其實八場未來影展 未來短片節 下來， 我們發現最大的問題是我們能夠真的讓大家都知道我們又有活動了，我們什麼時候有下一場影展。大部分我們都把訊息貼在我們的 Facebook 粉絲頁，以前我們都是這樣做的，但是我們也有發現粉絲頁並不是那麼可靠的，很多時候朋友們會告訴我們他們並沒有看到我們的貼文，當然更不會知道我們又有活動了。
另一方面呢，我們部落格的讀者並不多，真的會來我們部落格的朋友們則又需要被提醒[對吼 該看看FUTURE SHORTS] 的部落格了，畢竟大家的生活都是很忙碌的。
這樣我們該怎麼樣傳達這些活動訊息給我們真正的讀者觀眾們呢？
後來我們討論的結果是—-何不把我們的訊息直接傳給我們的粉絲呢？如果有人告訴我們 [我希望收到你們以後的活動訊息] 那麼我們就可以真正讓他們收到我們的新訊息了！ 因此，也許電子報是一個好辦法（縱使並不是完美的解決辦法 但可行阿）
於是我們有了電子報！下面有註冊的說明，我們只有在有新消息的時候才會發信給大家，也借此觀察電子報是不是適合我們的觀眾們，當然，我們會繼續做調整。非常感謝你一直看到這一行字，就讓我們保持聯絡吧 :)
點下圖註冊電子報！
The biggest problem we have found during the last 8 events we hosted is how to reliably let people know that we have a screening. Most of our communication was done through our Facebook Page, but over time that became more and more unreliable. Fewer people can see our posts, many never even get a notice that we have an event going on, and generally cannot get the same exposure as we used to. This is a general change in Facebook’s behaviour and troubles every other organizer as well.
On the other hand, not that many people come to our blog, and those who come would need to remember to check the page regularly to see if we have announced any new events?
Much better if we can go to our fans directly – if someone tells us that “yeah, I want to hear when you have the next screening!”, then we should be able to get in touch with them. For this, a newsletter is probably the best (even if not perfect) way.
So now we have a newsletter. Here’s the sign-up form below. We’ll send out emails only to keep people informed, and see whether it enables the creation a more satisfied community. :)
Let’s keep in touch!
Click the image for the sign-up sheet!
After almost 3 months of preparation, the next screening of Future Shorts Taipei is now ready for you! We have finished preparing the English and Chinese subtitles for all 6 films, and setting everything up for this week!
Future Shorts 2013 Summer Season / 夏季 未來短片節就要來囉: 2013 October 18, Friday, 8:00-9:30PM (doors open at 7:30PM), at 睡不著 Insomnia Cafe, 台北市大安區泰順街60巷8號.
You can also RSVP on the Facebook event page. Entry is 200TWD, and films start at 8PM sharp, so come earlier to have a seat! There’s space for about 40 people.
Volume
I prefer to be surprised by the films just like you do, and films shorts pack a lot of punch indeed in their few minutes. I still had to watch everything beforehand to make sure it’s all in good working order for you to see and boy am I excited about them! I’m blown away by the quality of the selection in every season since our first one almost 2 years ago. It’s brilliant, exciting, inspiring, unsettling, thought provoking. Usually not for the faint of heart, and that just adds to the experience.
Now that everything is prepared, see you in a few days for an awesome screening. Bring your friends too, movies are better in company! :)
Only a few hours left till we have this Autumn’s screening tonight – here are the Facebook and Google+ event pages.
Subtitles for Autumn Season (from On the Line)
I feel that in some way there are more work gone into this than any of the last 3 seasons, but actually every season was somewhat experimental:
The last winter season was the first time we have ever put on such event, even such kind of event, thus it was all new, everything had to be seen for the first time. And it was the first time Future Shorts blown my mind with their film selection.
The spring season was going to be bigger, we had a premiere and a grande screening. The grande needed much more arrangement, huge auditorium (well, for us, 220 people), our biggest audience to date, online ticket sales, and the fact that the film selection was 18+, which surprised me. And it was amazing again, edgy, clever, pushing the boundaries.
