Being new in all...

[Dustin R. Rogan]

...I had a question, say we didn't get top 3, will we be able to find out what place the film got?

[Zak Forsman]

i've always wondered that... if the polling data would be made available to the filmmakers. i think a certain transparency is beneficial and useful in a number of ways. and dangerous in only a few.

[Dustin R. Rogan]

i don't necessarily care who voted for me I'd like to know what place I placed, is all lol

[William_Robinette]

Agreed.

[Barry_Green]

We've been down this path, we've tried it releasing all the data, and we've tried it where we announce only the winners. I'm not sure which way this fest will go, but we've been there and done that previously so if the festmasters decide not to release all the info, it'll be for time-tested reasons.

[Kholi]

If I recall right, we did that with horror fest and it actually made some people mad.

Didn't turn out to be a good thing but I may be remembering wrong.

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Well, last fest they announced what seemed to be the top 5 or 6.
Maybe something like that would be fine.

It's all good though.

Cheers!

[Kegan]

I can see how it'd be a bad idea, but I also see the pros to releasing the data. What exactly happened when all the data was released Barry? Was there an outburst, did people shy away from the board or was it just not received well in general?

-Kegan

EDIT: Wow, I gotta start typing my posts faster..thanks Kholi and Mike.

[Zak Forsman]

i'm not advocating that the data be made public, but I would like it to be available to the filmmakers, who rarely get any kind of hard data to weigh against the public praise and somewhat restrained criticism. ten years ago, I worked in market testing for the major studios and I know there is a often a vast disconnect between what audiences say they admire in a film and what they'll actually recommend to their friends via word of mouth.

[Kholi]

In the spirit of the term "Fest" it actually seems to turn it into a "contest" instead. That's not exactly what it's about. To apply EVERYONE'S talent to a sliding scale or peer-themed voting stands to say "we don't like your work very much" when/if you see your film placed 50th out of 50 films.

The top three votes states "hey we loved these THE MOST out of the fest, but everyone rocked." When people place very low or some place exceptionally high it's misinterpreted as "not good enough" or "popularity contest".

It's a good idea in theory, just when you apply human reaction and it's unpredictability then it becomes not-so-good. Good thing is that the fest masters have tested and the reactions should be documented in Horror Fest.