Well, suggested etiquette, anyway. For screenings where production personnel hang out for Q&A, and there is a room full of people with limited time to get a few questions in...
1) Don't waste time introducing yourself. Did the other people in the theater express a burning need to be appraised of your identity, before or during the screening? If not, odds are they're not desperate for you to include your first name, last name, middle initial or shoe size, in the time required to ask your question of the director.
2) Don't introduce yourself as a 'film maker.' It's gratuitous and masturbatory. You know which 'film makers' everyone in the audience is actually interested in hearing about? The ones up on stage. When you're up on stage, it will be your turn. In the mean time, your self-identification as a 'film maker' is no more interesting to anybody, than your day job as a ferret-whisperer or your aspirations toward becoming a pre-surgical groin shaver.
3) Don't compliment the film makers, on the film you just saw. No matter how sincere, you will come off like an over-eager lickspittle hoping there's something in it, for you. They get plenty of that, back at the lot. And while everyone sure enjoys an ego-stroke now and then, the Q&A period where the clock is running is not the time to wax rhapsodic about the movie that everyone else in the auditorium just saw, along with you.
4) Don't ask basically un-answerable questions. I noticed that there were both digital and practical VFX in this film; would you talk about that? Well, what's to talk about? Yes, there are both, as observed in the question itself. What do you expect anyone to add to this sage observation? I mention this one because it comes up with such depressing regularity.
5) Don't use your moment-for-the-question, to talk about yourself. This is an afterthought, to item #2 - bad enough, the people who need to inform everybody that they're 'film makers.' Much worse, the ones who feel the tale incomplete without mention of their parents, alma mater, grade point average and theme of their thesis film.
6) If you don't have a grasp on the basic grammar and vocabulary necessary to frame a coherent question, leave the time for someone who can. If you can't make it through ordering Jack-in-the-Box without a half-dozen likes, you-knows, umms, errs, etc and you don't know what the term focal length means, then you're probably not ready to play James Lipton, either.
7) Don't blather on about how the film affected you. Did you attend the screening in order to hang upon every word of someone else in the audience, detailing the innermost workings of their experience, of the film? Almost certainly not. Show some damned consideration for the rest of us. Put your innermost thoughts and dreams in a letter, and mail it c/o the producing company.
8) Don't yap about this project of yours that is just like the film you just finished watching. If your project was going to see the light of day, it probably would have happened, by now. Now that there's a major studio release just like your project, how would you evaluate the odds of your project going anywhere? My $.02: not too good.
...anyway, peeves acquired over the last few months' screenings. Please feel free to add your own, from the audiences with whom you've been entrapped, at the screenings you attend.
1) Don't waste time introducing yourself. Did the other people in the theater express a burning need to be appraised of your identity, before or during the screening? If not, odds are they're not desperate for you to include your first name, last name, middle initial or shoe size, in the time required to ask your question of the director.
2) Don't introduce yourself as a 'film maker.' It's gratuitous and masturbatory. You know which 'film makers' everyone in the audience is actually interested in hearing about? The ones up on stage. When you're up on stage, it will be your turn. In the mean time, your self-identification as a 'film maker' is no more interesting to anybody, than your day job as a ferret-whisperer or your aspirations toward becoming a pre-surgical groin shaver.
3) Don't compliment the film makers, on the film you just saw. No matter how sincere, you will come off like an over-eager lickspittle hoping there's something in it, for you. They get plenty of that, back at the lot. And while everyone sure enjoys an ego-stroke now and then, the Q&A period where the clock is running is not the time to wax rhapsodic about the movie that everyone else in the auditorium just saw, along with you.
4) Don't ask basically un-answerable questions. I noticed that there were both digital and practical VFX in this film; would you talk about that? Well, what's to talk about? Yes, there are both, as observed in the question itself. What do you expect anyone to add to this sage observation? I mention this one because it comes up with such depressing regularity.
5) Don't use your moment-for-the-question, to talk about yourself. This is an afterthought, to item #2 - bad enough, the people who need to inform everybody that they're 'film makers.' Much worse, the ones who feel the tale incomplete without mention of their parents, alma mater, grade point average and theme of their thesis film.
6) If you don't have a grasp on the basic grammar and vocabulary necessary to frame a coherent question, leave the time for someone who can. If you can't make it through ordering Jack-in-the-Box without a half-dozen likes, you-knows, umms, errs, etc and you don't know what the term focal length means, then you're probably not ready to play James Lipton, either.
7) Don't blather on about how the film affected you. Did you attend the screening in order to hang upon every word of someone else in the audience, detailing the innermost workings of their experience, of the film? Almost certainly not. Show some damned consideration for the rest of us. Put your innermost thoughts and dreams in a letter, and mail it c/o the producing company.
8) Don't yap about this project of yours that is just like the film you just finished watching. If your project was going to see the light of day, it probably would have happened, by now. Now that there's a major studio release just like your project, how would you evaluate the odds of your project going anywhere? My $.02: not too good.
...anyway, peeves acquired over the last few months' screenings. Please feel free to add your own, from the audiences with whom you've been entrapped, at the screenings you attend.
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