What I Learned Being a Feature Film Screener for a Popular Film Festival

There are a few schools of thought to employ when creating and producing films. I’m not about to discuss how to make a film, nor how to get that film accepted into a festival. I’m simply focusing on what happens when your film is viewed by a screener and some of the thought processes that we screeners go through when advancing or passing a film. 

What’s most important: 

Does the film have a beginning, middle, and end? 

This can certainly be subjective, but I think that’s the point. 

Can anyone watch your film and leave satisfied that they’ve been given the answers they need. Not the answers they want, but the ones they need. You can certainly leave a few plot lines open ended but you cannot provide anything new in the last thirty seconds and expect us to leave satisfied. 

(I’m guilty of this sin myself. I’ve submitted a film that acted more like a giant teaser for a larger project. Of course, that was my design as I was trying to raise interest and funding for a feature film, but when it came down to being accepted into a film festival… I likely raised more questions than answers ) 

Are your characters enthralling? 

By this I mean, do they have unique dialogue among each other, or do they all sound the same? Do they experience growth on screen? Not every character needs to, but the more characters that go through a period of growth the better. The more we see and feel change, the better. 

You can’t have each character cracking the same jokes or making the same mistakes. Look at any ensemble film and notice how no one character acts or sounds like another. 

Leonardo does not sound like Michelangelo, and Donatello does not make the same mistakes Raphael does (I went with the easiest example here)

Is there a through line? 

Essentially, does your story make sense? It does not have to be told in a linear fashion but we need to know that by the end of the film you had an end goal one way or another. It’s not enough to have one compelling scene after another, they need to connect in way that establishes development. 

Is there clear direction? 

This is where most of the films fell apart for me. It is the last section of review for screeners and it pulls from each of the categories that came before it.

Is there a clear understanding that a vision was present when creating this film? It’s not enough to be consistent in your editing, or your shooting style or even your acting. You have to make clear choices and we need to see those choices unfold on screen. 

As an example, if you choose to film an entire scene from only one camera angle rather than many angles - I’m led to believe there was a specific reason behind that choice. It may be that your characters are discussing something that will affect more than just their own lives and so you want to show that visually by including their surroundings. That’s a choice. 

Too many times I’ve watched films that choose to capture a scene from a series of angles and make no distinction as to why we’re seeing any one angle over another. If the camera is behind your protagonist I want to know why it is there, and the answer better not be “because it looked cool” 

What’s not important: 

Budget

I’m asked at one point, did the budget get in the way of the story? I am not asked, was this a low budget film? 

There was a film that I watched and I had advanced that contained almost no lighting, no set design, and sometimes poor acting, but I was so enthralled with its characters and I was so invested in their journey and I was so satisfied with the ending that I was clear when I stated, “No, the budget did not get in the way of this film. Please advance it” 

Timing

For someone programming the event… Sure, maybe the timing is important. But for me, as a screener advancing films into the next round? I did not care about the timing. If you had a boring film that was over two hours long I was still going to finish it till the end. That’s my job and that’s my dedication to giving you the most accurate review. 

What did I learn and what should you take away:

Proper sound design is important

You have to remember that most people are watching these films on their computers at home. Not all of us have a surround system. Nor can we play your films through our high definition televisions. They’re likely on a Vimeo link or Google drive. So making sure we can hear your film properly on those systems is super important. 

Also Google Drive is not conducive to this process. Please pick Vimeo or YouTube. 

There is a legit scoring process

Yes, we score your films based on an evaluation process. It’s not an illusory idea. We’re given a series of categories for which we rate your film and those are tallied up to a score that can either advance you to the next round or pass on you. Rest assured that this is a scientific process designed to make it easy and consistent for screeners so that we are not overwhelmed. Does this film deserve to advance? Well, let’s look at the score. 

More than one screener watches your film for reach round

If I watch your film and I pass on it, that’s not the end of its journey. There will be another person shortly around the bend to watch your film and give it the same consideration I did. 

