"Endgame", a commentary on The Escapist's Film Festival

[Callate]

My take on The Escapist's Film Festival [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdpFmP4u_XM] is available for your perusal.

I hope some of what I have to say might help to make next year's EFF better. I'll warn up front than a lot of what I say is not fuzzy bunnies and rainbows, but none of it is intended with malice.

Thank you for lending your ear.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Haven't yet watched the whole thing (youtube is being really slow), but the point about finding your own niche is a good one.

EDIT: Finished watching it, and it was good throughout. Especially the end, which was a good point.

 

[JoshTheater]

Fantastic video, agreed with every word.

 

[alphaxion]

The point about filling up all of the available time is a good one too - so many of the entries hovered at the 4:50 mark (lest we not mention the 10 minute entry, brazenly flaunting the rules of the competition). Personally, I spent a good portion of time wondering how I could *reduce* the time of mine until I could get as close as possible to my desired figure of about 2mins 40.

I'd also add an extra point for the Escapist to apply to the next round: a little more info as to time scales of things. For several days, quite a few of us were nervously hitting F5 in the hope of discovering the winners and/or getting the commentary.

Oh, and thanks again for your thoughts on my entry

 

[Jimtopia]

Really really awesome advice for people, I'd recommend posting this again next year around the time the film festival goes up again, this is something people should see! In regards to my personal experience, I actually went in with a mindset almost the opposite of Rule #4 in your video. Specifically, I went into it thinking that I was making a pilot for a potential series, and nothing more. Though I think you address this in the video, if you're making a pilot make sure something interesting, or captivating, happens. There's a big difference between making a pilot where the premise promises something cool happening, and cool things happening because of the premise.

Once again, great video, very good idea addressing some of the major problems you saw and letting people know about it.

 

[FlitterFilms]

Great video, agree with everything you said. I think it's safe to say the competition this year had a much higher standard in terms of professional looking productions, I don't think there was even half as many broadcast quality videos in all the previous years competitions combined. To be honest I wasn't expecting to be competing with such polished productions otherwise I might have gone on the hunt for some better equipment, as it is I'm flat broke and figured it wouldn't make a huge amount of difference if my script was solid, but unfortunately I was wrong as were many of us.

It's a little bit of a shame that this is what it's come down to when previous great series simply have the feel of somebody having fun with a great idea rather than struggling to make a cinema worthy production, and I kind of thought this competition was for the everyman, but you can't entirely blame the escapist for wanting the best of everything. The only point of yours I might disagree with is the casting of your friends. Friends can be perfectly fine you just need to be careful with who you pick and make sure you have a director barking out orders to keep them in line. As long as they know vaguely what they're doing I think you can get away with it, after all when it comes to acting 90% of the 'Loading Ready Run'/'ENN' group can't act to save their lives and it doesn't seem to bother them.