Interview with Cable Hardin

1. How many entries did they get this year? For films make sure to ask them to distinguish between features and shorts.
    - Around 170 entries; pretty much all shorts, except for three feature length films. 
   
   
2. How many films do they aim to screen each year? How many papers/presentations do they accept? Again, for films make sure to ask them to distinguish between features and shorts.
   - It's not really a number that they try to screen, it's enough to fill a specific time, given how varied in length animated films can be. They accept three or four papers/presentations.
   
   
3. What is their pre-screening process?
   - Cable goes through and watches all of the films, and he pretty much chooses which films get chosen for the jury to see. 
   
   
4. How many pre-screeners do they have each year?
   - Only Cable; however, he'll call in students to help him if he feels he's started to get lose focus. 
   
   
5. Who is typically chosen as a pre-screener?
   - It's just Cable.
   
   
6. How do they score entries? Do they use a scoring template/rubric? Are there scoring guidelines?
   - Entries are scored by the jury after the pre-screening process; there are multiple categories in the rubric, including entertainment value and quality of craft of animation. There's also a section for notes that they jurors can use to write down their extra thoughts; he said only one of the jurors actually used that to it's full extent. 
   
   
7. Do you have a jury after the pre-screening process has ended?
   - There's a jury of four people; a local SoDak artist, Cable, a filmmaker from NY, and an animating filmmaker from California. 
   
   
8. How far in advance do they send out their call for entries? How do entries typically roll in? 
   - Call for entries starts on June 15th for early entry. The entries usually roll in around the middle of the acceptance period, with very few early submissions and very few late submissions. 
   
   
9. How many paid employees do they have each year? How many volunteers?
   - Cable is the only paid employee, and they typically have about 20 volunteers to help put on the event. 
   
   
10. Do you use specific programming, trafficking, budgeting software? Do you like it?
    - They do not use any software, minus things like Excel to put together documents. They're still a growing festival. 
    
    
11. What community outreach do you do outside of your festival season to keep your event on the
    public's radar and/or to raise funds? (Workshops, mini-festivals, fundraiser dinners, etc.)
    - Not any fundraisers; just hoping that the school and sponsors can give enough cash. Again, it's still a small and growing festival. 
    
    
12. Do you give out swag bags to visiting filmmakers? Presenters? Guests? If so, what type of items
    do you include in those bags?
    - They give out really cool, locally-conscious swag bags that have coupons for local restaurants and things like that. They really work hard to make sure their guests have a good time in small town South Dakota, and it sounds awesome. 
    
    
13. Do presenter/filmmaker pay registration to attend?
    - No, they cover the costs for the presenters and filmmakers
    
    
14. Are you able to provide presenters/filmmakers with funds to cover travel or lodging?
    - They try to cover as many as they can
    
    
15. What "perks" do your filmmakers/scholars enjoy at your festival/conference? What else do you
    encourage them to do while they're in town? m(Free dinners, tours, exclusive activities...in Wilm,
    we'd try to take them to the beach, Screen Gems tour, etc.)
    - People are encouraged to explore Brookings; the way Cable described it, it sounded like a kickass little town, with fun places to explore. He also said that the very touristy sort of things were a couple hours away, so he'd suggest to the filmmakers to plan that into their travel if they want to. 
    
    
16. Do you have special donor perks during the event? Or how do you thank them?
    - He said they thank them with a very kind letter and free tickets to the festival. 
    
    
17. What do they wish they had done differently or better when they were first starting out? What do
    you wish you knew then that you know now?
    - He said he wished they had thought about the jurors more fully at the beginning; the first set of jurors were just other professors, so that makes it hard to get an accurate reading on an interesting set of films if there aren't all film people choosing films. 
    
    
18. Any other ideas or advice that we haven’t thought to ask about? 
    - He had a very passionate speech on the concept of who is really running a festival, and how some festivals seem to be more about promoting something rather than showcasing films. He liked it that we are a small festival like his, that gave full attention on showing off cool films that people have made and giving them some notoriety. 
    

This week in VISIONS...

This week is the week that things have started to pick up in terms of actually getting things done for VISIONS. I met with the PR, Art, and Social Media departments today (Friday) for about an hour discussing what we need to get done, who's going to get it done, and when certain things need to get done. I can already tell this is going to be a highly collaborative effort, so I'm glad we got to mix the departments together. I shared an idea I had with the departments and I got good vibes from them, so I'm going to start putting together a presentation to talk about my big idea, granted that it's cool with Shannon after the AD's meet with her.

