The Day I Got To Be Jennifer Fox - Guest Bloger Adella
It’s a Sunday afternoon in January, and I’ve just spent the last
couple of days at the Beloit International Film Festival. That’s
Beloit, Wisconsin, where today the temperature is well below freezing
(-9 Fahrenheit and many people will bear this sub zero temperature to
sit outside all day on a bleacher and watch a football game)!
It’s the first time I’m representing FLYING at a festival - though I
have previously worked as a Filmmaker Liaison at the Miami
International Film Festival. I have recently been thinking a lot about
what it means to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. More precisely,
I am more and more seeing the “flip side of the coin.” While my work
experience at the Miami Int’l Film Festival was about helping the
filmmakers, my experience representing FLYING at the Beloit Int’l Film
Festival was about “being” the filmmaker. With a slightly evil laugh,
Jennifer had specifically asked me to pretend I was her, and I was
wondering if it would be a lot harder than I imagined. Both festival
experiences were lots of fun, and at the end of this post, I list 5
film festival tips based on my humble experience at the Beloit Film
Festival.
As I write this, I realize that one of my favorite activities in
life is travel… I imagine it must be one of Jennifer’s favorite things
to do as well. It’s not just the leaving of Point A and arriving at
Point B, but all the little stops and detours and people that you
interact with along the way.
All 6 episodes of FLYING were screened over the course of a Saturday
afternoon, and the audience response was great. But I understand now
that it’s all the connections you make with people before and after the
film screening that make the festival experience really amazing.
After arriving at the Chicago Airport, Morgan, a volunteer for the
film festival, picked me up in a hybrid car which had accumulated
nearly 1000 miles just by picking up filmmakers from the Chicago and
Milwaukee airports. In the 90 minutes that we were in the car together,
I learned that Morgan is one of 8 children. I told him I am one of five
children, and we laughed at how the average family in the US today has
about 2.4 kids. Curious about the meaning of the word “FLYING” in the
film’s title, he asked if Jennifer was a pilot. It turns out that he
runs a program in Beloit that teaches kids about flying and they had
recently started a special program for girls. I was struck by the fact
that there was more interest from boys than from girls… In the film,
it’s Jennifer’s father that flies the plane…
One of the first people I met when I arrived in Beloit was C.K. Lichtenstein, the producer of a film called “Cathedral Park.”
He gave me a postcard of his film, and when I told him I was there to
represent FLYING, he mentioned that he had seen a poster for the film
and was interested in seeing it (see 5 film festival tips below). He
came to see Part 1 of FLYING - and in turn gave me a copy of his film,
which I’ve been too busy to watch. I’m excited to watch it now that I’m
on my way back home…
Randy, a volunteer at the festival, sat through 5 episodes of FLYING
back-to-back. I met Randy on Saturday morning as we started chatting, I
told him to come check out FLYING. He was one of the few men in the
audience, and was very involved in the Q&A that followed the first
screening. While I can’t remember all of Randy’s questions and
comments, I do remember that he said things like:
“It makes me not like men, but I respect that Jennifer is so honest and real.”
“I like Patrick. He comes across as very charming, but content to
just move forward with life, whereas Jennifer has this need to
communicate and discuss dark feelings. If I were to go out with
Jennifer, it wouldn’t last very long.” (Is this what Jennifer meant
about how hard it is to be her? Were people always projecting their
feelings on the main subject of a film? I fastened my seatbelt.)
Honestly, it was great to have someone engage the audience in a
dialogue about the film, especially to hear about how as a man, Randy
identified with Patrick and put himself in Patrick’s shoes. I wonder if
other men who see the film put themselves in either Patrick’s or Kye’s
shoes? And if so, how many of them imagine themselves responding the
way Patrick and Kye do or in some totally different way?
Though they didn’t see FLYING, there were the 2 crazy college girls who
had driven to Beloit from Chicago to represent one of the short films
at the festival. They spent the night at the same hotel I was staying
at, but they had too much to drink the night before, and so they had
left their car on Beloit’s Main Street and hitched a ride back to the
hotel (apparently some nice Wisconsin man gave them a lift!). The thing
was, they weren’t sure if their car had been towed during the night and
were quite anxious to get back home… They were thrilled to find that
their car was still on Main Street. One of them had a friend who had
seen FLYING at the festival and had reported back that it was a good
film. I found out they are students at Northwestern and intend to
contact the university for a future college campus screening.
All these people, and many more, really made the festival experience
come alive for me… Now onto my 5 tips for a better festival experience:
1. First, make sure you confirm all scheduled hotel and travel
arrangements. Get specifics! If your flight is delayed or cancelled,
let someone at the festival know!
2. Next, you need your promotional materials (ie: posters,
postcards, business cards, etc). You never know when you might start
chatting with a total stranger, and then, before you both go your
separate ways, you pass them a postcard with the film’s screening times
printed on the back. This is very important. If someone you meet seems
like they’re interested in the film, you need to make it as easy as
possible for them to get to the screening. If they have to look up the
screening times, location, date, etc, you may have lost a potential
audience.
3. Make sure that the screening copy of your film (whether it’s a
film print/DVD/master tape) has been checked by the projectionist at
the actual screening venue! When your screening time rolls around, it
should be smooth sailing without any Audio-Visual problems. You want
the film to make an impact the moment the lights go down. If the audio
isn’t strong enough, or if it’s too strong, or if the projector
overheats and won’t play your film, you risk losing your audience. That
said, if you do encounter a problem, it’s not the end of the World!
Just do your best to engage the audience until the problem has been
solved.
4. If you’re going to try and “Pass the Camera” during your Q&A
session - which I did and recommend as a great way to break the ice and
get the audience involved - remember that it’s hard to film the
audience, listen to and answer all the questions at the same time! (I
figured this out when I looked at the footage from the Q&As and
noticed that while I would start with the camera frame on the person
who was asking the question, the camera would slowly tilt upwards and
before I knew it, I had a lot of interesting camera shots of the
auditorium’s ceiling.) Also, check your audio levels before filming!
5. Have fun and be open to the unexpected…
Looking back, I can say that while I was a little nervous about the
screenings and the Q&A sessions, it was an exciting, educational
and exhaustive experience! And honestly, it wasn’t so hard to be
Jennifer Fox – at least in my experience. I think I’d like to try it
again!
