Filmenstein: The Director’s Cut

Being the first of the seminar series, I was really quite surprised and pleased by how well this session was run. That said, looking back on it there were also things that could have been improved upon, but this is understandable given the short time frame they had to prepare for it. I gave this group a ‘C’ for seminar content being focused and relevant, because even though I thought it was interesting the way they structured it around a ‘fake movie’, I thought there needed to be more content focused on how to actually break into the industry. I gave them an HD for their guests’ relevance to the topic and career, and I thought they did particularly well scoring Glendyn Ivin as a guest on such short notice. I’d just started watching his latest TV series Puberty Blues and had been extremely impressed by the production values and just how well it all came together, so it was awesome to be able to actually hear about the influences behind his art. I was also pretty chuffed when I tweeted him after the seminar and he tweeted me back. I thought the choice of getting a director, producer, and someone from Film Victoria was a good one as it gave a few different perspectives on the industry. I gave the group a C for seminar facility. Unfortunately this group was the one that was going to experience a lot of teething problems, and there were a few awkward setup issues like the mics not coming out of the stands, the table being too small and the light shining in the guests’ eyes. I also thought the flow was disrupted a bit when the host sometimes talked over the guests. I gave the group an D for audience inclusion, because they not only had a Q&A section but also were the first to come up with the idea of running the twitter feed. I would have given them an HD however I tweeted a couple of questions during the seminar and neither of them came up, so I’m not sure how efficient the twitter feed actually was in the end. Finally, I gave the group an HD for promotion, because I saw a lot of signage building anticipation in the lead up to it.