Stoking the fire

Schmoozing at a festival, tips from a pro

So you’re off to a festival with your film. Time to schmooze!

Hmmm. If the whole idea of promoting yourself and your work in a crowd of strangers makes you nervous, you’re not alone. Does it come naturally for any of us? Not me, which is why I was impressed by Stephanie Hubbard when she responded to a first-time festival goer on a forum recently.

Stephanie runs a service helping filmmakers called “The Documentary Insider” — obviously for documentarians — but her advice is relevant to any filmmaker, especially those who spend more time in private behind a keyboard than out in public, talking it up.

Here, then, is a swag tips on making your festival experience count. Thanks Stephanie!

First off…

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HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF CONFERENCES

Conferences are what you make of them. If you’re not sure why you’re going, or what you want to get out of the experience, you’re unlikely to get it. This essay gives one perspective on conferences, and how to make them more valuable and engaging experiences. 

Firstly, thankyou Scott Berkun. I’m off to the Australian International Documentary Conference in South Australia in a little over 10 days, and have been looking for some advice. Now here you are in 2003, providing some handy pointers that still sound relevant in 2012.

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GENERAL TIPS

Scott’s essay lists a smorgasboard of conference tips. Here’s a few that stand out:

• Plan your time well beforehand
• “Conversations are more valuable than the sessions”
• Spend your time not only listening, but contributing as well
• Ask lots of questions
• Tips for after-hours socialising: raise the idea early in the day, create a central meeting point
• Consider the benefits and drawbacks of going with co-workers
• Relax: don’t cram, you learn more when you’re not stressed

And my favourite:

• Don’t wear your badge outside the conference. There is nothing sillier than a grown adult with a name tag (unless it says Rupert or Cornelius on it).

Poor Rupert & Cornelius :-)

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THE PANEL CHALLENGE

I’ve been involved in setting up the panel on Educating the Future, so was naturally drawn to Scott’s candid observations about panel sessions.

A panel session has 4 or 5 invited speakers sharing a time slot together. 

In better panel sessions, there is a diversity of points of view, and everyone is comfortable sharing them. But too often, panelists shy away from the intended topic, or avoid disagreeing with their co-panelists.

They often feel pressure to represent their company or organization, which inhibits active and provocative discourse. This is why most panel sessions suck. It’s up to the organizer to avoid making this happen, but since they’re grateful for the panelists to attend at all, it’s usually hard to exert control over the tone of the session.

Worse, some panels don’t allow for discussion, giving too much time to prepared presentations from each panelist. For these and other reasons, panels are a wild card, and often result in a fairly bland experience for everyone involved. When it works though, and the right people are invited and facilitated by the organizer in the right way, it can be the most enlightening session you’ll see at a conference.

OK. We’ve been told!

• Feel free to disagree with co-panelists
• Be honest, not bland (as Scott would say:“don’t suck”),
• and allow enough time for discussion.

Moderator Anna Yates (EnhanceTV), if it works can you thank me?

If it flops, can we blame you?

Just kidding.

If anyone else is thinking of coming along to our panel session – or any other for that matter – take Scott’s advice and contribute. Ask lots of questions. There’s nothing worse than throwing it open for questions, only to then sit in silence. Well it’s embarrassing for us, but you miss out too.

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KEEPING THE PASSION

Finally, the focus of the week is documentary, of course. Documentary is one of the most significant genres in the education sector, which is one of the reasons I’ll be there representing Campfire. But the other reason is more personal. The documentary genre is a passion of mine, largely because its creative and artistic merit is often undervalued. I think it has a special ability to inspire and engage audiences.

I came across an article by William Head (NightFare, Graphic Music, Buiten & others), after his experiences at a past AIDC (doco) conference:

After so much focus on the getting of finance, it was something of a relief to have a master-class with director Geoffrey Smith (who made The English Surgeon), in which he implored us to forget tailoring our films to broadcasters, sales agents and funding bodies and instead follow a passion to find ways to make films of impeccable quality. This, he said, is the best way to encourage interest from media organisations.

I want to connect again with producers of documentaries – young and old alike – who share my passion. I want to keep front of mind why I’m there. What a fantastic opportunity to be re-invigorated about those things which inspire us, and meet others who share a similar passion. Surely that’s how we all get the most out of conferences.

Why are you going?

I hope to see you there.

Oh, and thanks again for your tips Scott!

Online nerves? Start with a listing

SHOULD I PUT MY FILM ONLINE?

It’s arguably one of the most thought-about questions for any hard-working filmmaker, usually followed by, “who’s asking?” or “who’s giving the advice?”

Even if you don’t put your actual film online, you should seriously consider having it listed online. The Internet Movie Database or IMDb is the world’s largest film listing site, and is within surprisingly easy reach of any independent filmmaker. It’s free, and for few short hours’ effort, means the details of your film can be easily found online. 

In this week’s post, I want to give a few pointers and comments to get you started if you haven’t already done so. But first, you may want to know where I’m coming from.

BACKGROUND – WHY IS CAMPFIRE GIVING THIS ADVICE?

At Campfire, we find films everywhere. You may know that filmmakers can come direct to the site and submit, which many have done. However, we also have a steady supply of films that come to us through Without-A-Box (WAB). WAB is a subsidiary company of IMDb.

For filmmakers, WAB is an easy way to find and enter film festivals around the world.

For us, WAB is an easy way to select and process films for our FESTIVAL work.

However, my reasons for encouraging IMDB listings go beyond this. When we search for new films we haven’t heard of, it’s great to be able to read more about it online. As a distributor, I’m often surprised that all the effort to actually make the film hasn’t extended to giving it an online presence. Given that IMDb is free, it seems there is no good reason for not having SOME information out there available.

HOW DO I GET MY IMDB LISTING?

There’s a how-to wiki that describes this exactly. Edit the page if you find out something else helpful.

Of course, you’ll need to go to IMDb itself to make it happen. You may have some questions about what you’re getting involved with, and you’ll eventually need to register before setting up your page. Perhaps the most important thing to find out before going through too much of that form-filling stage, is whether you are actually eligible. This is IMDb’s way of sorting out the quality from the dross, and is ultimately a good thing because it means that there is some intelligence going into building this database. Ultimately, I suspect it also helps us all define what a film is.

From one of our filmmakers, Tim Clague (Hope, GodvsASA),

It is vital to add to IMDB as industry people will look you up there to see how busy you are. They will do that before searching Google or seeking your website. There’s no downside that I can think of, but it can be slow to get your film added. It does a totally different job to building your own site for your film – but you should do both and link between them.

HERE’S A FEW OTHERS AT CAMPFIRE WHO HAVE LISTED THEIR FILMS AT IMDB:

A Land Called Paradise – Campfire, IMDb  (Lena Khan)

Most (The Bridge) – Campfire, IMDb  (Alexandra Bekiaris)

The Soup – Campfire, IMDb  (Alexander Rozenblit)

L’Imputato – Campfire, IMDb  (Federeco Peduzzi)

Federeco also contacted me to say that he first signed up to WAB, and after that it was easy to go the extra step of creating his IMDb listing.

Do you have any stories to share about getting an IMDb listing?

Have you ever been denied a listing?

Have you found reasons NOT to bother?

Has it helped promote your own film or reputation as a filmmaker?