2021 59th Ann Arbor Film Festival

 Once more into the breach.....

This is our second year as a virtual festival.  We had more time to plan this one - last year we had 10 days - but in some ways I think last year was easier.

I must give a shout out to all the Festival Staff - especially Angela! - who all worked really hard to make this happen.  An amazing group to work with, and all of them are really a lot of fun.  

Thanks, folks.

And also a big hand to the board of Directors who stood behind us again this year as we moved through uncharted waters.  Without their support & expertise this Festival would be a very different animal.   

Thanks, folks.

First, you have to understand that normally I touch every digital file and put a lot of effort into making the screening playback a nicely curated experience in the theaters.  I pay attention to the timing between the films and the program slides, and take care to get the audio levels across a screening are within a reasonable range.  Sometimes I have to add a fade in or fade out, but never without consulting the filmmaker.  I see my job as putting the best possible version of your films onto the screen for our audiences - as well as dealing with all the performance and installation projects.

Last year was a lot like being in the theater: instead of playing back files from a computer to a *projector*, I was playing them back into another *computer* that was sending out the program to Vimeo who was hosting the stream.  I still had all the files right in front of me so I could do all the curation I normally do for the Fest.  If you haven't seen it, here is my writeup after last year.

This is my workspace for this year - my 'living at work' desk...

This year was different.  All the files were delivered into the cloud so I never touched most of them.  We used both Cinesend and Eventive because we were told they would talk to each other and transfer files for us in the cloud.   If you are a filmmaker reading this, that' why we asked you to send your films to Cinesend.  That turned out to be wrong, so files were downloaded and uploaded manually.  I didn't know about that until it was done, so I missed the opportunity to finesse the screenings the way I would usually have done.

One other tech detail is the Zoom thing.  Last year I had some control over the level and tonal qualities of the audio, which helped.  It was a combination of being there in advance of airing the Q&A and being able to 'tweak' it as it passed through the laptop feeding Vimeo.  This year it is a straight hookup from Zoom to Eventive so we have to depend on what Zoom can do, which is actually pretty good.for audi leveling.

And we can't put up nice graphics between things as easily as we could last year.  I did make a little bumper to lead into the Q&A, nicely outfitted with a bit of audio from Mark Murrell aka Ed Special.

And as you have noticed (if you are reading this), the Eventive platform adds its own charm to the viewing process (those three boxes are our pets!").

At least they finally fixed - literally 2 hours before our first screening - the glitch they had where the "Forensic Watermark" screen was showing up in between each and every file that played back.  That would have been an awful viewing experience, so THANKS EVENTIVE ENGINEERS!

And I know that those of you used to just showing your pass at the theater are finding the process of having to individually sign up for each screening a bit repetitive.  But that's how Eventive works.  They are known for is their ticketing Kung Fu, and are getting better at the whole streaming thing now that pretty much every film festival in the USA is using their platform.  but they still have a few things to figure out.

Anyway, enjoy this years AAFF.  We all learned a lot about these online platforms, and we all think there are elements of the virtual we will keep when we get back to the theater.

But we just can't find a virtual replacement for the Michigan Theater's concession stand...