If nothing else, the Toronto Film festival serves as an example of how not to run an event. You might think that going into its 35th year, the film festival would know how to properly run a media event. But you’d be wrong.
Make no mistake, the primary function of the festival is for movie producers, actors and directors to get publicity for their projects, and for distributors to find buyers for their movies. To help do this, they need media exposure. The reason they come to Toronto is the huge media coverage. The film festival itself acknowledges the importance of this media coverage when it says the festival wouldn’t happen without media attendance.
Where to start?
• Film festival credential acceptance e-mails were not sent to all accepted media. Hate to think about journalists who were waiting to hear back about their acceptance before booking flights and hotels.
• The festival is implementing an e-mail RSVP system for red carpet photo access. But, the e-mail announcing the e-mail RSVP system wasn’t sent to all photographers. The festival starts tomorrow and it still hasn’t fixed this or responded to questions about it.
For some perspective on this, my employer’s wire service has over 3,000 subscribing publications. My photo coverage for these publications will depend on a single daily e-mail sent from a seemingly unreliable e-mail server and with no confirmation of receipt.
• Press conference room is still too small. As the festival saw from problems several years ago when room occupancy exceeded fire regulations, the conference room needs to be, at least, doubled in size. The extra space is available but the festival refuses to do anything. Maybe it can’t afford to rent extra chairs?
• A photographers’ shooting area in the conference room? Ha! Photographers are an after-thought and they get stuck in a small area off to the side. Work area in the conference room to edit and send pictures? Forget it. Deadlines? Who cares.
Truth be told, the “press conferences” are packaged as cable TV shows and the reporters are used as the unwitting audience. This is why the festival doesn’t really want photographers in the room, (photographers distract from the TV show), but it “compromises” by putting photographers into a small area off to the sides. Two years ago, the “compromise” was to throw photographers out after two minutes.
• Upon check-in at the film festival, each photographer gets a press kit in a bag. Everything, including the bag and the hundreds of pages of paper, is instantly disposable since it’s all useless. (Okay, the coupon for a free slice of pizza and the sample of microwave popcorn are worth keeping.)
Photographers need only two things in the press kit: a list of where and when each event takes place, and the names of who will be there. Guess what’s not included in the press kit?
It’s obvious the festival has no idea what news photographers do and what they need to do that job.
The list of events is available in another room at the other end of the hotel but there will be no printed list of people attending. Instead, the festival will e-mail a list of names each day. (Take a moment to re-read the earlier paragraphs about the festival’s e-mail system not working properly.)
Last year, the film festival did both paper lists of names as well as e-mailed lists. For many photographers, including myself, the e-mailed lists arrived after the events or not at all. Thank goodness for the paper lists.
• The festival (unintentionally?) provides several e-mail addresses for journalists to contact its press office. Some of these addresses are obviously from last year’s festival. So far, either no e-mail address works or none of the 600 paid film festival employees bother to reply.
• As always, there are no work facilities for photographers at any movie venue. These venues have appropriate facilities since other events use them but the film festival refuses.
• No Internet access except in one hotel meeting room (“media lounge”) which closes at 6 PM eventhough events can run well-past 10 PM and the media works just as late.
• Isn’t the country’s largest Internet service provider the number one sponsor of the film festival? Why can’t Bell provide Internet access at all the venues? Aren’t the two main movie venues already wired with Bell Internet service?
One might think that if Bell was smart (ha!) or the film festival was smart (double ha!), they’d rent or sell those USB Internet sticks, loaded with a couple gigabytes of bandwidth, to the hundreds (thousands?) of journalists attending. These USB sticks could be set to expire at the end of the festival unless the journalist wanted to extend it. Imagine Internet access anywhere, anytime you needed to file photos or stories. Let foreign journalists save a ton of money on data roaming charges? Nope, no one wants that.
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It’s painfully obvious that the film festival doesn’t consult with any media outlets or any photographers. It’s also obvious that it isn’t paying attention. Every major sports event knows how to run a press conference, how to position photographers and how to set up a functioning work room. Even political campaigns know how to do all this. But every year for 35 years, the film festival in Toronto struggles and fails to reinvent the wheel.
How many years (decades?) did it take the festival to realize it should locate its press office in the same venue as the event itself? Before this happened, when a journalist wanted a simple call sheet or any other information, they had to drive, take a taxi or run to a nearby shopping mall where the press office was located.
But there is good news this year:
• It appears the red carpet dress code has been dropped. I guess since the film festival’s own staff and all the PR flaks ignored the dress code last year, there was no point in forcing it on the photographers.
• The new hotel venue is two blocks from the main theatre. No more rushed driving through downtown Toronto during afternoon rush hour, trying to get from hotel to theatre in time for the next event.
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If you’re planning to hold an event where media attendance and coverage is important, learn from the mistakes of the Toronto Film Festival. Consult with media outlets and consult with photographers. Understand what they need to do a good job and why that good job is important to you.
The smoother your event runs from a media standpoint, the higher the quality (and even volume) of coverage. Better quality coverage means better play in the next day’s papers.
Excellent post! I think the problem is that they HAVE consulted with ONE media outlet and that’s their U.S.-based official photographer, the two-headed beast known as Getty/Wireimage.
I think they feel that as long as those two have access and images, everyone else can take the long walk off the short pier. As one photographer said to me once, the white step and repeat, which tends to look dirty and wash things out, doesn’t bother Wireimage because they shoot on the carpet and not facing the white wall.