Rochester Film Festival

Rochester Film Festival is the oldest continuously held independent short film festival. It was founded in 1959 by a company called Movies on a Shoestring, Inc. Their vision was to provide an environment in which independent film makers could show their short films to wider audiences. Starting in 1972 they put together a traveling show of the best films from each of the previous festivals, called The Best of the Fest. The films that they choose are a variety of narrative, documentary and animation. The only criteria is they are short films and independently created.

The submission process is a two step process. Every entry is viewed in full by staff members who vote on which films to keep. Following this preliminary judging, Then final judges view the films that were kept to have a final selection. Every film that is kept receives the Shoestring Trophy.
1. What time is your interview scheduled and who will you be talking with when you call/skype?
  Brian Moffitt has responded and w says he will get back to me with exact time but that he could do it this week.
2. Who started it and who runs it?
   It was founded in 1959 by a company called Movies on a Shoestring, Inc.
3. What is the mission of the festival/conference? (copy and paste the first paragraph)
    By 1971 Movies on a Shoestring had firmly established itself among the world’s leading amateur festivals, so we modified our name to the Rochester International Amateur Film Festival. In 1983 we accepted our first video entries. The worldwide growth of film schools and of the film industry in general has led to a great increase in the number of professional quality short films being produced and competing for spots in our festival, so in 1996 we dropped the word “amateur” from our name and became The Rochester International Film Festival.
 4. How does this compare with their actual programming choices from the past two year? Be specific in describing what they program (mode, categories within mode, niche, Political? Global? Local? Gender? Sexuality? Race? Any themes that you see? etc…)
  The only criteria is that the film is under 30 mins and is indepenent
 5. Where is the event?
The festival is in Rochester New York
6. When is the event? (Give dates from last year if not current)
 April 23rd-April 25th 2015
7. How do you submit? Snail mail, online, withoutabox, through their site, etc…
 They prefer to receive submissions through snail mail.
 8. When are the deadlines to enter? Early? Reg? Late?
  Early is December 1st and the latest would be February 1st
9. How much does it cost to enter?
 $35 entry fee is before December 1st, $50 if between December 1st and February 1st
10. Who’s eligible, what are the guidelines to enter?
  Independently made short films that are no longer than 30 minutes
11. Is there a Student category?
12. What formats do they except for jurying? DVD, Vimeo, Flash drives?
 The format should be DVDs
13. What formats do they except for exhibition/screening?
 They also use DVDs for this
14. How many films screened at the festival last year?
 26 short films
15. How long is a typical shorts block or paper presentation block at their event?
  All of the film blocks are short films
 16. How many films or papers do they program per block?
  Between 6 to 8 films
17. How do people register to attend? Is there a cost to attend as a guest?
  They have free admission for guests
18. Look at sponsorship page and see what businesses. Grants and private entities give money to the event. Figure out how many of each kind and note any leads that might be useful to us.
   They are partnered with Yelp and George Eastman House. They also promote donations from festival guests.
19. What are their sponsorship levels and incentives for each level?
  If you give $25 or more they will put your name in the program book
20. Did they have a kickstarter or indiegogo? What incentives did they have for each level of donor?
  They do their donations directly through their website using paypal
21. What kind of non­traditional film/video events have they had before? Things like Installations, 'Visual Soundwalls,' VJing etc.
  They focus on short films.
 22. Are there ways in which they have expanded the typical film screening event? How have they branched out from sitting in a dark room in front of a screen? Our website is our virtual face. Every day our site has incoming traffic, nationally and international
  They have an event called The Best of the Fest that takes the best films from each festival and travels to different cities.
23. Is the layout easy to navigate? What makes it easy?
  The site was easy to navigate because it had easy to find link buttons taking me to find the information that I needed.
24. Is the layout difficult to navigate? What makes it difficult?
25. Can you find the information you are looking for on the homepage or via a link on the homepage?
 The easy to read link allowed me to find the information that I needed
26. Aesthetically, what catches your eye? What's cool about it?
27. Aesthetically, what doesn't fit in? What makes it look bad?
  The website is a little too simple and outdated looking,but this could be a positive because it could fit in with the fact that this is the oldest short film festival and it makes it more homey.
28. Should there be more information? Is the page too bare?
  I think the page shows just the right amount of information so not to overwhelm the visitor.
 29. Should there be less information? Is the page too busy?
  No
30. What would you do differently if you were to redesign this website?
  I would try to incorporate more colors and try to make the website appear more modern and quirky.
31. What would you keep the same if you were to redesign this website?
  I would want to keep the simplicity of the website.