Covering a film festival

August, September and October are all pretty heavy months for me. August sees the Jersey Battle of Flowers, Rock in the Park, Outdoor Film Festival and a whole lot more.

In September (although it was the last weekend of August this year) we have the Jersey Live festival, the Jersey Air Display, the Beer Festival, several other food festivals and starting this year - The Branchage Jersey Film Festival.

I’ve covered all the others several times before and know exactly what to expect, how they work and what is needed of me - I’ve even started to use social media to cover them.

I wrote very recently about covering the Jersey Live music festival for the BBC in fact.

But the strange one this year, the one I’m not 100% sure I know how I’m going to cover yet is the new kid on the block - or should I say the new kid on the screen. The Branchage Jersey International Film Festival.

You see, over four days there are dozens of things happening and I need to somehow get to as many of them as possible - take photos, find a story for the website, do an interview or two, vox some people and watch closely enough to do a review on radio a couple of days later.

There will of course be a few bits I can/will be doing before the event - hopefully I’ll get a couple of preview DVDs of some of the films so I can review them for Radio before they happen - to help people decide whether to go or not.

And there are interviews that can be done in advance - somethings don’t need to have happened yet to make a good interview/story.

But there are many things at the Branchage film festival that aren’t just about film - there is a lot of live theatrics surround the movie experience.

For example Nu-folksters The Memory Band will be performing a live sountrack to 1970’s cult film THE WICKER MAN at a pretty eerie castle.

But that is just one tiny example of what’s happening and why it’s going to be such a tough call working out what to go to and when and to make sure I don’t get more material than I can do anything with.

Head over HERE to see the full programme. And then the elections start!

Of course my wife just thinks I sit on my arse all day watching movies, seeing live bands and … oh wait!

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