Sunday 23 May 2010

Winchester Film Society


Thursday night was the end of season party at the Winchester Film Society, and to celebrate they screened three shorts that had all been shot by local film makers. The programme included Clockwork, the highly acclaimed and technically astonishing Ten Thousand Pictures of You by Robin King, and Stand or Fall - from Page to Stage, which was a moving documentary about a play performed by prison inmates.
Because there were only three movies on the programme it meant that there was plenty of time for Q&A. It is always with a degree of trepidation that put my movies forward for consideration by a non-machinima audience - obviously if you know your audience is "into" machinima then it's fine, but when you have a less specific audience there is always a worry that the movie won't stand up to comparison with more conventional fare. For me, the true measure as to whether they like the movie is demonstrated by the questions that are asked. No questions means they didn't get it, or didn't like it, so let's move on to the proper stuff...
I have to say I was really chuffed with the questions that were asked! And, if I did this sort of thing more often then I'm sure I could come up with more interesting responses. As it was, the audience were great, and the welcome from the Film Society was warm and appreciative.
Having the opportunity to rub shoulders with non-machinima film makers was great too. As well as being a talented film maker, Robin King is also a professional actor with a penchant for software development. Anyway, I recommend you check out his movies on Vimeo.

3 comments:

  1. I'd be very interest in knowing what questions they asked too, any chance you could post a few of them Iain? Ta.

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  2. Sure Russell, I'm trying to remember now!
    Well, during my intro I spoke a bit about how machinima began, so one of the questions was whether I was making movies back in the days of Quake. (No. I didn't as the idea hadn't occured to me, although I enjoyed playing the game).
    Do I storyboard? (yes)
    What is the sequence I go through for making a movie (script, record audio, storyboard, set build, shoot, post)
    And there were various questions about commercial opportunities, and when I suggested that for me I couldn't really see how to make it big enough to quit my day job there was a great response; "where's your punk spirit?!"
    I was also asked why I'd chosen this story for Clockwork, and where it had come from.

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  3. lol, be a punk, just don't quite your day job...yet :) Ta for the summary.

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