It’s all about having a compete vision. 

It’s not enough for your film to entertain me. It needs to be complete in all senses of the word. It needs to be something that I know went through the rounds of concept to completion. Even if you fall short in a few categories, if I leave that film feeling like I got a peek into your life or your imagination and it was compelling enough to feel real to me at the time - then you will advance to the next round. 

The competition is near endless. 

I watched nearly 30 hours worth of films in a few weeks. And that’s just me. There are a hundred more screeners just like me watching even more than I did. 

When they start you off they tell you to be more critical than you want to be. They remind you constantly that there are thousands of films at play here and we need to be serious about how we review them. It’s not a pity party for a film that almost makes it. It has to be a cut above the rest. The number of films I watched versus the number of films I passed is of great dissonance. 

A studio-produced film will come across your desk 

It’s no secret that film festivals are a medium for studio-produced projects to garner more attention. Every so often a film would come around that I immediately knew was made with a budget that far exceeds the average independent filmmaker. Not only that, but you’ll see actors you recognize. It does not mean that it is an automatic pass. It must still go through the same process as all the rest. But something to remember is that a film of that caliber often has a resume of experience to build off of. If the budget looks as high as it is there’s usually a reason for that. The script was good enough to attract these actors and/or that director. So you must remember that you are still competing with giants. It may seem unfair, but even if a studio’s name is recognizable, it doesn’t always mean that their exposure is guaranteed. They are still playing the same game you are. 

Overall, what can you take from this that you didn’t already know? 

It’s not like any of us are making a film that isn’t actively trying to exceed these goals.

Well, for one - there are real people watching your work. Remember that. 

I’m a real person. I set aside time out of my day for your work and I gave it the utmost consideration. It’s not a machine-based AI slop job. There will always be a subjective point of view at work here and that is to your benefit as an artist. 

This is and always will be an art form.

Do not creatively settle for your film. You are not a director on contract for Warner Bros where you have the benefit of failing upward. You must create what feels most honest to you, and what speaks volumes for you. Do not be afraid to trust your instincts. The point of me writing this was not to give you a means to be accepted into every festival. The point of me writing this was to remind you that behind all the glamour and special effects, this is all still an art form. We are still watching these films as a search for meaning. I want to leave the screening room (my computer at home) feeling like I was gifted a piece of your unique life experience. Even if that experience centers around a vampire’s diary. 

If it felt real to me, I don’t care that it is a complete work of fiction. 

Make it real. Make it personal. Make it impactful. 

Please keep creating! 

I know we’ll all be here watching! 

Cheers to the upcoming festival circuit and cheers to you as artists! 

Continuing Education at SVA

Recently I enrolled in classes at the School for Visual Arts in New York City. I asked leadership at Drury Design to grant me the opportunity to expand my skills and they gladly obliged - signing me up for two courses over the summer. 

I signed up for After Effects Professional and Cinema 4D. 

While I’ve been working with After Effects for years now, I couldn’t escape the imposter syndrome of knowing that I am completely self taught. Pretty much every discipline I practice in post production has been a result of my self-instruction. I was an English major in college and though I tinkered with video editing, I was never ‘classically trained’ 

Having a resource like YouTube is one of the best aspects of working creatively in the 21st Century. You can learn anything you want at any time for free!

And that’s exactly what I did. 

For years I was running to YouTube and discovering how to do simple tasks. Sometimes I still revisit old videos to remind myself of a trick I learned a few years ago but was only able to use once or twice. 

After Effects is one of those programs you can never fully explore. There’s always going to be one little effect or detail you’ve never heard of before and that’s what makes furthering education so impactful. 

I probably could’ve started with the After Effects basics course, and I may still return to it, but I knew I was pretty advanced already so I wanted to jump right into the big stuff. 

And to my surprise, there were so many little tricks I was completely unaware of. 

No, that’s a lie.  I was not surprised at all. I knew I was missing out on shortcuts and simple workarounds. I knew I was giving myself more work than needed simply because I didn’t know some obvious workflows or shortcuts. 

