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