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ATTENDING AND REVIEWING ARTS EVENTS

Today I went on a college trip to the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York. It was am amazing opportunity to see the short films that people are working on amd what takes them from being amateur to more professional. We also had the honour of meeting and getting a speech from Lisa Bryer, Producer of the well-known and highly-rated feature film ‘The Last King of Scotland’. (after realising I hadn’t seen the film, I watched it within a few days after the event and it is very well done, I have a lot of positives to say about the film!)

The Aesthetica Short Film Festival lasted several days and explored many different genres of film which were previewed in separate theatres, scattered across the city of York. When I arrived with my friends it was exciting because we are all interested in film and it is great to see works of people like us in the hopeful future. The opportunity opened up new experiences to watch short films that are much different to the full feature Hollywood films we are all used to seeing at the cinema. Though we ended up only seeing 5 short films and a handful of experimental films, we thoroughly enjoyed our time, the whole atmosphere and events there were fantastic for us all and opened up our eyes into the world of film and the difference between these short films and feature films.

Here are the short films we watched on the day:

In relation to my Arts Challenge, the event did not open up many opportunities to see into post-production and special effects, however, during our time in York we did visit a section based on “experimentation” within film. This was definitely an interesting experience but it showed how film explores all different techniques to portray events and gain a response from the audience. The visuals that we saw showed the use of effects and manipulation that created extraordinary and paranormal sequences which were quite often hard to watch. It was important to appreciate these though, because without experimenting with effects to get a response, film wouldn’t be how it is now.