Should the BIAFF format change?
Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 12:13 am
Now that BIAFF (British International Amateur Film Festival) 2004
is over, we can recognise that it - and the competition which underlies
it - were extremely successful. Apart from a few technical hiccups
which may have been partly linked to the heat and lack of oxygen
for both machines and operators (!) it ran well.
But there is always room for improvement. Festival has changed often
over the years and if we have ideas, old or new, on how to make it
better, let's share them here.
My own initial thoughts are mainly concerned with seeing even more film:
a) drop the Chairmen's Reception which is fairly pointless these days.
b) drop the Gala Dinner, replace it with an informal reception/buffet.
Mass catering banquet food is bland at best. It is great to share
a table with nice people (old friends and new ones) but we do not
need all that time together.
A simpler event would be cheaper and so allow more people to attend
and would allow time for more movies to be shown after it.
Or the post-meal event could be the celebrity lecture if we want to
keep that feature.
c) the awards show should never run beyond 4pm
d) we need an even bigger screen for the awards show, from the back of
the hall that seven foot screen looked like a portable tv.
e) the award show movies should be transferred to a single tape (with
backup copy of course) to make the job of the projection team a
shade easier. The pressure on those guys is immense with the p.a.
slides and lights to look after.
Final thought for now ... Brian and Alice Dunckley deserve an enormous
cheer from all of us. Others give a few weeks of their time to festival,
they spend a large part of the year on it. While we think back over the
fun they will be packing up and posting tapes, comments and awards to
entrants who were not there in person. They have maybe one month in the
year when they can stop thinking about the competition and then it is
down to sorting out any rule changes and getting the new forms ready
for distribution in late summer.
Dave
is over, we can recognise that it - and the competition which underlies
it - were extremely successful. Apart from a few technical hiccups
which may have been partly linked to the heat and lack of oxygen
for both machines and operators (!) it ran well.
But there is always room for improvement. Festival has changed often
over the years and if we have ideas, old or new, on how to make it
better, let's share them here.
My own initial thoughts are mainly concerned with seeing even more film:
a) drop the Chairmen's Reception which is fairly pointless these days.
b) drop the Gala Dinner, replace it with an informal reception/buffet.
Mass catering banquet food is bland at best. It is great to share
a table with nice people (old friends and new ones) but we do not
need all that time together.
A simpler event would be cheaper and so allow more people to attend
and would allow time for more movies to be shown after it.
Or the post-meal event could be the celebrity lecture if we want to
keep that feature.
c) the awards show should never run beyond 4pm
d) we need an even bigger screen for the awards show, from the back of
the hall that seven foot screen looked like a portable tv.
e) the award show movies should be transferred to a single tape (with
backup copy of course) to make the job of the projection team a
shade easier. The pressure on those guys is immense with the p.a.
slides and lights to look after.
Final thought for now ... Brian and Alice Dunckley deserve an enormous
cheer from all of us. Others give a few weeks of their time to festival,
they spend a large part of the year on it. While we think back over the
fun they will be packing up and posting tapes, comments and awards to
entrants who were not there in person. They have maybe one month in the
year when they can stop thinking about the competition and then it is
down to sorting out any rule changes and getting the new forms ready
for distribution in late summer.
Dave