The summer season was a bit more laid back, just a simple screening, kinda run out of time to do much more, even if there were plans. It was one great time, and finally the first screening on which we haven’t lost money. :)
For the autumn season, the one premiering tonight, we tried to get Chinese subtitles, so we can extend our audience a bit more, out from the English speaking community in Taiwan. Some amazing volunteers worked with us, and the global organizers had finally some Chinese translations, which altogether makes a better experience. Let’s see how it worked out. The process need some fine-tuning, but things should definitely work smoother this time than before, from the technical point of view.
It’s time to set up our venue. Looking forward to seeing you tonight. :)
Movies are best enjoyed when you know what’s going on. Duh! One cannot speak all possible languages on Earth, that’s even bigger issue with Future Shorts, where in one sitting, withing the course of one-and-a-half hours you can watch 7 movies from 5 different countries. Also, the same films are shown in dozens of countries around the world. That’s why we have to rely on subtitles to get our message to the local audience.
Tumult (UK, 2011, by John Barrington)
For Future Shorts Taipei we made it a priority to get some kind of subtitles for every film we show, and as the first stage of the project, we had English subtitles for our Spring and Summer programme already. But that’s not enough. Taiwan is a special place, and we have lots of local and international friends here. Not everyone speaks English, and not everyone can read Chinese. Thus we want to be able to prepare double-subtitles for all our films: both English and Chinese (just like those fun movies on the HK movie channels I’m quite fond of :)
For that we need your help: we have the English subtitle files – could you help us translate it to Chinese? If you can please get in touch with at fstaipei@gmail.com, or in the comments below. Then we’ll be able to get you some sample of what does need to be done. Don’t worry, not too much text.
We are planning some more screening of the summer programme before the end of September, and this would be a great help. Thanks in advance!
We have just wrapped up our Spring Season. We had a great Premiere and also a Grande screening. The films themselves were exquisite, and I had a great time organizing it as well. Here’s some results of the votes for the Grande screening:
And the winner is….
I cannot say the top position is really unexpected, though I’m glad that all films had votes cast to them. The global winner of the festival will be announced some time today, I’m curious which one, whether the taste of the Taipei audience coincides with the global taste.
In the meantime we have some more photos in our album here from our weekend screening, thanks to BigYo (the “normal” photos are by me, the good ones are by him:).
The Man Without a Head
While waiting for the Summer Programme to kick off, here’s one film from the Spring Season if you haven’t seen it yet.
Also, if you have been to one of the screenings, we’d be really happy to hear your thoughts on how to get better, either leave a comment below, post it on our Facebook page, or send an email to fstaipei@gmail.com, thanks!
After our Premiere screening, now we are ready for the next step: bringing Future Shorts to a wider audience. That’s why we are going to have our next event in a 230 people auditorium in the NTU. It’s on May 27, Sunday evening, from 7pm. A bit more than 2 weeks left and still a lot to prepare. There are hundreds of screenings around the world (click here to see a quick list), and for example on the same day there’s another one in Ukraine. Joining us you are really joining a global community of film lovers.
Future Shorts 2012 Spring Grande cool card design
Tickets
This time we are preparing mostly pre-sale tickets, you can book your tickets by clicking here. If you have any problem with booking, please just contact us at fstaipei@gmail.com, and we’ll sort it out.
At that link you can also see the list of films that are on the programme this time. We have 7 movies, some animation, some documentary, all quite different style, with one overarching topic – examining relationships. Though this time that also means that the films have to be restricted for only over 18 years olds.
Our venue is 台灣大學 應用力學館國際會議廳, NTU Institute of Applied Mechanics Building, International Conference Hall, and here’s a handy map to get you there (that outlined yellow spot there with IAM label):
How to get to our venue: Applied Mechanics International Conference Hall.
The MRT Gongguan and MRT Technology Building Station should be quite close for public transport, and should be some parking space nearby as well. And this is pretty much how the place looks:
Applied Mechanics International Conference Hall
Coming from Hungary, I can tell you this is pretty much how most of our cinemas looked like in the 1990s, so for me it’s a quite homely feeling. Hope it will work out well too.
