In reply to Offwidth:
> (In reply to Andy Perkins)
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> pleaase stop showing 60 to 90 minute films .
I agree that many films are too long. 40 minutes is a good maximum for a Festival cut, and we do often ask film makers for shorter Festival cuts. However, on that basis we might not have selected The Crash Reel which clearly worked. I quote a recent message from a film maker: "it's great for a film-maker to incite emotion in an audience. It's the Holy Grail." And Crash Reel did that in spades.
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> Are these issues a real big deal... I'd say not; is the Peoples' Choice worth keeping... probably (for all the hassle its nice to vote and there are clear marketing gains for the festival as a whole)?
If it's not a big deal then why argue the point?
But the reference to "marketing gains for the Festival" completely misses the point. As I said in my reply to Frank, the gain for the Festival is to involve you the audience in the judging. It has nothing to do with marketing.
>A rough weighting (on showings and venue size) could be done and would help level the playing field and the weighting factors could be done in advance (and multiplied by the votes to get the winner) and certainly would spice things up.
Totally flawed I'm afraid - what about if we show a film in a massive venue but relatively few people go to it (which happens). What about if we show a film on Sunday at 9am instead of 3pm on Saturday? What about if we show it away from the Brewery in venues like The Box where attendances are often low? All these things affect viewing numbers and therefore what the end result of People's Choice is. I could sit down and spend a day working out the results of your proposal if
1. I had seen the voting counts, which I haven't and
2. If I hadn't already spent weeks of my time on Festival organsiation and the 4 days of the Festival working 8am to 2am. It's time to get get my life back, and all this debate is delaying that.
>If hypothetically everyone voting at least saw all the best films I think the choice would change some years.
But they don't and can't. Nobody can see everything at Kendal apart from the judges who have my total respect, shut in a room for a few days to watch films back to back with a total run time of 26 hours.
And who is to decide which films are "the best"? On what criteria? As I said to Frank, let's keep it simple. Kendal is complex enough as it is.
>In past years the best films often got reshown to help with this more but I guess the festival is a victim of its own success in having less space to do this this year.
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We nearly doubled film capacity this year. So no, there is more space not less, and we try to show the films we think people will want to see.
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> You yourself are guilty of enthusiastically pushing films you like (when you're a presenter of talks and film sessions) and different presenters push different films (at what point from the audience perspective of usually not knowing the presenter well do honest recommendations stop and cynical market plugs start).
However, this is the point where you have really wound me up.
"Guilty" of enthusiasm? As if it was some kind of crime?
It is my role as a presenter to be enthusiastic about things.
Given the amount of stuff to see at Kendal, the presenting team often get asked for recommendations for "must see" films and that's why we provide those recommendations during the sessions. The suggestion that our presenters recommendations are anything other than honest or that there are cynical market plugs is, quite frankly, pretty offensive.
If you were at the premiere of Distilled and seen me unable to speak afterwards on stage with emotion, remembering all the great times of climbing with Cavey, Brendan Murphy, Roger Payne and Mal Duff (all mentioned or pictured in the film) you would understand how genuine the Festival is, and that at heart it's just a bunch of people getting together and getting inspired to get out there and do more.