Age Appropriate Filmmaking

First, I have to give a shout out to the filmmaker who said being mentioned in this blog would be almost as cool as getting in the festival.

Well? Is it?

We had a night of solid acting across the board. Nice job, folks. A good picture of bad acting is a bad picture. I cannot tell you how important it is to get the cast right, and most of the films we saw last night did.

Among these good actors were a lot of kids – from high school to barely walking. I'm sure we saw more than one future star last night. I hope they'll come do some promotions for us when their movies are no longer eligible for competition.

Regular readers will be glad to know the "Good Logo = Bad Movie" rule is still in effect. I don't know if anyone has ever noticed, but most production companies with studio distribution deals didn't start with an expensive, grandiose opening logo. They put their energy into making good films. The big logo comes after your work has earned more money than you know what to do with. When I see a fancy opening announce the production company I think, "that's time, money, and effort that could have gone into another day of shooting or writing, paying a cast and crew." And every single time, the quality of the movie proves me right.

Last night one of our screeners said something we hear a lot. "If that film was made by my 12-year-old niece, I'd say it was brilliant, but..."

That's one of the difficulties of judging submissions. We know absolutely nothing about the filmmakers who submit – which is a good thing, as it helps eliminate prejudice – but, what if the film was made by a 12-year-old? We all passed on the movie because we're not a festival geared toward grade school filmmakers, and by adult standards the movie wasn't any good. Chances are nearly 100% that it was made by an adult, but there is that little bit of doubt.

So if there are any kid filmmakers who have submitted, don't take it too hard if you don't get in. Just finishing a movie is a huge accomplishment – even for adults. Keep up the good work.

If you're an adult and you've made a movie that looks like it was made by a child... keep the day job.

We had a film that was so incredibly unique that the creativity trumped the various little things that would have killed a lesser movie. Well done. We do get so tired of seeing films in the style of what's hot on TV.

We want your voice, not someone else's.

On that note, thanks for reading. See you next week.