festival genius Tagged Articles at Cinematical
A Farewell Present from B-Side to SXSW!
Filed under: Festival Reports », Fandom »
As you may have heard last week, the fantastic outfit known as B-Side has fallen on some hard times. Although well-known as a somewhat non-traditional film distributor, B-Side has also become a festival junkie's best friend over the past few years, and it's because they gave us the Festival Genius. Used either as a replacement for or a supplement to a film fest's official schedule, the B-Side Festival Genius has taken a lot of stress out of the film festival pre-planning. Heck, it makes the arrangement of my schedule actually FUN.So while it's very unfortunate that B-Side may actually go extinct forever (I said "may"), that hasn't stopped the team from pulling one last present out of the closet. Thanks in no small part to a mysterious outfit known as Electric Shadow Journal, and thanks in very large part to a few B-Siders who continue to do it for the love of the movies, the Festival Genius is here to offer the SXSW 2010 attendees one last hurrah. Behold! The B-Side 2010 South By Southwest Festival Genius! Hooray! Make it location number one for your SXSW planning, or use it right beside the (also very handy) official SXSW film schedule. Either way, everyone here at Cinematical would like to thank the B-Side team for helping us through our festival wish lists all these years.
We anticipate your return with much enthusiasm.
Bad News for Film Fests: B-Side Shuts Down
Filed under: Distribution », Newsstand », Movie Marketing »
Nothing like some depressing news to start off a Monday. B-Side Entertainment, the company that's been distributing indie films and making incredibly useful interactive online guides for a number of film festivals, is closing its doors. Filmmaker magazine reports that the Austin-based company laid off most of its staff last week and is now trying to find homes for the movies still in B-Side's pipeline.The reason is the one you hear a lot these days: the funding ran out. B-Side's CEO and founder, Chris Hyams, said the venture capital firm that had been backing them pulled out in late 2009. "We have spent the last four or five months looking for [an] alternative.... But we reached the end of our cash before we could secure new investment. We had to shut the company down."
To use the official economic term, this sucks. Let me here recount some of the ways this sucks.
1) B-Side's "Festival Genius" software was aptly named. Anyone who's ever gone to a film festival has been tormented by the schedule. If you see Film A at Time X, you'll miss Film B, which starts at Time Y. But maybe you can catch Film B at Time Z later in the week -- oh, but then it conflicts with Film C. The Festival Genius would help you work out a feasible schedule for participating festivals, and it had social-networking elements too: share your schedule with friends and colleagues, rate the movies after you've seen them, and so forth. It was a niche tool, sure -- it's a small percentage of the world's population that goes to film festivals -- but for that niche, it was a miraculously ingenious and easy-to-use solution.
B-Side's Awesome 'Festival Genius' -- For the Anal-Retentive Movie Geek
Filed under: SXSW », Festival Reports »
OK, even if you're not going to the SXSW Film Festival this year, you'll have to admit this is pretty darn cool. Looks like the fellows over at B-Side.com decided to upgrade their already excellent fest-scheduling abilities, and the result is a new friend called Festival Genius. Basically, you go through and click on the movies you want to see, and then a bunch of magical fairies sprinkle pixie dust into your modem and BANG, you get a complete layout of what you're seeing and when AND it shows you all your potential conflicts and then ... fixes 'em! I don't know what kind of Satanic powers are at work here, but if they prevent me from missing a screening of a gory Irish horror movie, then i say Woo, Satan.After the jump you'll find a handy little video guide that will (ummm) guide you through the finer points of this NASA-esque technology. And while there's certainly nothing wrong with the schedule on the SXSW website, there's just something so appealing about B-Side's geeky little gizmos. If you're unable to hit Austin next week, you can rest comfortably knowing that B-Side does their scheduling thing for a LOT of other festivals. Now all you have to do is actually go to a film festival, and all will be right in the world.
Click here to meet the Festival Genius -- or continue post-jump for the video introduction. (Even with all this convenient technology, I'll still be late for that gory Irish horror flick. Someone hold me a seat please.)
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