Film Festival Projection Pitfalls...

[Alex]

Well, I went to see my film that had been transferred to BetaCam SP. It was to be projected on a video projector in a theatre environment on either an 8,000 lumens or 12,000 lumens projector.

It took the projectionist well over 2 minutes to figure out that 1/6 of the image was spilling over the top of the theatre screen, and another 1/6 was spilling under the bottom of the video screen.

All told, 1/3 of the image was not on the screen! What was so frustrating was it made all of the shots look completely misaligned, like I didn't know how to frame a shot.

All I can say is to any video projection company that rents video projection systems for film festivals, don't just brag about how bright your projector lumens are, take a reality check pill and make sure that you treat the short films with some respect.

It's one thing to make an adjustment at the beginning of a 90 minute film, it's quite another to take the same amount of time to adjust someone's short film so that it fits the screen properly. In other words, by the time the short film is almost done, they have corrected the aspect image.

I'll probably write a letter to the company, except what can they do for me, except re-project my film at some future event (presumeably before the audience shows up).

[Greg Crawford]

Was this the Italian Film festival? How did you do, was your film re shown, did the judges see it again or before the official screening?

[Alex]

Film Festivals that have films playing throughout the entire day for several days, by filmmakers who aren't known to the public, usually have small attendance during non-prime time screenings. These off-hour screenings are comprised primarily of the filmmakers, their cast, crew and family members. My short film was part of a short film screeing that started at 5:30pm on a Friday.

Film Festival organizers generally hype their evening film line-up, which usually is a feature film, and they hope to get large audiences for their 8PM Prime time-screening.

Attendance above and beyond the 8PM screening is a bonus for a festival. So if anyone ever plans on attending a film festival because their short film is being shown, SHOW UP A DAY OR TWO EARLY, have PLENTY of fliers (better yet, print up a thousand business size cards with the screening time, location and your contact info), and promote your own film to anyone who will listen.

The exception to this rule is when a small town has a festival and it IS the event of the week or month for that town. Your chances are much better that attendance will be OK for non-prime-time screenings.

Greg C, there probably were no judges present when my film was projected incorrectly. The films are usually judged ahead of time.

[Mike Buckles]

I'll bet your heart just sank when you realized what was being done to your brainchild...I hate having my films and videos outside of my hands and in uncontrolled environments...all the careful planning, lighting, composing the shot..down the drain! How did you do in the contest? Too bad things aren't like the old days....when "Gone With The Wind" came out, David Selznick even went so far as to produce theater programs on slick paper that wouldn't rustle as the movie played...and when "Sleeping Beauty" came out, Walt Disney had it premiered in a theater especially designed for that movie, to showcase the Technirama 70mm print and multichannel stereo sound...we should be able to build a theater for our epics too!

[Alex]

The fatal flaw in the video projection process was the video projectionists mistaken belief that the films needed to fill the movie theatre screen horizontally from one side of the screen to the other.

The problem with this idea is the screen was a 2.35:1 aspect ratio! Super-8 & 16mm are 4x3. I don't understand why they didn't just let the video's play without any adjusting at all.

My film was made to be viewed as a slightly rectangular picture, not squeezed to fit some faux desire to be a 35mm Anamorphic (CinemaScope, Panavision) 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

[Alex]

Here is a link that shows the different aspect ratios for film projection.

http://www.in.mybox.com/film_formats.htm

My Super-8 film should have been shown as either an A, B or C sized image, instead it was shown as an "F" sized image!

[Mike Buckles]

I like the chart!! I wanna shoot some 70mm...how's that for a fancy home movie setup!!!