This weekend I was able to attend the Bay Area International Children's Film Festival in Alameda! My short, Mon Monde, had a screening there alongside a lot of really amazing animated and live action films. Some of which included, Franziska Buch's Here Comes Lola, Carlos Baena's Play By Play, Studd and Patterson's tiniest stop-mo heroine, Dot, and of course, Leonardo by Jim Capobianco. (Who also happened to be running the event!)
The theater was so bright, colorful, and filled with children! They were running around and playing between breaks, but let me tell you, once the films started...they were all so quiet and attentive. I was very impressed. That feeling was soon replaced with nervous panic, however, once I realized that children can be some of the bluntest critics out there! As the films played, I sat in petrified silence as the kids around me exclaimed loudly to their respective guardians whether or not they approved of the shorts. I became horrified at the thought of Mon Monde not being received well. Not only that, I was expected to do a short Q&A session afterward! Would anyone even ask questions? Or worse, what if the children couldn't even remember the film amongst the array of fantastical shorts?Just as I had convinced myself that the knot in my stomach was an overactive ulcer...a miracle happened.
The film did not play. Only music on a black screen.
THANK GOD FOR TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES!
It was just the moment I needed to collect myself and remember that the most important critic is and will always be...yourself. Sure, there is always room for improvement and it is important to be able to expand your horizons by taking critique... but in the very end, I want to make films that will make me happy. And I had an absolute blast working on Mon Monde! If other audiences see what my team and I worked so hard on and enjoy it too, well then, that's wonderful. And if they don't? Then that's fine too. I still have hands to draw with. No negative opinion can crush my artistic voice.
So with that after-school-special-speech out of the way...all of the glitches were resolved and Mon Monde eventually played. The final result? Both children and adults generally liked it! The Q&A session went over well, too. I may have rambled on a little longer than necessary...coupled with a few fits of nervous giggles, but other than that I think I handled it very well! Ha ha ha!
If I had to choose...The most perfect moment of that festival happened when I was waiting in line for the restroom. A little girl and her mother were ahead of me, and the girl kept looking at me and then whispering to her mother. I made funny faces at her in the meantime. (What else can you do in line with a bunch of children?) I didn't really think anything of it, until after we came out, and the mother was ushering her child away.
"I really liked your film!" the girl said as she passed by.
She must have been no more than 5 or 6.
That was the highest compliment I received that day.
So with that after-school-special-speech out of the way...all of the glitches were resolved and Mon Monde eventually played. The final result? Both children and adults generally liked it! The Q&A session went over well, too. I may have rambled on a little longer than necessary...coupled with a few fits of nervous giggles, but other than that I think I handled it very well! Ha ha ha!
If I had to choose...The most perfect moment of that festival happened when I was waiting in line for the restroom. A little girl and her mother were ahead of me, and the girl kept looking at me and then whispering to her mother. I made funny faces at her in the meantime. (What else can you do in line with a bunch of children?) I didn't really think anything of it, until after we came out, and the mother was ushering her child away.
"I really liked your film!" the girl said as she passed by.
She must have been no more than 5 or 6.
That was the highest compliment I received that day.
