KINOSCRIPT: How to create a screenwriting festival

Oksana Oliinyk
15 янв. 2019 г.
4 мин. чтения

About 4.5 years ago Olesya Novosad and I had a conversation:

We need to create the screenwriting festival! - told me Olesya.
Yes, we do.
So, let's do it?
Let's do it.

There were a lot of reasons for organizing the festival, and although we knew it would be tough, we could not abandon this idea. First of all we wanted to develop ourselves and help others to improve. We understood that if there are no conditions, no possibilities for development, we need to create it ourselves. And although our Napoleonic plans stroke against the reality, it didn't bother us, but stimulated even further. It is always difficult to get started in any field. Sometimes, you are lucky, and sometimes you have to put more efforts.

That is how our epic festival life has began. We had no money, no partners, only a great desire to do something and support of our mentor Bohdan Zholdak with his inspiration: "there is no way back - move forward". The first title was "Apricot nights", which was rejected by Zholdak, then "Break into screen", which was rejected by Olesya and me, finally we settled on the name "Kinoscript".

We decided that 3 months will be enough for us for the preparation. We planned to hold the festival at the end of December 2014, just in time for holidays (we didn't realize that it was not the best idea). We developed a strategy, work plan and even set deadlines, which we broke successfully, being accountable only to ourselves.

We did not know how to do such festivals, however, we had some experience in event organization generally. At that time Olesya has already had her own animation school and I worked as a team member on several international projects. Also, we conducted a few art events and script readings together with our teammates from the Labtron Creative Society.

We had such strategy: first, to create a website and FB page, to announce about the script contest, to advertise the festival, to appoint the date and award winners. During the work there were many related issues: who will evaluate the scripts - so in such a way there appeared our wonderful jury (whom we are very grateful for the support); where to host - we were supported by the Union of Cinematographers in this, who provided free room in the House of Cinema; how to promote the festival - there appeared our partners.

The partners search is always an extremely difficult task, and with experience in Sales and Project Management, I knew what is the "cold calls" and how to make presentations and form letters. In organizing your project or festival, start-up, a dancing school, it is necessary to be ready to do everything by yourself in the beginning, so any previous experience is appreciated.

We solved the issue with the web-site with the free resource wix.com (thanks to God for the latest technology and the genius developers for this invaluable website). Because the website can be shown to partners! We made a database of companies/institutions/people who might be interested in our festival and who could help us. Sent out a press announcements in the media, began to fill the website content and the FB page with events, that were created.

Further (the luck was on our side!) one of our announcements was seen by an incredible Svitlana Som, who at that time was engaged in the projects of the Daryna Zholdak Foundation (its contribution to our development is a separate incredible story). She invited us. Simple question: "What's your program?" - and we realized that something was missing (the only program we had was the ceremony of awarding the winners). So we had workshops, discussions, meeting of participants with the jury and film screenings. The program looked decent enough, I just had to find speakers and those, who want to listen to them.

I won't describe the whole process, in general, the world of Ukrainian cinema is small enough, and the filmmakers are open and charitable - there is always someone who is willing to support your idea (people have a lot of ideas, hiding in their pockets, but not everyone will dare independently to implement them). And so it happened. On pure enthusiasm, and sincere desire and with Herculean efforts.

When we held the first festival, there was no doubt about the second one. We received lots of feedback and sincere gratitude for what we created and felt that "our dream has come true." The following year we had the program, funding, StarMedia - the company, which first was willing to cooperate with writers of "Kinoscript"- has joined us.

As for me, the start was successful. We are moving in the right direction and with each step open new opportunities for ourselves and our colleagues. It was the main purpose of creating the Scriptwriting festival "KINOSCRIPT".

Important items in the individual festival organization:

To develop an accurate plan BEFORE you start working
To set deadlines for each phase of work
To have enough time to break all deadlines and still have time to do everything in time
To find a team you trust (it is possible to do everything by yourself, but the quality of the work is lost)
Priorities focus
To be cooperation opened
Not to panic
To always have a backup plan
To believe in yourself and in your team
Not to pay attention to idiots who will throw mud and threats to arrange a debauch (FB has a great function "black list", and at the entrance you can always put BO:)
To work on mistakes
To move forward