I suppose I should preface this blog by telling you that I have never been to a film festival of any kind before, so not only was the Bergenfield Film Festival BGR's first... It was also my own. As first festivals go, it certainly was eventful.
The night had all the makings of a good one. Dinner with my parents and brother who were seeing the movie again. Then, the festival was going to feature BGR, John Trigonis' CERISE, and Blake Zawadzki and Dan Gregory's The Definitive Point. All in the same theatre!
The reality was somewhat different. We got there and got our VIP passes for directors and producers (picture below). We waited outside the theatre and first listened to one guest speaker who was involved in a documentary that was being shown that night. What followed him was the creator of one of the other movies at the festival who spoke (at length) and then introduced a singer who did one of the songs for his movie. This was strange to me. Why was the festival focusing so much on one of the films? Then, someone pointed out to me that the program listed only 3 of the many films as nominees for their "best all around film" award. The aforementioned film was one of the three, but none of our group's films were. That's cool. I don't mind not winning. BUT. What is the point of making a fuss of the "all around film" award when before the festival even begins three films are singled out? And no one at the festival is voting that night, so the choice has clearly been made already. That just feels like a slap in the face to every filmmaker not in that group of three. When so much energy and support is pushed towards three films (one in particular), where is the love for the rest of the films? I understand that festivals are political, and there will always be favorites... But show a little class, and don't broadcast the favoritism. It's classless, and just plain unprofessional.
So, there is disappointment #1. Then we get through the first few films, and get to CERISE. I have seen CERISE, and it's a good film, a fun film. If you have the chance, I recommend getting to see it. But during the movie, it started to skip and stop a bit. I really felt for John during this. I knew he would be pissed. (Not to mention the sound problems in the theatre and the aspect ratio fuck ups... The theatre's problem, not CERISE's.)
CERISE ended and BGR started. It was going really well. The comedy was playing, and we got tons of laughs. Then we had a little bit of the skipping and stopping that John's film had. Then a little more, and a little more.... Eventually, the film couldn't go on for more than a minute without skipping a little. (The theatre's fault, not BGR's... Also, the sound and aspect ratio sucked for us too.) That happened and was frustrating, but we are pushing through until we get to this dramatic bit where the group is arguing. And boom! Skip! Freeze! And it stayed frozen on this image:
Yup. I know, its an improvement, but there it stayed for awhile... A long while. A painful while. They stopped and restarted and struggled to get the thing moving, but the damage was done. The movie was not playing right at all, and the last 20 minutes must have taken an hour to get through. People who didn't know us must have been pissed. They were there seeing this movie and whatever reaction they might have had was soured because of this... I don't blame them... But it made us look bad. It made the film look bad. I still got compliments from people I didn't know and people I did about the acting and the story, etc. That felt good, but it did little to get rid of the sour taste the festival left in my mouth.
And that was our first festival... Hopefully, we have bigger and better in the future. I really hope this isn't it.
Anyways, I will update as we have updates as usual. Once again, check out www.indiegogo.com/red-scare to donate to our next project.
Below are more pictures from the BFF taken with my new t2i that will be used on Red Scare.
Stay Tuned!
Sam
Actor, Writer, Producer
Blaming George Romero
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