tom hardwick wrote: ↑Sun Apr 02, 2023 12:36 pm
it did make me think there's room for a + and - system to be put in place
Tom, putting such a system in place for films where one panel sees every film and has time to analyse in detail (and possibly watch again) would make sense, but i'd suggest that even with the heroic attempts to standardize judging panels, the differences between panels is still going to be greater than the +/- margin within one pannel. I haven't expressed that well. What I mean is we wil stil get films where one panel thinks it's a 5 and another thinks it's a 3 and a + /- system won't help that.
The time allotted for a panel to make a decision is based on watching once and, after a brief discussion awarding it a star rating. It really is a score awarded based on first impressions and a brief chat with friends - and there's nothing wrong with that! After all, that's the coditions under which most people will see any film the first time and they will probably only see it once, unless they were particularly taken with it, so scoring a film that way is perfectly justified.
And this is also the reason that the comments sometimes seem at odds with the star rating. The person writing the comments has the ability to watch the film again, and time to reflect and therefore they will inevitably pick up on things they missed the first time or in the brief discussion.
Tim
Proud to be an amateur film maker - I do it for the love of it
Very sensible post Tim, judges watch films just as we do in the cinema (streamed nowadays) and first impressions are all, in my opinion. Those of us who habitually attend BIAFF should have a pretty good idea of what grading a given film deserves, simply by dint of having seen so many each year, and being told what their grades were. Judging one's own film is more tricky of course, emotion comes into it. Speaking personally (I have said this earlier), I am very rarely surprised at my own scores, disappointed maybe, but not surprised.
"Milky Way", film made by my friend Werner Haegeman, received 3 stars. That was quite a surprise. It received a score of 18 out of 20 at the "Belgian Festival". There is not much difference between the comments written by the BIAFF-judges and the comments written by the "Breedbeeld"-judges. They are very positive. Only the verdict is different. Maybe it's because of the following thing: the BIAFF-judges wrote: "no one on our panel was familiar with the style... but we enjoyed your film." I remember there was quite a discussion on this forum about Werner's "Swimming Pool". That was 4 years ago! Time flies! Werner received a diamond and the award for "best comedy". Now you can watch his movie online at BIAFF.
Willy, I’ve now seen Milky Way. It’s an extraordinary film and I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. My opinion is, while I didn’t understand it and didn’t particularly like it, it shows Werner as a brilliant filmmaker in total command of his material. Technically it’s a really excellent piece of filmmaking and I definitely don’t believe that a 3 star award does it justice. But there you go. Judging can never be an exact science. With different judges this could have been a 4 or even a 5 star film.
I cannot find "Swimming Pool" online - there is Jan doing an interview with Werner Haegeman and Francis De Ceuster. I would like to watch Swimming Pool. Many of the award winning films are difficult to watch, which is a pity. I would not want to watch Milky Way again as I don't enjoy being emotionally disturbed - and only watched a bit of it the first time. People say they enjoed the film Milky Way!? Is enjoy the right word??? An alternative may be they feel a sense of achievemnet that they were able to watch it all the way through, a bit like eating a very hot curry!!
When it is finished there could be an endorphin Rush which made watching it worthwhile and now one feels great, like getting better after a bad illness!
There is no doubt Milky Way is very well made and a step up from most amateur films - whether it is to everybodies taste is a different matter Iook forward to someone posting the link to Swimming Pool
I wonder if it may be time to revert to the older system of awards at BIAFF: gold, silver, bronze and blue seals. (These were certificates which had a large foil seal of the appropriate colour attached.) In fact I might suggest losing the blue level.
The seal system was changed partly because we ran out of seals (!) and partly because we were beginning to get far more entries and wanted a way to separate them out more.
BUT these days many people regard a 1, 2 or 3 star award as almost insulting. They are absolutely not meant that way.
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As to seeing films online ... many of the top award winners do not make their work available on Vimeo, YouTube etc. We cannot put them online ourselves because they are not our films and not our copyrights. That said by the middle of next week there will be a fine selection of films from the festival available on www.biaff.org.uk
Thanks Dave, I was hoping to watch a selection of the films on line at my convenience. It's a pity that we can't obtain access to any film of our choice, after all, they are entered for public viewing. Will the film Milky Way that Willie mentions, be one of those made available?
