Now, I appreciate the effort that goes into organising these kinds of events, and the contribution that is made by volunteers and contributors. Not to mention the fact that it was free to attend, thanks to public and private funding. So I was very careful not to criticise individuals or participants: I was airing my opinion about what I saw as a lack of care in the organisation and running of the events I attended.

I received quite an acerbic phone call from one of the festival organisers this afternoon, who took exception to my comments. As a gesture of good will (and because I like a quiet life), I’ve now edited the original article to remove some of the specifics of my criticisms. Not because the original piece was inaccurate or exaggerated (if you want to see the original, just contact me), but because the tone of the phone call was… well, let’s just say it wasn’t very pleasant.

I’m surprised that anyone would take the opinions of little old me so seriously. But when it comes down to it, that’s just what they are: my personal opinions, and I’m sorry if people don’t like them. Airing my views publicly has got me into hot water plenty of times in the past, and no doubt will continue to do so in the future.

Since our decision to cease the CFN screenings as of the new year, we’ve been really enjoying getting out and about to attend events as patrons for a change. Although our screenings were only once a month, there was a heck of a lot of work involved: liaising with guest speakers, doing PR, researching films, programming films, preparing films, producing programmes – and that’s all aside from actually presenting the evenings themselves. So it’s nice to not have to worry about all those jobs right now, and to spend some time getting out and about seeing what everyone else is up to.

We’ve been to some good events so far this year, my favourite being the first short film evening at Lanternhouse, which I hope is going to become a regular fixture in Ulverston’s cultural scene.

This weekend we’ve been to some of the screenings and talks as part of the Film Insiders Talent Festival in Barrow, hosted by Signal Films. I couldn’t make it to this last year, so was doubly keen to make it along this time.

I went with an open mind, hoping that I was going to enjoy myself. Ultimately though, I was left disappointed. Not so much with the programming – the events themselves had good content, with some interesting people speaking – but the organisation and running of things seemed a bit slap-dash. Easily-avoidable technical problems spoiled proceedings at both of the evening events I attended, and seemed that there was no one person in charge of proceedings.

I know it’s a horrible cliche to say “I could do better than that”. But the fact is that I could, and more importantly, have repeatedly done better than what I experienced over this weekend.

Rather than just ranting about it, I thought it’d be worth posting up some constructive advice for anyone planning to organise a film screening event. We’ve been organising and hosting them regularly for quite a few years, and have learned a lot along the way. Here’s my bullet-proof list of how to run a successful film event.

1. Test everything

It really isn’t good enough rolling up an hour or two before your event, setting things up and hoping that everything will work. You’ll inevitably have some technical gremlins appear, and the only way you can iron them out is to prepare and test everything well ahead of time, and then when you’re happy with things: test it all again. We spent at least three solid days getting things checked and in place when we hosted Rule of Thirds last year, making sure that everything was water-tight, with plan B’s in place to cope with any unforeseen hiccups.

Don’t just hope for the best, because something will go wrong. Even if you’ve tested everything off-site, test it all again in situ at your venue. Technical glitches can seem like small hiccups to you, but can be a real annoyance to your audience, particularly if they’re persistent.

2. Sound is everything

You can just about get away with a slightly under-par picture, but your sound quality is of utmost importance. If your sound is bad, then everything else falls apart. It can create an awful experience for your audience, and can render films completely unwatchable.

This is relevant to both screening films, a Q&A session, or any other kind of presentation activity. Microphones need to be of a decent quality, and tested to make sure they’re working properly before proceedings begin: fiddling with things during the event really isn’t an option.

If you’re going to use a PA system, get someone who knows what they’re doing, and have them concentrate solely on running the sound throughout your event. It’ll save you so many headaches, and give you one less, very important thing to worry about. But, if you hire someone in, get them on recommendation: there are some rubbish sound technicians operating out there in the wild.

