that way?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they don't deserve praise and recognition, but just stick one or two on the film and list others in comments/iMDB.

It's the same as one-man (or mainly one-man) film makers who insist on crediting themselves as everything from producer to tea-boy. For goodness sake, if it's a one man project we know you were the location scout.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Mon May 10, 2021 12:40 am
by Howard-Smith
Re: film festival awards and laurels. You might find what follows interesting. Make of it what you will.

There's a certain film (which I'm not going to identify here) for which I was involved in the BIAFF first round judging. It runs less than an hour and it's listed on IMDb as having an estimated budget of £4000.

The IMDb listing reveals that this film has received numerous awards at the following film festivals:

Culver City Film Festival 2020 Winner - Best Director, Narrative Short Film
Depth of Field International Film Festival Competition 2021 Winner: Award of Exceptional Merit - Original Score Winner: Award of Merit - Best Loose Short and Zero Budget
Independent Shorts Awards 2020 Winner: Honorable Mention - Best LGBTQ Short
IndieX Film Festival 2020 Nominee: Best LGBTQ Short
MLC Awards 2020 Nominee: Best Film Score
New York Movie Awards 2020 Winner: Honorable Mention Best LBGTQ short
Open Window International Film Challenge 2020 Winner: Best LBGTQ Feature
Silicon Beach Film Festival 2020 Winner: Audience Award - Best Narrative Short
WRPN Short, Tight & Loose Film Festival Competition 2020 Winner: Award for Exceptional Merit - Loose Short
WRPN Woman's International Film Festival 2021 Winner: Merit - Best Loose Short, and Best Zero budget short

Not included in the list:
BIAFF - We awarded this film 1 star.

By the way, can anyone enlighten me as to what the term 'Loose Short' means?

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Mon May 10, 2021 10:03 am
by tom hardwick
Really? We gave this multi-award-winning film One Star? Either all the other awards have been made up, or BIAFF judges were shown a different version.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Tue May 11, 2021 9:58 am
by John Simpson
I wonder what the £4000 budget was spent on? Some of it could have been used for entrance fees for film festivals. I think £4000 is a reasonable amount of expenses to be spent on an amateur short film. Even if you are making a club film they are not cost free, there is the hire of the hall, yearly insurance, heating and lighting, and the buying of cameras, lights, computers in the first place, so a lot of fixed costs.

I think this filmmaker must have been danceing to to beat of a different drum, and was obviously happy with the film, which must have been very different to what was expected by BIAFF. Sometimes when making a film it comes from the heart and the filmmaker puts a lot of store in sincerity and almost puts that on the line. When the film is not recieved well, it may feel that the sincerity has been put into question.

I think the worst thing at school is when a teachers looks at someones work and they say: "This is not very good, you didn't try" When in fact the child did really try.

Re: THE BIAFF WEEKEND

Posted: Tue May 11, 2021 11:03 am
by Howard-Smith
To me a budget of £4000 would be enormous. I’ve never spent more than £100 on any film and that includes my 2008 feature film MADDER running at 87 minutes.
Our judges’ appraisal for the 1 star film to which I referred was very tactfully and sensitively worded. It was a well-intentioned film. It was just that the acting, camerawork and editing were not of a sufficiently high standard for us to award more than 1 star.