"We all have different views and opinions. We have different experiences, likes and dislikes, prejudices and more." These are wise words by Tomas Hardwick on this forum. I appreciate your opinion, John. Some weeks ago I sent an article about "The Milky Way" to the editor of "Film and Video Maker".
Today I watched some BIAFF-films online. I found Jill Lampart's documentary "Ruth's Art" fantastic. Also the first documentary by Howard Smith "Straggyneck". He is an all-rounder. I enjoyed "Marigold" by the Bristol Group. Orange is the colour of optimism was said (by Larry Hall?). Maybe that's why our Dutch friends wear all kinds of orange things. The documentary "Struggling to Survive" about old cars, sugar mills, etc... was very interesting. John Ascomb deserved his 4 stars for the Weather Wizard. I recognized His Royal Majesty the King Charles III in this animation film. A film made by a real amateur. It was a good BIAFF-day in my opinion.
I’m glad you enjoyed ‘Scraggyneck’ Willy.
Regarding Dave’s suggestion about reverting to Bronze Silver and Gold I think is well worth considering. Many people feel upset and disappointed, even insulted, by low star ratings and some to my knowledge have stopped entering BIAFF for this very reason. The Diamond Awards would still be kept for the top 8 films… or maybe even the top 10 films as a nod to the popular old Ten Best competition.
Howard, I really can't understand you saying that people feel "insulted" by a low grade for their film. It obviously can't be very good and they have submitted it for judgement, they may be disappointed but how insulted? We all make poor films from time to time, it is a difficult art and it is unreasonable to expect undiluted praise from anyone viewing our work. The commercial productions have to face criticism, so should we.
Michael, it was Dave who suggested that the lower stars are taken by some filmmakers as (almost) insulting and I was agreeing with him based on what others have told me. I personally haven’t felt insulted by 2 star awards, merely disappointed and maybe puzzled.
I could name two filmmakers in the Midlands who have no intention of entering BIAFF again due to their low grades and what they perceive to be unfair comments. Also a former judge and filmmaker from down south has no intention of entering any more films after receiving 1 star for a couple of his films 3 years ago.
So I’m suggesting that reverting to the colour system of awards would be beneficial to people like this.
The colour system of film grading does indeed have its merits, but wasn't it superseded by the Star awards to enable our judges to have a greater range of categories in which to place a film?
There's also the mythical contestant who flew in from a far off and distant land expecting to receive the bronze award for (as he put it) 'gaining third place in such a prestigious competition'.
We’ve been round the block a few times with all this and there’s no definitive solution in sight.
Another suggestion has been to have films simply either “Officially Selected” or “Not Selected”. A potential problem with this would be controlling the number of selected films as there may be too many or not enough films for showing at the festival.
Another suggestion was to increase the number of categories for awards and announce all the nominations and award winners on the final night. Again there’s a problem in that so very few of the award winners turn up to the festival to receive their awards. It’s so different at something like the Birmingham Film Festival Awards night. People pay £60 each for a dinner at the awards evening and there are LOTS AND LOTS of awards given out… and the turnout is very high with virtually all the winners present, or representatives of the winners present, to accept the awards. There’s an incentive in attending when you know that you’ve been nominated in a particular category. I estimate that there were at least 250 people at the BFF awards in November (25 tables with 10 ar each table).
Last edited by Howard-Smith on Tue May 09, 2023 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
On the subject of people not turning up to collect their awards at BIAFF, this has always been a source of irritation to me. There may obviously be a genuine reason why a winner can’t make it, eg. a family issue or illness, but I often suspect it’s because they don’t value the award enough to be bothered to attend and collect the award in front of an audience. Some years ago there was a filmmaker who won TWO Diamond Awards in one year, and one of the films was Overall Winner. I believe that David Newman did everything he could to persuade the filmmaker to attend BIAFF but in vain.
