Southend Film Festival 2012!

The Southend Film festival has just taken place for another year in the last week. here is my personal scoop on it!

The Gala Night was much like last years: wearing a suit and bow tie, with champaign and wine everywhere. When they screened my animation on the big Odeon screen it received a nice big clap, which was awesome. I even captured it in dodgy mobile phone camera quality so you can hear it. How sad of me haha.

Hard Boiled Sweets was not that bad, really. Not sure why is has such harsh reviews on IMDB but then again I don't watch many British Crime films but I did enjoy it more than I probably expected and that's what really matters. Southend location wise it mainly stuck to the sea front pier and arcades area so walking past my house or anything haha! Plus there was a great Q&A with the director and a good chunk of the cast afterwards. Very enjoyable night.

The next four days were the main festival full of films. As well as having my animated ident screen in front of every movie of the event just like the last two years, I also had a table set up at the Palace Theatre on the Friday and Saturday, followed by the Park Inn Hotel (AKA the piano) on the Sunday and Monday. From here I was selling my Lucy Lolly DVDs, prints and badges. The Park Inn was particularly good as there was a few kids screenings on the Sunday morning of Rio and Peter Pan which got me a lot of customers, and I also had access to a plug meaning I could show my films on my laptop and even show people how the ident was made! So that was all good fun.

Also all the staff (including me) was wearing these t-shirts with the festival logo on the front and my mutant goldfish on the back! The print quality of this shirt is far better than last years, and I've got myself 2 to keep forever! :D

I did get to watch a couple films inbetween my table sitting. The live action Tintin film was a really good adaptation with rather good likenesses of the characters. We also sat in for Peter Pan (the Disney version) which I hadn't seen for years but still holds up really well as one of the funnier old Disney flicks.

On Monday there was a Laurel & Hardy which showed the Mickey Mouse short Mickey's Polo Team (of which they cameo in) and two films which made me cry laughing, especially this one scene where they were pretending to be alley cats meowing and throwing shoes back at a butler!

Lastly that night there was the Closing Gala film Lost in Italy. I think I may of been sitting next to the director of it! There was one gruesome scene that several people actually walked out on and the director whispered to me "this must be the iconic scene then"! It had a bit of a confusing ending (like the plot was forming the pieces of a puzzle but then just flipped the table over at the last minute) but it was very intriguing. Also Paul thanked me for the animation before the movie started so that was awfully nice of him! :)

On Tuesday night there was the short film awards, of which my ident was entered into the over 16 animation category again without me knowing, that obviously didn't win because that would be unfair considering the creature was all over the category title cards!

Another memorable event that I was honoured to be a part of!