But that wasn’t the largest take away from the class. 

For me, the class was especially good at alleviating the ever-present imposter syndrome that many of us creatives suffer from. 

I’ll give 100% of that credit over to my professor Adam Meyers. He couldn’t have been more approachable as a professor, or more encouraging as a teacher. Most of his class was watching him work through a new challenge or creative endeavor. We’d ask questions along the way and give him challenges he’d never had before. It can’t be overstated that simply watching him work on a shared screen was more impactful to me than any ‘shortcut’ he could’ve taught me. 

He took every step of his process with the patience and curiosity of a true artist; and he reminded me that this is in fact still an art form. That there will be a sketch process, a research process, scrapped drafts and days of little progress that should be treated like milestones. 

Adam has been animating for decades, and he knows what he’s talking about. Trust me, the guy is a professional; but when you ask him a question he’s never heard before and he says “I don’t know, let’s try it out!” It reminds you to take it easy on yourself and to commit to one step at a time in your own process.

The classes at SVA were very affordable. Three hours for each class, one night a week, for 10 weeks.  

You certainly get your money’s worth. 

And on top of that, Adam will package up all his lesson plans into videos for you to review later. 

Of course I’ve watched back a few of them already and I will continue to reference them for years to come. 

I highly recommend these courses and I applaud SVA for hosting their “Continuing Education” department for people like me who just want a little assistance or a refresher between jobs to enhance my skills and make my position that much more valuable at work. 

And I also want to thank Drury Design for providing the reimbursement on these courses and encouraging me to further my education!

Spreading The Word with Narcan® Nasal Spray

It can be difficult to find a sense of purpose in the work you do. For me, it’s been about balancing a career of passions versus a need to pay rent. It is not often that the two will collide. However, luckily, I’ve found that the work I do at Drury Design, and more specifically for Narcan® Nasal Spray has brought with it a sense of purpose. 

If you’ve been living life under a rock for the past few decades then you might not understand our country has been wracked with substance abuse in the form of opioids. The infamous drug has been linked to the highest number of accidental deaths in the United States. Which can be from an addiction gone awry or a simple one-time ingestion at the wrong quantity. It’s a drug that is prescribed by doctors, a drug that is sold on the street, and a drug that is cut with an even deadlier substance.

Narcan® Nasal Spray, however, is a simple over the counter medication that’s designed to rapidly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. It’s literally one pump into the nostril and after a few minutes your loved one, or even a stranger you stopped to help, is awake again. 

Working for a product like this, helping spread awareness for a product like this, educating people on a product like this, has all been very satisfying for me on an impactful level. I feel like I’m making a positive change in the world, and the response I’ve been getting from people on the streets of New York is proof of that. 

Most of the work I do is usually tied up in NDA’s and often doesn’t leave the screens of the clients we produce it for, but for Narcan® the whole point is to spread this information as far and as wide as possible. So I’m going into detail on what I’ve been able to accomplish for them here on this blog.

At first we were working on testimonials from people with direct experience with opioid overdose.

Being an expert on remote video directing, I was leading the effort in recording personal stories from people across the coucntry on how they were able to save lives using Narcan® Nasal Spray. We were virtually in their homes and listening to them tell life-and-death stories about their loved ones. I knew then that this campaign was going to be important. 

Creatively speaking, these raw videos were visually coming in a little flat. We are recording either on a laptop or on a smart phone so there’s no dramatic lighting or second cameras to rely on. We had to get creative in the post-production department. And that’s exactly what we did. 

We created an aesthetic that felt like a living, breathing, art form. Using all the skills I’ve developed over the years I leaned into this tactile stop-motion aesthetic. Words were animated in to emphasize their stories and different pieces of art were utilized whenever necessary.

Though we had a specific style, it certainly felt like each video was its own creation - building from scratch each time. 