3. Respect your contributors

If you have a filmmaker in attendance to talk about their work, then you owe it to them to make doubly sure that everything runs smoothly. They will have invariably gone to quite some effort to join you, and quite often they’ll be a little nervous about speaking. If your event runs smoothly, and your audience are enjoying themselves, then it creates a comfortable atmosphere: you’re contributors will relax, feel more comfortable and ultimately give your audience a much better experience.

When your contributors arrive, make time to have a sit down and a short chat with them, even if you have a 101 other things to do. Make them feel at home, and explain the itinerary so they know when and where they need to be, and what to expect when they’re plunged in front of an audience. Technical or logistical hitches with a guest speaker is not only embarrassing for you and for them, it makes your audience squirm.

4. Don’t cause distractions

Once an event is underway, everyone should be seated or in position to do whatever they need to do. And that includes organisers. It can feel tempting to hover around at the back, or wander in and out looking busy. Once proceedings are underway, you should find yourself a seat closest to where you need to be, and stay there. Noise travels, particularly in a room full of seated, attentive people, so if people are moving around, or fiddling with things, it causes a terrible distraction for your audience.

If something needs fixing, it’s really best not to try to fix it until you have a natural break. This is particularly important while people are speaking: any kind of technical tinkering can be a horrible distraction, and can throw your speakers off their stride. If you do have something to sort out, don’t try to do it while your event is still running: wait, call a break, then fix it – you’ll get things sorted much more quickly, and you won’t look like such a shambles.

5. Have a master of ceremonies

I can’t stress how important this one is. Have one person in charge, curating the event and acting as host. They should be in charge of making sure the evening runs smoothly, dealing with any problems and generally keeping everything in check. Your event is destined to fail if you don’t have some kind of hierarchy and allocation of responsibilities.

I’ve witnessed far too many badly run events due to a simple lack of communication and planning. If nobody is in charge, then there is no focus for any crew or volunteers helping with your event, and problems are compounded.

And just hoping that people will be where you think they should be doesn’t work. People aren’t always under your jurisdiction, so you need to double-check they know where and when things are happening, and if you need to have someone with them, to give them guidance and support. It has the added advantage of helping you to deal with the running of things at lightening speed.

6. Don’t cause yourself problems

Always make sure you know where your assets are (without them, there is no screening), and always, always have a backup. Loosing a disc is unforgivable, and a coherent running order is a must.

And whatever you do, if you have lost a disc or something show-stopping has happened: never, ever announce it to your audience from your seat. Get up, stand at the front, apologise, and tell everyone you have a technical problem which you’re sorting out as quickly as you can – your audience need to be kept informed.

And one last, easily-avoidable headache: don’t swear. People haven’t come to your event to be sworn at, unless it’s during the course of open conversation with a contributor – but the use of bad language is entirely unnecessary, and a lot of people really don’t appreciate it.

7. Have a good presenter

If you’re running a Q&A session, it’s really worth trying to find someone who has a good presentation style – preferably someone who is personable and knowledgeable, someone who can connect with an audience. It’ll help your whole event to “gel” and is the best way to present an air of professionalism – and is a sure-fire way of getting people to return in the future. They should be well-dressed – not too formal, but at least make a bit of an effort – and should be full of energy, attentive and alert, with good posture (no slouching!)

8. Run things to schedule

Wherever possible, make sure that you run a tight schedule. Sometimes it’s necessary to delay things a little if you’re still waiting for audience members to arrive or iron out final logistics, but you need to weigh up the pros and cons of keeping everyone else waiting, at the expense of a couple of people having to shuffle in late. Some people don’t like to be kept waiting, so if you do have a serious delay (and I consider serious to be anything more than 5 minutes) you need to make an announcement.

Probably more important than starting on time, is finishing on time. It can be very inconsiderate to keep people around for longer than they expect, because they generally have places to be: a train to catch, a childminder to relieve, friends to meet, a parking ticket about to expire. Running everything to time puts across the impression that you’re running a tight ship, and keeps everything feeling sharp and dynamic, not lazy and lacklustre.

