So yesterday I attended Campus Movie Fest at UC Berkeley where my short film was in competition. There was a sold out, standing room only crowd and the response was huge for every film that was shown. Problem is, it ends on an incredibly anticlimactic note. When it came time to announce the winner, the MC decides to hand off the mic to one of their sponsor representative, who went on to make the announcement in an incredibly nasal and soft voice that just plain sucked all the energy out of the room. After he was done, everyone was just looking around like they're expecting something else to happen. The winnning team just walked quietly on to the stage with very little applause since people were still confused. After they stepped down the MC basically told everybody to go home, and people just started quietly shuffling out of their seats and left. No big applause or anything.
I was at this festival last year and the response was so different. This year they actually have a bigger budget but the whole time they were just hyping the grand finale festival (for the winners of this one) to be held next month. I almost get the feeling that they telling the audience that the "real" festival is going to be the finale so they shouldn't bother to get excited at all about this one. I wasn't even sad that my film didn't win since the emotional payoff weren't there; if anything, I felt cheated.
I was at this festival last year and the response was so different. This year they actually have a bigger budget but the whole time they were just hyping the grand finale festival (for the winners of this one) to be held next month. I almost get the feeling that they telling the audience that the "real" festival is going to be the finale so they shouldn't bother to get excited at all about this one. I wasn't even sad that my film didn't win since the emotional payoff weren't there; if anything, I felt cheated.
