PRE-FILM SPONSOR/LOGO PARADE
Before every film, while people are finding their seats and getting settled, a "Sponsor/Logo Parade" plays on the screen. This used to be an actual slide-show - but we turned it into a DVD. This gave us the ability to do so much more than just show static logos.
We started small by throwing some animation in the Parade and adding an informational Runner Bar along the bottom. Now we're embedding video advertisements within the reel. The Individual Giving department came up with the ingenious idea of including humorous workout videos - "The Passholder Fitness Advisory Council - SIFF Cares", tongue-in-cheek versions of what you'd see on transatlantic flights . This is the second year we've shot and edited the video.
We've since been contacted by other Film Festivals around the world to enhance their Pre-Film Sponsor/Logo Parade, as well.
LOBBY SPONSOR DVD
Some sponsors are given the opportunity to brand an individual screening (each film can have as many as six sponsors attached to it).
The benefit to this is that the sponsor gets targeted, personal recognition before the film. To go along with an announcer saying, "Please thank our sponsors so-and-so" there also used to also be print-collateral in the form of big posters at the theater entrance with the sponsor's logo. The problem with these posters is that they cost a fortune, required a lot of storage space and, if the sponsor to a show changed, new ones would have to be printed.
We turned them into a single DVD.
The beauty of the DVD is in the complex code hidden under a slick, easy-to-use interface.
Before the audience is let into the theater, the Venue Manager pops the Lobby DVD into a TV set up next to the entrance and picks, from an alphabetized list of up to 100 different companies and organizations, the sponsors for the upcoming screening. Then the DVD does its magic by creating on the fly a mini Logo Parade of just the sponsors the manager selected and special festival slides mixed in.
No more wasted posters. No more fear of last-minute changes.
It really is, if we may toot our own horns, a beautiful thing.
SIFF LOUNGE ADS AND TRAILER REEL
New this year, SIFF has their own lounge in a local bar! In this lounge, in addition to drinks and new festival friends, you get to watch a continuous loop of classic and contemporary film trailers! Of course, someone had to assemble the loop of trailers...and that was us!
The Lounge, being a new thing, has to be advertised. And what better way, than with some classic trailer parodies!
The talented SIFF photographer Les Sterling took some artistic pictures of the lounge in action and we cut them together into two trailers using the structures and styles of the Casablanca and A Clockwork Orange .
These trailers play before every film as a part of the Pre-Film Sponsor/Logo Parade and on siff.net.
EDUCATION
This will be Kris' fourth year teaching the Digital Media Lab classes, in conjunction with The Seattle Mac Store and IrisInk. The classes include the hands-on sessions "Introduction to Final Cut Pro", "Advanced Techniques in Final Cut Pro", "Introduction to DVD Studio Pro" and "Introduction to Final Cut Studio" as well as a lecture/Q&A on encoding.
The Lab has nearly doubled in size over the last four years and continues to be standing-room only.