My Encounter with Encounters 2013

Pop-ups, back-patting and the changing role of the film festival. A brief reflection on my experience of volunteering for Encounters 2013 and how this exploration of a film festival formed a part of my ongoing research into the transfigurations of how the spectator interfaces with the spectacle.



What is a Film Festival?

This year I volunteered for the Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival in Bristol. I did this for four reasons:

1. I love film. Obviously.
2. It gave me an opportunity to network and build up contacts for future projects.
3. I was relocating from Bath to Bristol and I reasoned it would be a good way to get to know some other like-minded individuals.
4. It gave me an opportunity to do some hands-on research and exploration of the public exhibition field.

Encounters 2013 Launch Event @ Creative Common.

Volunteering for Encounters provided me with an opportunity to witness a film festival up front, something I had never done before; as I commented during the festival: “I’m not here for the films, I’m here for research" - see Ways 2 Interface. Examining a film festival (the spectacle) and its outreach to the public (the spectator) was something I wanted to observe in the mists of the current digital re-birth and how that digital upgrade is influencing the purpose of the film festival. Additionally, I wanted to answer a more simple query, something I had never really addressed: I wanted to understand the purpose of a film festival - what is it for?

Bathing in the Bath Film Festival 2013

Yes, I was there. 

I volunteered at 2013's Bath Film Festival, just like the Encounters Film Festival before it.

I also got to see the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, on the same Saturday I did my festival training. So I consider the Doctor Who extravaganza as one of the festival's screenings!

And here's some pictures I took of the festival...

It's Made of Wood: Cardiff, The TARDIS and all of Time and Space

On Sunday 18th August, I was very fortunate to be able to go to Cardiff and have a set tour of the actual TARDIS set that is used in the television show Doctor Who. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a huge Doctor Who fan, so this opportunity was like meeting royalty!

Behind those doors are all of time and space. Do you want to come with me?

In addition to the tour of the TARDIS set, we also received a location tour of the Cardiff Bay area and were shown various locations used in the show and its spin-off Torchwood, locations ranging from New York in the 1930s to the Boeshane Paninsula of the 51st Century. While in the Bay area we were also fortunate enough to see the BBC filming some of episode 3 of the third series of Sherlock - two for the price of one!

Lestrade walks into an off licence - spoiler alert!

The Blog is Back!

Hello, my name is Peter O'Brien and I am not Irish. However, I am a writer, researcher and filmmaker and this is my blog - it's back (again)!

I'm back (without the long hair and five years older)!

Truth be told this blog has had a bit of rough start, considering I started it about three years ago and it only has fifty odd posts. I have created a number of blogs (Something to do with Film being the first one) through which I have been dabbling with concept of "blogging". Each blog (Something to do with Writing, Something to do with Making Films, 366 FRAMES 2013: My 366 Project, Forward Facing Photo) has built on the one before it and it was only really in my most recent one, EYES of a storyteller, that I hit upon the best blogging style. In short, you treat your blog like a sketch-and/or-scrapbook: spontaneous, cluttered and quirky. 

I have also finally figured out the focus this blog should take. The name of it, Something to do with Film, would suggest that it is a typical cinephile review/analysis/appreciation blog and it is... and it is not. Rather, this is my life-blog and it has a particular focus on film because people like me have something inside... something to do with film. As I commented in Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, my theoretical dissertation: 

"When I am talking about films, I am talking about humanity’s need for narratives and immersion in fantasy; its need for reflexivity and rationality; its need to expand, to explore and to extrapolate. These are fundamentally ancient yearnings and, when properly understood, they will reveal fundamental insights about reality, human nature and our continually changing ways of being therein." 

Basically, I am going to write about my relationship with film (and all audio visual content) and use that as an illustration of my own life. Simple.

It's a reflexive relationship (me now).

In a similar vein, I am also orchestrating a research project, Ways 2 Interface, that is investigating our ways of being the spectator and the spectacle (it continues my theoretical dissertation research project) of which this blog will form a component.

I am still building the website, but keep your eyes peeled and follow the twitter account @Ways2Interface

Bingo Bongo Bango :D