A year ago, I wrote an article about the ways to create online screenings with available tools, by combining different platforms such as Google Forms, PayPal, Vimeo and Zoom. Many friends and colleagues adopted those solutions (or chose to work with Movies Everywhere and have everything in one platform…).
A year passed and those practices became trivial, sometimes with other combinations (for example, I have a friend who conducts screenings in a branded Wix website and unlisted Youtube videos, to keep it to invitees only).
There are also ongoing discussions and dilemmas in the filmmakers’ community on whether to ask for…

A few posts ago I wrote about how film festivals would look like in a post Coronavirus world.
It was a combination of prediction, analysis and yeah, a wishful thinking too (disclosure: I’m a founder of a digital platform for film festivals).

Less than six months later and it’s partly becoming true: Hybrid events, about which we talked from Day 1, are becoming the new normal. This is due to the fact that in the territories we mainly operate, venues are beginning to reopen. Yet, some audience members choose hybrid over the in-person (physical) option.
As expected, I must add.

…

The decision to conduct an online or a hybrid film festival is never easy, even when done wholeheartedly. Film festivals are born to be live:
Hugs, applause, hand shaking and networking are not less important than films, so an online film festival always involves some sense of pain and grief.

The Illusion

At least we’ll work less hard say the festival directors and producers to themselves. No need to pickup anyone from the airport, no meals, no catering, no taxis, no hotels, no parking arrangements to VIPs, no delays because of traffic jams, no visa issues for guests, no badges, no barcode…

A few weeks ago I participated in a fascinating online presentation by sound artist Meira Asher. Although it is not the topic of this post, I warmly recommend you find out more about this multi-talented woman, a human rights activist and a researcher in the fields of Social Documentary and the Amplification of the Human Body.
During her presentation, which was done on Zoom, Asher shared videos with the audience. For that, she pasted each time a link in the chat and said “see you in 5 minutes” or “see you in 2 minutes” — whatever the length of the video…

The instructional part of introducing our platform for virtual film screenings and Q&A to clients is always divided to two: The technical part and the conceptual part.
The technical part is usually the easiest. What is not clarified in a demo, will be better understood with documentation and practice. After some time, everyone will get the hang of it.
The conceptual part is more tricky. Not only because there is no ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’, but because there are not even Best Practices. It really depends on the personalities involved, the goal of the Q&A, the number of attendees and many other hidden…

An Analysis

I made a small research before writing this article: Searched for “post coronavirus world”. There were many results of course, but what fascinated me most was the dates: From April to July 2020, people were already talking and writing about Post-Coronavirus days.

On July it stopped. — Is it because the idea was discussed enough? Or because of the dismay which followed the second and more powerful wave? Both could be possible and complementary.

The Film Festival World

In those months, we made many phone calls and had discussions with film festival directors and producers. We were trying to talk to them…

You’re a filmmaker or a film distributor. You want to protect your film. That’s obvious. At the same time, you want to expose your creation to as many people as possible. At least most artists want that.
So far so good.

But there’s a catch: The more you protect your film (online), the worse the user experience will get.

The latter is not so obvious and must be explained. Then, we’ll offer some solutions to mitigate the challenge.

Why can’t we have the cake and eat it?

Imagine an airport (in the days this article is written, airport is definitely something most of us can only dream about-:)). In…

On early March 2020, we started our platform for screening films and meeting filmmakers. Note that I wrote started and not launched. Launching is usually done after a long preparation and is well planned, while we had to react swiftly to an unexpected event (COVID-19). In addition, since we started, we don’t stop introducing new features, improving existing ones and learning from mistake while we run. I never worked so fast.

It took my amazing team only two weeks to come up with a basic, yet good enough solution: we created branded pages for screenings, added a registration process, followed…