Pitching!
Five young authors were chosen amongst their colleagues at the mini competition for development of film stories. They were given a chance to publicly present and explain their ideas to the audience and representatives of the film program of the Relativity School from Los Angeles and the best one will be awarded by trip, housing and creating of their idea in Hollywood.
They had seven minutes to explain and eight minutes to talk to mentors. Strict but fair moderator and time tracker was Jelena Modrić. Some prepared a short video; others relied solely on their verbal skills. Lucija used her seven minutes to present her idea with the help of her red umbrella, important for her story. Rudolf confidently explained the PTSD subject; Maja talked about her idea while Dominik passionately explained his horror and acted his film from move to move. Karlo admitted that his night activities made him so tired that he sometimes lost focus during his presentation. Shame!
They were given numerous instructions and advices, praises and several criticisms. I'm guessing this is needed for the right educational approach? It is important to mention that the whole process of pitching was in English and our sixteen year olds (year more or less) perfectly adapted to those conditions. As Boško Picula would say, English had become second (or maybe first?) official language in our country.
Two weeks of teenage camp will last from 7th until 17th of December this year in Los Angeles, California, USA while the best from Karlovac pitching will participate next year. Now they need to wait, calmly watch screenings and workshops, talk to peers, eat an apple or grapes offered at the info desk.. And hope. Winner will be announced on Saturday when other awards will be given as well. Until then they can continue dreaming.
It is different with bicycles; they are usually on two wheels, some with three, especially if they are children's. Many of them have gears so that the strength of the driver would be transmited according to the terrain that he is riding on even though most of them don't have gears. Two people can ride tandem bicycle, there are bicycles for three and four people. Rarely there are some for five or six people.
That's the situation with bicycles. When it comes to pitching, it all falls down on one person.
With the sincere and bright smile Adrijana is announcing the last official screening on Friday night and jokes how few days ago, on Tuesday, they though they wouldn't survive until the last day. Of course it was a joke because everything went as it intended, and even better, and even if it didn't most of us didn’t know that. 'Interventions team' as they used to be called would work far from the public eye, weather they were setting the screens or other technical details at the most unusual places, organized arrival and departure of guests (for some of them we knew they were here only when we saw them on social media while some of them were only with us in spirit), spreading yellow canvas on benches so that everyone would know what's happening or if they were just solving every problem possible.
Now we wait for the evaluation of 21st Youth Film Festival and 9th Four River Film Festival, Q&A with participants and organizers at the City museum on Saturday morning, around ten and then awards ceremony and official closing at eleven at Zorin Dom.
And then, new arrival next year at the 22nd Youth Film Festival and 10th annual FRFF!
Duško Popović
popovicdusko@yahoo.com
10.09.2016.