FESTIVAL QUIZZZZ

1. What did you find the most interesting when comparing the festival research materials?
- The most interesting thing to me was seeing all the different types of festivals out there; mine, for example, was purely animation, but it still followed the guidelines of having shorts, feature-length films, different genres, etc; other festivals, however, were not as tied down in one specific thing. Ally's festival, Indiegrit, seemed to be more focused on creating a Southeastern experience than just being about films. It got more varied from there; Chris' was similar to VISIONS because it's a student film festival, Rural Route was focused on films that were simply about rural areas (whether doc or experimental or narrative), and Steven's had a competition purely for screenwriting. Festivals are cool, man.

2. What sponsor ideas were sparked from the posts so far? Which festival/conference inspired this and why?
- It's hard to say. All of the festivals, mine included, used a combination of local companies for sponsorship and bigger companies that tied into the point of their festival. I know SoDak had Wacom as a sponsor last year, given that it's all about animation, so something like that for big sponsorship would be cool if we can find a company that falls into our vein to sponsor us.

Public Speaking and Time Management - Quick Responses

The time management series was a solid set of videos; the 80/20 rule was perhaps the most interesting concept that it taught me. Only 20% of your work is truly essential and that's what should be focused on in your Einstein Window; however, it seemed like his ideas were geared more to people who have desk jobs, not students. That's the major problem with these; they're good ideas, but students can't use them as effectively, given that only focusing on 20% of our workload means picking and choosing classes to place an emphasis on. This isn't me trying to talk bad about the videos of course, the info given is very useful - but for us, only in the context of being employees for VISIONS. As students, it's not super helpful. 

The Public Speaking series was definitely more useful for me. A lot of things in this series were things I've learned before, but it was good to get a refresher, given that public speaking formally isn't one of my strong suits. I can handle a crowd and can handle public speaking, but I tend to get playful and fall into the pitfalls of uhms and errs. The other section that really helped me was the section on Q and A's; I've never really done an official Q and A, besides ones we've had in class for films, so I could use all the help I can get for that stuff.

SoDak Animation Film Festival - Interview with Cable Hardin on Tuesday at 10am

1. What time is your interview scheduled and who will you be talking with when you call/skype? 
   - I'll be talking to Cable Hardin, the director, and I'm talking to him on Tuesday morning at 10am our time!
   
2. Who started it and who runs it?
   - Cable Hardin runs it, and given that the festival is only five years old, I'm guessing he started it as well. There's no information on this festival's history. 
   
3. What is the mission of the festival/conference? (copy and paste the first paragraph)
   - The mission of the SoDak Animation Festival is to entertain, educate and inspire audiences through the versatile medium of the animated image by showcasing unique independent and commercial animation from all over the globe. The festival also shows an abundance of genuine hospitality and appreciation to visiting animators and artists when they come to share their passion and work with the festival audience and community. In a geographic area that is not traditionally associated with animation, the SoDak Animation Festival strives to promote a greater understanding of animation as a versatile form of art, entertainment and industry.
   
   (taken from withoutabox)
   
   
4. How does this compare with their actual programming choices from the past two years? Be specific in describing what they program (mode, categories within mode, niche, Political? Global? Local? Gender? Sexuality? Race? Any themes that you see? etc...)
   - There are literally only titles for films that I can find, and their site only has bare minimum collections of animations they've shown, so it's hard to tell. I don't even know what the majority of the films for this year are about. 
   
5. Where is the event?
   - Brookings, South Dakota. It seems to be on the campus for South Dakota State University, but the site wasn't very clear on that. 
   
6. When is the event? (Give dates from last year if not current)
   - October 17th-19th
   
7. How do you submit? Snail mail, online, withoutabox, through their site, etc...
   - withoutabox is the only method of online submission, and snail mail is accepted as well, but not encouraged. 
   
8. When are the deadlines to enter? Early? Reg? Late?
   - EARLY: June 15th; REG: July 15th; LATE: August 1st; WAB EXTENDED DEADLINE: August 15th
   
9. How much does it cost to enter?
   - Free for people in South Dakota; otherwise it starts at 25 for early and works its way up to 50 for the WAB extended deadline.
   
10. Who’s eligible, what are the guidelines to enter?
    - Anyone is eligible dependent upon the category; the major guideline is that the film must be animated. 
    
11. Is there a Student category?
    - Yes; undergraduate, graduate, and even a high school section. 
    
12. What formats do they accept for jurying? DVD, Vimeo, Flash drives?
    - They want submissions through withoutabox, but DVD's work as well if you snail-mail them.
    
13. What formats do they accept for exhibition/screening?
    - Same as above, I guess. Not really mentioned anywhere. 
    
14. How many films screened at the festival last year?
    - Over 50 were shown out of 140 submitted from 16 different countries
    
15. How long is a typical shorts block or paper presentation block at their event?
    - About an hour or so, given the schedule. 
    
