In October 2020, Raindance Film Festival delivered its first ever hybrid online festival in a 27 year history.
It’s now over a year after the pandemic first took the UK by surprise, shutting cinemas, theatres and arts and cultural venues as well as temporarily stopping TV & Film productions in their tracks.
As the team look forward to this year’s festival, the 2020 festival team shed light on the pros and cons and challenges faced in what was an unprecedented year for film.
For Freelance Festival Marketing Campaign Manager Joe Supple-Turnham, the role was to devise and deliver the festival marketing campaign.
“Communicating to audiences was widened in a way that it had never been before, as having a hybrid online edition of the festival meant that the team could speak to audiences across the globe – all you needed was access to the internet and a device to watch on. This allowed us to open up the festival to a whole new audience beyond London that might not have been able to attend in the past.
With the festival taking place mostly online, we weren’t sure how, or if, the buzz and sense of community of a normal festival year would translate to the new format. It was great to see this replicated on social media in a bigger way than normal, with audiences sharing their reviews and recommendations, and comparing notes with other people.”
For Bailey Graham, Raindance’s Marketing lead, the festival was “transformative, persevering and empowering. This was mainly because Raindance audiences “were so engaged, coming from all corners of the world to experience independent film. It was incredible!”
Even though the hybrid festival was a success, it was a challenge for Bailey and the marketing team. “We could not rely on selling tickets to those passing by, instead we had to directly target our audience online, which took a lot of work in growing our virtual audience and styling a very specific campaign. This also meant that people buying tickets would not have the thrill of experiencing the film festival in the centre of London like we usually would, which held back some people who usually go to our festival and prefer the physical experience.”
For Bailey, the 2020 festival really reinforced the reason why Raindance hosts the festival in the first place and made the team even more passionate about what they do. “All year round we work, creating collaborations, watching films, finding how to make the best film festival experience possible, and of course training filmmakers through our film school, who get to screen at our festival. We are always happy to support and share new and upcoming filmmakers, and even if you believe your project ‘isn’t finished’ or ‘isn’t good enough’ and Raindance will always be there to support filmmakers.”
For the festival’s senior programmer Martyna Szmytkowska, the highlight of the festival was “as always all of the screenings and Q&As that were packed.”
“I’m a senior programmer so my task is to curate the features programme together with the whole programming team. It was different this year as the communication with the team was completely online without in person meetings, and it took a bit of getting used to. Other than that, it was pretty much work as usual as the majority of my role involves watching films and liaising with right holders around the world via email.”
“One thing that was very different this year though, was the number of feature films we programmed which we cut down to allows us to attract a wider audience in a competitive digital environment.”
Looking back at the festival is there anything the programming team would do differently? “Change or improve the streaming platform to be more custom made to the festival needs, so that it’s easier for the audiences to navigate and find various parts of the programme effortlessly.”
For Raindance’s filmmaker in residence Harvey Puttock “one of the prominent tasks was setting up the live panels and Q&As on Zoom, then editing them to put them up as video-on-demand content.
Usually I’m part of the print traffic team, testing and creating DCPs. This year there were only a few live events so there was only five or six DCPs instead of the usual 200+.”
Were there any major highlights? “After many months of zero in person events it was great to get to have a handful of live events at the festival. Particularly the repeat screening of Stardust at the Genesis Cinema. Everyone there was very welcoming and having it the night before the second lockdown began felt special. Having two Raindance Icon Award Winners this year was also a nice surprise. This meant I worked on the interviews with Jude Law and Sally Hawkins, one streaming from the Raindance Studios and the other straight from our final live event.”
Is there anything the team would do again post-pandemic? “I hope we keep the online aspects to create this inclusive audience. The fact that the festival was held online meant that people could join from across the UK for the features and worldwide from shorts and we look forward to hosting the next Raindance Film Festival.”