Now let’s spread the word, and have a great crowd for a fun evening.
A bit more than a week ago we had out first screening of the Spring Season. It was great, again very good election of movies, with the overarching topic of relationships. First I was weary of the “Over 18” requirements, but actually it is all fine, I have to rethink what kind of things I’m worried about.
Future Shorts 2012 Spring Premiere screening
Insomnia Cafe worked out very well as a venue, it is very cozy and friendly, movie-lover staff as well. Next time might want to keep in touch with them better, though to have a little more promotion. The first event we had in January was very popular, got to figure out how to fill up the place again.
Can see more pictures from the event in our album here (Facebook) or here (G+), no login required to either.
Now we are working on the next screening, a bigger one, in less than 3 week. Will post more about it in the days to come, about the venue, how to get the tickets, the new things we will be trying.
Finding a good venue for an event feels quite tricky. Especially if it’s an event that I feel so strong about, and really hope that everyone can have a good time. If there’s a dinner gathering, or just chatting with friends, then almost any restaurant or cafe can do. For a film festival that only happens once every few months and possibly won’t ever see the films again, those put much more pressure on the organizers – on us.
Last time we were at Insomnia Cafe, which worked pretty well. It’s pretty cozy (though that means limited space too), good atmosphere, and overall great place to hold a screening. Definitely a place to keep, even though it only covers part of the features of the venue we want to have.
Future Shorts Taipei 2011 Winter screening
One solution is to have more than one screening, and that’s partly what we are thinking about: having two screening at wo different venue, one for the cozy (let’s call it Premiere), one for the wider audience (let’s call it Grande).
Finding a good large venue on the other hand seems to be more difficult than I originally thought. Been checking out obvious choices – obvious because got them as recommendations from multiple people when I was asking around.
There’s Spot Taipei Film House, which would be a proper cinema. If only it wasn’t so ridiculously expensive, and in the same time relatively small….
Spot Taipei Film House
Then there’s my most favorite museum of the world, MOCA Taipei, they have a screening room, and I did watch movie there before. It’s much less expensive, and it would be quite interesting to watch such modern works of art as Future Shorts is, in such a modern art environment. It’s a bit small as well, though.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei
Then finally there were some suggestions that we can find venues at various universities. Looking around, most of them are very much not suitable for a screening, but there are exceptions. One of the most likely candidates is this conference room at NTU, which was also the venue of one of the TEDxMonga events. It’s spacious, comfortable, as close to cinema experience as a university auditorium can get…. Will likely have to check it out again to compare with my memories, but right now it looks like a good place for a Grande screening…
NTU conference room R100
Now just get the ball rolling, there’s not that much time left till the end of May. Can we fill a room with 238 people for short films? I think we can.
I had a little present in my email inbox today, the announcement from Future Shorts about the new spring season. It’s really exciting to be part of this project that spans 55 countries, and connected (at least) 25.000 people at 240 different screenings. I believe that we can still do better and be an exceptional local chapter for films here in Taipei. :)
The Spring Screening will include 6 short films, both classic and recent. Will do a detailed profile about them as the preparation progresses for our event.
Maybe the biggest change is the introduction of the Audience Award:
On March 1, 2012, Future Shorts Festival Spring Season will introduce the Future Shorts Audience Award for the Best Short Film of the Season chosen by the audience from around the world. This Award will provide a platform for our global audience, the key and integral participants of the world’s largest pop-up festival, to tell us which short film they vote as the best of the programme. The director with the most global votes will be awarded €500. The Audience Award will launch into the Spring 2012 programme and throughout the year — it will be a quarterly celebration of the most exciting short films and filmmakers in the world.
This is an awesome idea, and actually we were already ahead of the curve in that one.
The winter screening's audience choices
At the last screening we already had votes, and selected our own Audience Award winner: Luminaris was the favorite — by one vote over God of Love. (Can click the titles to watch their trailers.)
Now let’s prepare for the next time.
Gergely Imreh
Future Shorts Taipei 