Darklight 2008

I spent chunks of the weekend popping in and out of various events running in the Darklight Festival. This is the second year the festival has run in June, having previously been an Autumnal thing, and to be honest I preferred the old time slot. The Summer is becoming saturated with things to do.

€50 bought you access to pretty much everything and considering the variety screenings and the caliber of some of the speakers, it was terrific value.

Friday involved running between different talks some of which were in Filmbase and some in the Lighthouse. 

The Lighthouse hosted the Virtual Cinema Symposium, and included on the panel Barry Ryan from Warp x "a sustainable digital studio driven by creative talent and a dynamic business model that rewards everyone involved in the films" His contribution was particularly interesting and inspiring to me. Warp X was created to fastrack low budget filmmaking by, well, just gettiing on with it. Their mission was to produce 6 films in 3 years and they are bang on schedule. At the Q&A afterward someone suggested setting up a film making manifesto based around darklight not unlike the Dogma movement. Personally I'd be more interested in "a sustainable digital studio driven by creative talent and a dynamic business model that rewards everyone involved in the films"

Viral Marketing was on the agenda later in a symposium chaired by Steve McCormack from Wildwave. There were some terrific panelists here too, the producer of Bebos Sophies Diaries and Bandy Toaster. 

It turned out that Darklight had indeed been behind the dodgy video that was knocking around last week. They seeded it with a bunch of bloggers and waited for things to take off. It was, sadly, rubbish and someone thought better of things and pulled it. 

I didn't get to see the Virtual Cinema Shorts, but no doubt they will be online soon, I heard they are fab.

On Saturday we went to a screening of Dead Mans Shoes, followed by a short film Dog Altogether and a Q&A with the Actor/Writer/Director, Paddy Considine.

The only thing we had a  chance to go to on Sunday was the 4Day Movie, a collaberation by 30 odd people, it was worth the trip into town and a great end to the festival. 

It's a definite on next years calendar!