9. Thank everybody

Thank your contributors, thank your venue, thank your hosts, and most importantly thank your audience. But don’t let it turn into a lengthy oscar speech, you should keep it brief. By wrapping up with a round of “thanks” you nicely bookend your event, and prompt a hearty round of applause from your audience. There’s nothing worse than going to an event which isn’t concluded properly, and where things just dwindle.

The most emphasise should go to anybody who has contributed their time or resources for free – those are the people who have really made your event a success, and if you don’t thank them, they’ll be really cheesed off – and rightly so! I make a list before I present any kind of event, to make sure I’ve got everyone covered, and that gives me the rest of the time to figure out if I’ve forgotten anyone. It’s that mantra again: check, and then check again.

I wish I could round all these points up with a tenth, but right now, I can’t think of anything else. Those are the key areas I think: follow those words of advice, and I don’t think you can go far wrong.

The whole 40 second sequence took three weeks to complete, and was created mostly in After Effects.  What’s most interesting is the approach he took to dealing with high resolution images in a short timeframe:

But still time was an issue, especially when it came to producing 2K images. “Because I work as a digital artist on films everyday I knew it would be very difficult to deliver the film on time if I worked at 1920×1080 because every second of the film was going to be VFX images,” Michel explains. “So I decided, after making some tests, to work in 1280×720 pixels and then resize all the film at the good resolution (with some sharping and graining process) and it worked pretty well. At the end nobody can tell if it is truly 1080p images or 720p streched…It just works. You can see the result on those 2k images. The second reason why I choose this format was to be able to see all the images in my 4/3 computer screen without zooming/dezooming! Everything is good to save time.

semiotics
plural noun [treated as sing. ]
the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.

Then, a few weeks ago, it sprang to mind again, while I was watching an episode of Screenwipe.  Charlie Brooker took a serious angle for a change, and the entire episode consisted of sit-down interviews with a range of TV writers, including Russell T Davies and Graham Linehan, who is responsible for writing two of my all-time favourite comedies: Father Ted and Black Books.

(Some kind soul has diligently put that entire 50 minute episode onto YouTube for your viewing pleasure.)

Late on in the episode, Davies went on a rant about the perils of writing bad dialogue, and overloading it with too much exposition – trying to explain everything through the words of the characters.  It took me aback for a moment or two, because I suddenly realised that’s how I’ve been writing for years!  It made me cringe to think of some of the scripts I’ve written in the past, which I’ve stuffed full of bland exposition and lame dialogue.  Some of the early drafts of Gan Yam were full of crap lines like “Alright, sis” and “I’m off to see my folks”.  Ugh – it makes me want to curl up under my desk just writing them now.  The final draft wasn’t a whole heap better.  Even the opening gambit between the two lead characters include this horror: “blimey, we haven’t seen you in ages”.  What was I thinking!?

There are other bits of that script which I’m proud of though, and they are generally the bits where there is no dialogue at all, and the story is told with pictures.  There are a couple of sequences which are jam-packed with all sorts of speedy story-telling, character connections and hints of back-story.  A picture can indeed paint a thousand words, and that’s where semiotics comes in.  By using recognisable signs and visual indicators, infintely more can be conveyed within the frame of a picture than by trying to explain through words alone.  Sure: emotion can be conveyed through the skilled dialogue of a writer, and the expression of that dialogue by a skilled actor.  But you can create many more nuances of emotion by keeping schtum and instead stimulating the audience to create their own, more personal, subtle and intense emotions.

That’s where my writing generally fails: when I try to load too much into the dialogue, hammering the plot home with a sledgehammer, rather than taking a more subtle, intelligent approach, leaving clues which enable an audience to put the pieces together themselves.

But, you can go too far the other way.  And that’s where Clint Eastwood comes in.

