Perseverance
21st Nov 2011
I’m in the throes one more of watching a lot of adventure films as part of the selection process for next year’s Sheffield Adventure Film Festival (9-11 March). Each year the number of filmmakers who send in their films rises. However it’s still a massive task to go out there and find films, track down the filmmakers, ask them if they would like to submit, and get them to do so. The vast majority are more than happy to oblige, viewing festivals as a necessary route to exposure through screenings, awards and general chatter. However, the vast majority are also incredibly busy (presumably making films) and find the task of sending across a film a bit tedious. Fortunately things have become a whole lot easier as most now opt to upload them digitally for me to download. This means we get high definition copies which we can then screen at their intended resolution as opposed to DVD. In the last two months I have downloaded over 100Gb of film and expect to download a fair chunk more before the official closing date of December 1st. To all the filmmakers out there that I hassle – please accept my gratitude, and excuse the perseverance by way of multiple emails! It definitely pays off in that I believe that ShAFF, because it comes at the end of the winter (i.e. film festival) season, has the best selection of any adventure festival, anywhere.