DC Shorts Blog

The Film Festival Process, Part 1

By DC Shorts on January 21, 2009 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

Hi, my name is Bryan and it’s a pleasure to meet you, or at least, write this blog for your reading pleasure. I’m an intern with the DC Shorts Film Festival and my boss, Jon Gann, has asked me to keep you appraised of what it takes to prepare for our film festival that runs from September 10 to September 17.

I know, September seems like a very long time away but it hasn’t stopped us from diving into preparations for the festival. My fellow interns Joseph and Alina are staying busy keeping you informed of everything we’ve got in the works. Joseph is in charge of keeping our calendar up to date. He checks various websites for events that he then posts on the calendar and he will be making weekly video podcasts on our website about comings and goings of the following week. Alina is in charge of marketing, keeping up with our facebook, myspace and other pages and otherwise trying to attract as much interest in the film festival as possible. Feel free to look us up, particularly the DC Shorts Film Festival facebook group.

As for myself, I’m kind of the odd man out, so I find myself in charge of our blog, writing entries like this one so you can get a peak at what it takes to put the festival together. On the blog I will also be writing reviews of randomly selected film submissions to the festival. I do a lot of reviews outside of my capacity with the DC Shorts Film Festival. I write for my American University’s student newspaper, The Eagle and I have my own film review and news blog, goodmoviebadmovie.blogspot.com. While I certainly put a great deal of faith in my critiques, you don’t need to do the same. I will be writing the reviews in the capacity of an intern, not a judge, so the blog reviews have nothing to do with whether or not an independent judging panel accepts or rejects the submission into the film festival.

When a film comes in, it’s the job of myself and the other interns to process it. We rip into the packaging and extract the films that have hopefully already been registered and paid for on Withoutabox.com. We make sure the WAB number is written in sharpie on the CD itself and stick it into a paper case with the WAB and title written on it. That’s right, all those fancy packages and ever so pretty labels filmmakers put together hoping to impress judges and curry favor for their film are unceremoniously tossed into the trash. All we care about is the film itself, no matter how well done the case is, each DVD is filed in a cabinet in a row of its compatriots, indistinguishable save for a tiny handwritten label on the back.

I’ll be talking more about the festival process in coming weeks and months so check back in to learn exactly what it takes to prepare and run a film festival.