16. How many films or papers do they program per block?
    - One paper, but I can't tell for films. 
    
17. How do people register to attend? Is there a cost to attend as a guest?
    - Hard to tell, there's no info on the site about getting tickets to register to attend. 
    
18. Look at sponsorship page and see what businesses, grants, and private entities give money to the
    event. Figure out how many of each kind and note any leads that might be useful to us.
    - The SoDak State University, certain companies that create tools for animation (Wacom, for example, makes tablets to draw on your computer), and other local companies are their main sponsors. 
    
19. What are their sponsorship levels and incentives for each level?
    - N/A, couldn't find info on this
    
20. Did they have a kickstarter or indiegogo? What incentives did they have for each level of donor?
    - N/A
    
21. What kind of non-traditional film/video events have they had before? Things like Installations,
    'Visual Soundwalls,' VJing etc.
    - I'm not sure if it counts, but last year there was a Wacom event where they showed people how to use tablets and stuff. 
    
22. Are there ways in which they have expanded the typical film screening event? How have they
    branched out from sitting in a dark room in front of a screen? 
    - It's a pretty small festival, so there's not a lot of information on this. It seems pretty average though.
    
    
    23. Is the layout easy to navigate? What makes it easy?

    - It's easy enough, with all the links up top...
    
    24. Is the layout difficult to navigate? What makes it difficult?

    - ...however, the links don't all have the information you need; for example, "Join Us" merely has opportunities for Sponsorship, not actually a way to join them as a viewer
    
    25. Can you find the information you are looking for on the homepage or via a link on the homepage?

    - There was a lot of information I had a real tough time finding - in particular, where to get tickets to attend. And a lot of other things. 
    
    

    26. Aesthetically, what catches your eye? What's cool about it?

    - The background is kinda nice and simplistic and looks alright with the mostly white foreground
    
    27. Aesthetically, what doesn't fit in? What makes it look bad?
    

    - It's too simple - there's not enough going on. There aren't enough pictures or videos. It's boring.
    
    28. Should there be more information? Is the page too bare?

    - There needs to be way more information on every single page; I feel like Withoutabox told me more than the site ever could have.
    
    29. Should there be less information? Is the page too busy?

    - Not busy enough
    
    30. What would you do differently if you were to redesign this website?

    - More videos of the films, more pictures of the location and thumbnails for the chosen films, more information on everything (especially the films), a page for buying tickets online, more color (because brown is a nice background color but this is animation, let's get bright and crazy with it), an improved front page that isn't so boring, and, perhaps obviously, some animation on the site itself. There's a tab on academics that makes me think this event is on a campus, but I can't tell, so if this is a school-run event, I'd like to know more about that. Change the video that's the default to show on the main page because I have no idea what it's supposed to be and it's not a very flattering video to showcase for an animation festival. It's also a small video that leads to a Vimeo link with very very few videos. One video had something about a really cool contest they had, so why is that not on the page? Is it happening again this year? I don't know, it doesn't have any information on it. 
    
    31. What would you keep the same if you were to redesign this website? 

    - The font on the page is okay

    
    

    
    

    
    
    
    

Week 1 - Bio, Pic, Reading Response

HEY
So it's week one of visions and here are my things!

Kyle Randolph is a Junior at UNCW, majoring in Film Studies and minoring in Digital Arts. He has written, directed, edited, and starred in a few student short films, and is hoping to bring his enthusiasm to the Visions Film Festival and Conference. This is Kyle’s first year working on Visions, and he hopes to work in PR to create posters, t-shirts, and animations for the festival. Kyle currently films and edits wedding videos with Brick Street Cinema, and hopes to someday work to create a web series on YouTube.


So what I hope to learn in visions this semester is, I guess sort of obviously, how to run a film festival; back in high school I did a lot of Stage Managing, and for some reason film festival-ing seems like stage managing to a certain extent, and I enjoyed stage managing, so I hope i enjoy this.

The reading was interesting, but very repetitive; the basic idea was the creation of film festivals, starting with the Venice Film Festival, and how festivals sort of flowed in and out of the idea of low-budget, not-well-known films and creation of notoriety for newcomers into the film world. I guess it was repetitive because all the festivals fell into the same pattern - start small, gain popularity, fall into the money pit, stick with bigger films. It makes me happy that we can have things like Cucalorus and Visions, that haven't fallen into the pit of big money (and in the case of visions, kind of can't fall into that pit) to keep the small film makers alive and with the potential to become well known.