Well, we're at the Sheffield Doc Fest and it's been a productive but tiring way to spend a Saturday.
I caught 3 main sessions or workshops on Saturday and they were all pretty helpful. They've given me plenty to think about. One of my favourite quotes of the day was along the lines of "some people create art, sit back and relax waiting for the audience to find them. Others go out there and make sure an audience knows they exist". Having completed 'Hola Mahalla: The Forgotten Festival' documentary, now available on DVD & On-Demand, we have been trying to get the word out about the film and also learn as much about the business as possible. The response has been very positive from those that have seen the documentary and naturally we want to grow the audience. We also want to take the documentary to different festivals. So having exposure on this scale of festival and a documentary specific festival has been very helpful.
It's all been an interesting learning curve, the whole project. Once you've made the film, then you have to muster up the energy and take on the mamouth task of getting it an audience and some industry attention too.
Some of the sessions at Sheffield Doc Fest have helped rejuvenate the passion further for the project. Some interesting ideas of where to potentially show the documentary apart from the traditional cinema experience, and utlising Virtual Reality too. The Next phase of the project will be to have a more interactive element. Hearing about some of the technology that now exists, it's been serendipitous.
I'm at the festival until Wednesday and I'm hoping to take a lot from the experience.
Thanks
D
