event photography

Film Festival Frolics

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For those of you playing along at home, here are a few more missteps, mistakes and outright idiocy at this year’s Toronto Film Festival:

• Internet service still not reliable and many times, it’s just dead. The wifi at a nearby Starbucks today was about 45 times faster than the film festival set-up.

• For some unknown reason, the festival doesn’t do printed call sheets (a list of people attending each movie premiere). Instead, it does e-mail call sheets. But the festival doesn’t e-mail sheets to everyone and it forgets some movies entirely. Some call sheets are being sent to newspaper or agency editors, some of whom are located in other countries, rather than being sent to the photographer at the festival.

At one premiere, a publicist from a US movie distributor expressed her surprise at the lack of call sheets and then opened her bag to pull out her studio’s own call sheets complete with names, bios and even small photos to help with IDs. Perfect.
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Film Festival Flop

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Following the previous post about events leading up to the annual Toronto Film Festival, today was Day One of the 35th annual event. Opening night. Full media attendance. What could possibly go wrong?

• A TV guy shooting B-roll inside the *media* lounge got kicked out of the room. Apparently no one is allowed to shoot video or photograph any part of the film festival’s “inside” areas. Also not allowed to video, photograph or interview anyone who works for the festival. And, get this, you’re not allowed to photograph the *exterior* of any theatre where film festival events are taking place (?!?).

 

• The film festival’s WiFi system died immediately. It was already down when I tried at 2:30 PM.

Can they fix the WiFi? – “I don’t know.”

Can they call someone to fix it? – I’m not sure.”

Is there a backup plan? – “I don’t know.”

Why does the press office use wired Internet but the media has wireless? – “The WiFi is unreliable.”

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Film Festival Madness

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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?
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Photo Op or Photo Flop

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It’s now three days into Queen Elizabeth’s tour of Canada and (as expected) the photos are quite boring and even non-existent. Political conventions and campaigns usually have better photo planning. I don’t know why the same effort isn’t put into a royal tour. I suspect it’s because a royal tour is basically run by the police rather than a creative director or a public relations agency.

The purpose of a photo op can be completely lost due to poor preplanning. For example, what’s the point of doing a statue unveiling when the statue isn’t in the photo? Why have the talent stroll through a garden when the garden isn’t visible?
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Royal Pain

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I just finished three days of following Prince Charles and Camilla through Toronto and southern Ontario. The Royal couple are currently on an 11-day official visit to Canada.

My first thought is that this is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. I can’t imagine how many millions of dollars are being spent on this. Many events were not open to the general public and most media events were only for a handful of pre-selected media organizations.

However if you consider, or at least pretend, that this is a marketing or public relations event, then perhaps it might be money well-spent if it had been properly planned and executed. This applies to all marketing efforts and not just royal visits. The client, (in this particular case, the Canadian taxpayer), must get their money’s worth.

Why spend time and money promoting a product, service or brand when that effort is only half-assed or squandered? Why just go through the motions? Marketing success needs both media and public exposure. Otherwise it’s just a tree falling in the forest.
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Film Festival thoughts

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The 34th annual Toronto Film Festival has come to an end.

A few things got better, some things got worse and most stayed the same (i.e. bad). One might think that after 34 years, the event could get it right.

What got better

• The main red carpet area was greatly enhanced:

No more TV crews in the background.

The arrival area was lit with just enough light to shoot late-night arrivals without having a jet-black background. Plus, the light was even daylight balanced. In previous years, night events were very dark, lit only by the existing one or two orange street lights. I suspect the new lighting was meant for the event’s own TV needs and not for photographers.

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Ready for your close-up

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I photographed a week-long tennis tournament last week for the event organizers. The media relations folks were, as always, fantastic. They were friendly, helpful and always available. They answered every question, sorted out every problem, had all necessary tournament information available and arranged every interview. They even handed out free pizza and beer at the end of each day. On very hot days, they’ve been known to hand out ice cream!
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