I've been pretty awful at blogging and producing written content in general... have lots of drafts that I never get through. Well, no time better than Covid quarantine time to change that!
Inspired by (or copying directly) Amanda, I've decided to run my own version of SIFF@Home, since SIFF 2020 was sadly cancelled due to, well, everything being cancelled. I loved her method of trying to simulate SIFF through the curation (picking the types of movies and the percentages of those types that she'd normally see during SIFF) and behavior (dressing up for "Opening Night," putting midnight movies on the program just to ignore them, etc). I am not as hardcore of a SIFF-goer, and a normal year for me might be 20 films and 5 volunteer shifts, but I also love planning, so I've programmed a more-than-full lineup for myself, and I'll probably end up watching just a fraction of it.
What I looked for in choosing films to put on the schedule:
The list of feature films! Way more than I will end up watching. Can filter and mouse over the blue square for more details. I also have my schedule on Tableau, but it's too tricky to get it to be display-friendly.
Inspired by (or copying directly) Amanda, I've decided to run my own version of SIFF@Home, since SIFF 2020 was sadly cancelled due to, well, everything being cancelled. I loved her method of trying to simulate SIFF through the curation (picking the types of movies and the percentages of those types that she'd normally see during SIFF) and behavior (dressing up for "Opening Night," putting midnight movies on the program just to ignore them, etc). I am not as hardcore of a SIFF-goer, and a normal year for me might be 20 films and 5 volunteer shifts, but I also love planning, so I've programmed a more-than-full lineup for myself, and I'll probably end up watching just a fraction of it.
What I looked for in choosing films to put on the schedule:
- New-ish films. Film festivals tend to feature fresh films. I decided I wanted films made in the last 5 years, favoring newer ones, but also accepting older ones from underrepresented countries. And I threw in a few old films, since SIFF always has a few archival films.
- Things that sound interesting to me, plus a little variety. The low number of action films and complete lack of horror is intentional.
- Prioritize films currently offering rentals to support local theaters. I've been trying to watch these anyway, and there's the added benefit of many of them being very new films. I have films on the program benefitting SIFF, Northwest Film Forum, and Scarecrow Video.
- The rest of the films are streamable through the services that I have access to, which includes Netflix, Kanopy, Hoopla, and Criterion Channel.
- I selected a large number of short films that I'll screen with some of the shorter films and put into programs for Shortsfest. These films were sourced from this article, SxSW shorts, Tribeca Shorts, and Criterion Channel.
- Amanda posted her schedule, so I looked for films on her list that were available to me, interesting to me, and films that I hadn't seen already, and I added all of those to my schedule at roughly the same time that she's watching them.
- I put together the list of films in slightly over one evening, so it was done very quickly.
The list of feature films! Way more than I will end up watching. Can filter and mouse over the blue square for more details. I also have my schedule on Tableau, but it's too tricky to get it to be display-friendly.
I'm not 100% sure I will stick to this plan, to be honest. My time is already very fully utilized, even in quarantine, and I have a few things going on that require daily time on top of a full time job. But this idea really called for me, and I realized that I'm in great need of inspiration and something to be excited about. So as long as I can keep doing this and all of the mandatory things in my life and stay sane and well-rested, I'm going to stick with it. And I fully intend to blog my journey, something that I used to do during SIFF and wish I'd stuck with because the records are nice to have!
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