I want to like Clint Eastwood.  I’m not a huge fan of his acting roles – I’m sure he’s one of the all-time greats of cinema, but it’s just not really my cup of tea.  But I do want to be able to enjoy his directorial work.  I’ve heard and read great things about his directing skills, and the subject matter he approaches in his films should appeal to me – what with it being heavily focused on character stories.  But it doesn’t appeal.  And I couldn’t figure out why for years.  The last film of hisI’d watched was Mystic River in 2003, which won 2 Oscars, was nominated for 6 and received all sorts of plaudits.  But I just couldn’t get into it.  I don’t think it helped that it starred Tim Robbins, who (in my opinion) adds as much depth to his characters as magnolia-coloured wallpaper.

So, last night I tried again.  I sat down with good intentions to try to make my peace with Mr Eastwood, determined to enjoy his work.  The chosen film was A Perfect World.  OK, not one of his better films, but I thought perhaps it might be good to watch something middle-of-the-road, so that my expectations weren’t raised too high.

And it was kind of OK.  But, just like Mystic River, I couldn’t get into it.  It didn’t grab my concentration, and threw up very few surprises.  And that’s when it hit me.  Semiotics: Eastwood just uses them way too much.  He’s painting so much with the pictures he puts on the screen, that you you can’t fail to miss the direction of the plot and the story arcs of the characters.  It’s all there, with no subtlety and no restraint, and it ruins any notion of suspense or intrigue.  It’s not helped by the myriad of clichés and stereotypes which make up the cast of characters: the redneck cop who’s a good guy deep down, the ambitious, intelligent woman who battles against the oppression of her male peers, the slimeball Federal agent, the crackpot felon who moves and talks like a lizard and shows no remorse.  Within 10 minutes of viewing, you know all you’re going to know about all of these characters, and there’s not a lot to keep your interest in them.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh – maybe these characters were never intended to have too much depth.  Maybe their exposition was off-loaded early on so that more attention could be given to the relationship between the two central characters, and their story.  But, oh – those poor old semiotics reared their head again.  It was most obvious (and ruinous) when the character Mack appears – a friendly, black farmer who pops up out of nowhere in the middle of the night and offers shelter and food in times of trouble.  Like a Siren out of the night, I just knew it would turn bad, so I waited for 10 minutes or so, and a couple of withering looks later, sure enough: it did.

So what am I trying to say.  Well, first that I now know why Clint isn’t the director for me.  His storytelling doesn’t leave me with anything to work with; nothing to get my brain cells firing and engaging me with his characters or story.  I’m sure he’s a good director, but he doesn’t scratch my itch.

Secondly: this has made me realise the importance of semiotics: how it can work more effectively than the spoken word, but also – and perhaps more importantly – needs to be used intelligently and subtley if you’re going to avoid hammering your audience over the head with too much information.  In that case, you might as well forget the pictures and just write shitty dialogue.

So this is something I’m going to keep on my radar and read a little more about – not just with regard to moving image, but in a wider context.

Last weekend, my Mum took part in the first Great North Swim in Windermere. It was the first mass participation swim event of its kind in Great Britain, and it was the first time she’d trained for any kind of swimming event.

A group of us went along to support her, and we filmed a few bits throughout the day – nothing serious, but then I edited the footage together to make this little diary of our outing.

This gave me a chance to try out the 25p mode properly on our Sony Z7 for the first time. When it came to editing, I didn’t really notice much of a difference to just de-interlacing the final render, and since I was applying a Nattress filter to the finished edit, it actually meant i had to tweak a few more settings to make sure I wasn’t re-de-interlacing! I think what I need to do is do a test of two different workflows, side-by-side: one using 24p mode, the other with 50i and a de-interlace applied.

This wasn’t a very serious shoot, so it’s not brilliant footage, and with it being a changeable overcast day, the lighting don’t help much. One thing I am learning more and more about the Z7 though is that it is so easy to over-expose – the LCD screen can be very misleading and you almost have to force yourself to drop an f-stop just to make sure you’re not washing out.

I also played around with a vignette for the first time, just to add a little more of a home movie feel.

Corio Raptor Care and Rehabilitation is a centre specialising in the care and rehabilitation of birds of prey, or raptors. The center is run by Nick and Anji Henderson, who provided us with access to the birds they look after, and to talk about the work they do.