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To Dream the Impossible Dream...
In 2000 a new International Film & Video Festival arrived on the scene, in the quiet rural part of Britain known as the Cotswolds. It is now a respected festival on the world scene. How did it come about?

In The Beginning

"You want to run a festival ... an international film & video festival ... here?"

Imagine the faces of the Cotswold Video Camera Club committee when Lee Prescott, their Publicity Officer, dropped his bombshell of an idea. But they are a determined bunch in that part of the country and Lee is a persuasive man. A sub committee of five was set up, at first chaired by the Club Chairman, later by Clive Blackmore. As the only one present who had won several international awards for his work and had visited festivals abroad Lee became the Festival Officer and Secretary.

Having formulated their ideas the committee's first practical task was to prepare a budget. Lee approached Stroud District Councils's Leisure and Development Services to present the concept. Within four minutes he obtained the necessary financial backing. But there is never enough money to do all you plan and subsequently four excellent local sponsors were also obtained - though winning their support proved much more difficult.

Publicity

What's the use of throwing a festival if nobody comes? Good publicity was a high priority and it was all obtained free of charge. Word about The Cotswold International Film & Video Festival raced round the U.K., Europe and world wide. Various film magazines featured it, hundreds of Film & Video Clubs carried the message. UNICA (the world body for amateur film) included the Festival in their Agenda International. The Festival was also presented world wide on three web sites.

During the 14 months run up to the first screening the local weekly newspaper gave regular publicity to it as did the three local daily newspapers. Three local radio stations also covered it. In the immediate run up to the Festival all those sources gave more and more coverage, some of it exceptional including a double-page centre spread. The radio stations also broadcast details regularly. As the Festival got underway the BBC broadcast interviews with Lee and Eric Cooper, a Hollywood Director who attended the Festival.

Two local TV channels were also utilised to give details. The Sunday Express, national newspaper also picked up the story about the Festival during the run up.

At the heart of all this was Lee, telephoning editors, spreading his enthusiasm to reporters, working tirelessly to promote the event.

The Video

One of the best selling points for the event was its video. Lee had the idea of producing and distributing world wide, a video of the attractive Cotswold and Stroud area where the Festival was to be held. Seven club members shot various activities in the area. Lee and his video colleague Mike, (not a club member), then edited and post produced the tape. This involved not only the usual editing problems, some resulting from different formats, but also the further one of colour matching, sound manipulation and enhancement from the seven different cameras three of which were handled by "novices"! As a result post-production took a little over 41 man hours.

A copy of this video was sent free of charge to everyone who enquired for details of the Festival plus further additional ones to other destinations. In all several hundred were sent out.

For Stroud District Council this promotion of one of England's most beautiful but often overlooked areas was immensely valuable.

The Rules and Prizes

The Committee agreed a set of rules and entry categories. There were to be Gold, Silver and Bronze Trophies all with good cash prizes in each category. In addition it was also agreed to feature a separate award plus a substantial cash prize for the Best Film Overall.

Runners-up would be awarded certificates of 3 stars, 2 stars and 1 star. The judging panels awarded marks for each film, using a formula which allotted points for technical and artistic achievements. Those marks decided which movies went forward to the final adjudication and fixed the levels for the certificates. All adjudication marks and critiques were made by the supervised adjudication panels. The preliminary sifting was done by the committee and club members. The main awards being based on marks from the final adjudication panel.

Getting Entries

In addition to the general publicity entry forms were designed and Lee obtained a goodly number of addresses from his international contacts who were quite co-operative. He also obtained a whole list of U.K. film and video makers and clubs through his U.K. contacts. Invitations to take part were sent to everyone whose address was thus obtained along with details, travel brochures, and the video.

E-mail

An unexpected development was that so much communication was done electronically. Lee rapidly built up a database of contacts ... despite sabotage from his computer which from time to time decided to crash!

Adjudication Panels

Lee invited people to serve on the panels. The main aim was to use as many competent adjudicators as possible. The final panel was especially set up in this way using very experienced people: Debbie Slater (Darlow Productions), Dave Watterson FACI (British Federation of Film Societies), Alan Caig (Head of Leisure, Stroud District Council) and Stuart Chambers B.A. (Media). Preliminary adjudication took over 3 weeks and the Final Adjudication Panel worked for around 26 hours. Among other supporting duties Hilda Prescott kindly provided excellent meals and refreshment breaks.

Adjudication System

An especially formulated assessment system was used, (the Leesystem) which precludes adjudicators from conferring and requires them to work on an individual basis. One major objective is to stop and block the attitude of any judge who tries to "browbeat" the others. This also prevents any "political bias" from any adjudicator/judge who may have been at the receiving end of complaints from an entrant previously.

A critique and marking system was used but one really has to support and complement the other. Supervision is also used with this system, obviously! As Lee admits: "O.K. it isn't perfect but no system will ever be - but it's close."  The supervisor and the Festival Officer had no say in the adjudicators decisions.

Pre-Viewing Entries

Among the unseen chores that always form part of such an occasion, Festival Officer, Lee, pre-viewed every entry to ascertain its contents and category. This was done as the entries arrived to (try to) avoid a build up.

The Festival Theatre Public Presentations

Screenings were arranged by Lee in the attractive modern theatre of a local fee-paying public college. All the entries used in the four screenings - each of which lasted over two hours - were transferred onto Digital Video using professional equipment. This simplified presentation, avoiding the necessity of constantly changing tapes. The DV format ensured that no quality loss occurred in the transfer.

Each session was introduced by Festival Chairman, Clive Blackmore.

The IAC Southern Counties Region video projector was used for the events and achieved a 16 x 16 feet picture onto the theatre's cinema screen and which covered one third of the end wall. So successful was this that cinema buffs and the "film versus video" brigade present, wanted to know how it was achieved since they could not discern any of the brightness, colour or quality loss often associated with video projection. Lee gave them all the system details and equipment model numbers.

As a cine enthusiast Lee was especially concerned to give the best showing to the four Super-8 films submitted. All were judged on the basis of film projection and the three chosen for presentation in the festival public shows were transferred to video for presentation. All NTSC videos were also converted to PAL.

Licences & Public Liability

This was covered on the one hand by entrants' copyright declarations and also by the "all singin' all dancin'" licence of the theatre. The public liability of £2 million was bought for a premium of £27 through IAC - the Film and Video Institute.

The Public Programme

The programme was formulated by Lee and Clive with advice from Dave Watterson. Thus the four two hour programmes presented over the three days of the Festival were well balanced. The printed brochure was prepared on computer by Lee and printed by Clive in his office.

Guests Of Honour

To find a suitably high-profile presenter for the awards Lee negotiated with HTV the television channel for the area. As a result Richard Wyatt a popular TV celebrity agreed to present the prizes. He performed the presentations excellently with great good humour. Subsequently he wrote to Lee and said that he was "amazed at what the Festival proved to be and also at the quality and content of the videos and the projection achieved."

Of course the final night was also an opportunity to invite representatives of the sponsors, press, radio, local government, the Film & Video Institute ... not forgetting the long suffering postman who looked after the Festival's P.O. Box!

Looking Back

The Festival proved to be very successful. Like so many amateur movie events a team of people contributed but it depended for the most part on the energy, determination and enthusiasm of one person. Throughout the 14 months leading up to the event Lee Prescott did most of the work. He even painted the direction signs placed on road junctions all around the area but drew the line at driving round to set them all in place!

This picture shows Lee Prescott as he used to be before the strains of running a festival caught up with him!

On the very first Cotswold back in 2000...
The Winners |  Interview with Eric Cooper
Interview with Kay Bamford-Burnell

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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