Filmmaker Lewis Arnold, who completed his digishort 'Spirited' towards the end of 2008, recounts his experiences attending the Clermont-Ferrand short film festival and market with support from Screen WM and UKTI, with producer Tom Knight in tow...
On Sunday the 1st February Tom and myself made the long drive to Clermont for the Short Film Festival, taking about twelve hours as the SatNav took us through Paris!
Our intention was to really complete last years digishort experience by attending the festival, whilst also preparing ourselves to better ‘Spirited’ with our latest project, ‘Stained’. Unfortunately we hadn’t got ‘Spirited’ into the International Competition but as we were in the Short Film Market we decided to attend regardless and I’d say it was worth every penny.
It was a real eye opener to see how many short films are actually out there! And like all the other few thousand filmmakers, we’d turned up armed with a bunch of DVD’s, which everybody was just throwing into the pigeon holes of unexpected sales agents and festivals! They must have been screwed if they were flying with the added weight of thousands of dvd’s! It made me realise a good marketing strategy could go a lot further then bombing pigeon holes like we did. Next time ey!
It also really gave us a real sense of what we and a lot of UK short films have to compete against on the global scale. New Zealand for example only commission nine short films, meaning each short has more finance, shooting and finishing on 35mm. Granted the ideas were also great too and they come for free to those lucky enough to have them! You have to check out, ‘This Is Her’ by Katie Wolfe, AMAZING.
A lot of the drama shorts were also very ambiguous with endings that provoked conversation and thought, whether you liked them or not. It really made us look back over our next project to see how we could improve our festival and distribution chances.
The event was also a great networking opportunity. You end up drinking, chatting and having a laugh with some of the real movers and shakers of the industry. With The UK Film Council, British Film Council, Sales agents and festivals all with a real presence out there it’s definitely worth a trip!
Click here for my round-up of Clermont stuff...