We created something special and the videos now live on in their Instagram and YouTube channels. You can see them grow aesthetically over time. We’ve since distilled them down to these bite-size moments that anyone can ingest through social media channels. 

Our next challenge with Narcan® was to create a series of educational videos to explain how to use the product, when to use the product, and any pitfalls or legal issues associated the product.

I knew this would be a large creative lift no matter what. So my plan was to create a workflow that would work for me. I needed something I could work with in a quick enough fashion as we had six videos on our plate at once. 

Working with a designer at Drury Design we decided to base the concept on the omnipresent CPR posters that you see throughout bars and restaurants. If you’ve ever walked through a series of eclectic dive bars you’ve surely seen what they’ve done with these necessary posters. 

What starts as necessary education becomes a fun experiment as you get to see dancing instructors or famous movie characters acting out what to do in the event that someone is choking. We thought it was so much fun to play with what is normally such a serious subject. This is as much a life-and-death situation as an opioid overdose. So we thought, if they can have fun surely we can have fun too. 

So taking inspiration from those, and from the instructions you’d find inside an airplane safety manual, we developed a series of posters for each educational video. 

It was my plan to animate each poster by adding depth to the 2D piece of art like something out of a puppet show. 

With this plan in mind we could have our artist draw out original characters, our designer build them into a poster, and have it handed over to me as an illustrator file so I could animate each element inside After effects. 

We ended up creating some of the most involved pieces of animation I’ve ever worked on. And the finished product has been a hit! The videos now live on their social media channels as well as their YouTube page and main website! Not only that, but they’ve asked for more! We’re now working on our 9th educational video and the workflow has only gotten more seamless. 

Our next challenge with Narcan® was to create something more personal that resonates with real people rather than anything animated.

Narcan® wanted to hear from people on the street and get personal with those who weren’t researched or prepped beforehand. While all our testimonials were true stories, we certainly gave our appointments time to collect themselves and present their stories in the best possible light. Narcan® wanted to move beyond the prep and onto something more instant. 

So we thought, here we are in New York City, let’s use that to our advantage and get out on the street to actually talk to people! 

And that’s exactly what we did! 

I hired a friend of mine who is an expert with a steadicam, grabbed a microphone and just started walking the streets of Manhattan, asking people what they knew about opioid overdoses, if they had had personal experiences with the drug and if they knew how easy it was to save someone’s life with Narcan® Nasal Spray. 

The results were fantastic. 

We got real responses from real people in real time. Strangers on the street giving us their honest opinions on how they viewed the destructive nature of opioids in America. It was enlightening to see what people really thought as they weren’t afraid to give us their honest truth. 

Our first outing was an experiment in how the world views the epidemic.

Do they think it’s a problem of pharamaceutical overprescription or is it a problem of addiction? Do people deserve to be saved or should they face the consequences of their actions? Our goal was to break the stigma around opioid addiction and spread awareness that it isn’t always someone looking for a high. That it could be your grandmother facing the pains of a hip replacement and suddenly can’t ween off her new meds. 

Our second outing was focused on saving lives.

We wanted the people to know that it could be easy to bring someone back from an overdose - that there was a product out there capable of saving a life in less than a few minutes. The results were better than we could’ve imagined. More people than we thought were educated in the matter, they knew the Narcan® name and they were ecstatic to receive a free box of it from us after the interview was finished.

Overall, I’m happy to say this work has had the most positive impact of anything I’ve ever worked on. I’m so very proud to be creating this work and I’m happy to have received all the accolades for it over the years. 

We’ve won Gold, Platinum, Silver, etc etc. Different awards from different agencies over the years. 

We still have a happy working relationship with Narcan® and we still continue to put out award-winning positive cultural-shifting work for them. 

Fo anyone who has ever participated in our street interviews I want to take this time to personally thank you for your participation. I hope you never have to use your Narcan® device, but I do hope you spread the awareness and education to your friends and family - because, as we’ve learned, it doesn’t matter who you are, any person at any time can be at risk of an opioid overdose.