Things on this site are really livening up, aren't they? Great stuff!
Can I remind big Dave and others that the biggest reason the Open category
came in was not equipment related really. It was when we would be at St Ermins
for the IAC Festival, and on the Gala Show programme would come some pretty
good films, lasting say five to twenty minutes.
I am not equating quality with time on screen, of course, but what caused
dismay among most British watchers, would be the up to four minute end title
sequence listing anything up to 100 people who had helped make it.
They were made as part of University courses, to create show reels, and emanated
mainly from Berkley or UCLA... it appeared that they felt it looked good
on their CV to have Silver and Gold seals from our competition.
The ordinary homegrown amateur film maker, or even the ordinary film making
club, just could not see the playing field as level.
Then the BBC launched their short film (i.e. the classic cefinition of less
than 60 mins) competition which I believe now attracts thousands of entries,
and those Open, here-I-am-Holly-wood films have largely disappeared from
our and other European short film competitions.
Of course we now have genuine non professional films coming from the Continent,
and maybe someof our film makers don't like that, but it does raise the standard
of the Show as you'll have seen at Norwich. That they are so grown-up and
intelligent in their attitude to big contemporary problems is all to do with
the state of our national attitude to cultural matters. We have massively
dumbed down as Michael Slowe was saying here,on the one hand, and also it
could be said that we suffer from an absence of brash young film makers at
the start of their film making lives, though there are some, like Mark Jackson
and Oliver Wright who are really promising.
It is all to do with the problem of where are the young adults? The whole
problem of hobby organisations UK-wide. People don't "join" the way they
did years ago, and they certainly are few and far between who want to "do"
as well!
If you have the answer, let's hear it lads and lasses.
Reg Lancs
8607
"Dave Watterson" <
big.dave@net.net> wrote:
It was before my time on IAC Council but I think the reason for making a
distinction
between "open" and "amateur" was a perception by many amateurs that students
and others in the open group had access to better equipment. There might
have been something to that in the days when some people still used 16mm
but not now.
We must remember, however, that IAC's purpose is to encourage ALL amateur
movie makers ... not just the best. It is quite as important that an absolute
beginner whose work may be pretty poor is encouraged and nudged in the right
direction as it is to give well-deserved praise to a fine movie maker.
I agree there are now many shades of "amateur" from mum shooting pics of
the kids on the lawn to professional boom operators directing a drama, using
their colleagues and borrowed kit, via the wedding video folk and all those
clubs who do newsreels or what are in effect "corporate videos" for charities
and local good causes.
There seems to be a group of people content to be "not specially god at
movie
making" but who like to get praise and prizes as much as anyone else. I
think they may be looking for the odd "A for effort" reward. But it is
their
influence that I perceive to be behind the distinction. Perhaps what the
rule really means is "don't put my movie up against a good one".
I wish we could agree on a way of encouraging all movie makers brave enough
to enter their work for competitions and scrutiny but not at the expense
of ghettoising the best.
McDave