Well chaps, it ran from Friday through Sunday - but I only attended Saturday.
Why just Saturday? Because as part of the "sharp shorts" segment of stuff being shown, my short film "VHS" was screened.
Now, a rundown of the festival:
Wasn't a "total f*ck up", but it was adjacent to a "bit of a bugger up". This was the second time the festival had been done (first time was in 2003) and is quite an independent effort, although it was sponsored by Forbidden Planet (comic book etc type store across Britain) and Screen West (among others). It took place in The Cube "microplex", one of those single-screen art house cinemas that are tucked away in the back streets and are advertised on posters and trendily-underground type magazines and fliers etc, hehe. It was a pretty cool venue, a lot of art house charm about it (complete with "under construction" toilet facilities ... which appeared to be unisex I think  ).
Got there around 11am and things kicked off about 70 minutes later with "The Pit and The Pendulum" (Vincent Price version). An old print so there were frames cut out from damage (I presume) dotted around throughout and at one point the projector buggered up and wasn't showing the image correctly, so it stopped and had to get fixed for five minutes. The film was pretty good though.
Next up was "Darklands" - the Welsh answer to The Wicker Man. Made in 1996 it disappeared into distribution rights limbo after the video release in the mid-to-late-90s. It was pretty good, sagged a bit at times and looked very mid-90s mostly, but there were some really cool bits (the tribal-dance-music-styled sacrifice scenes and a part mid-way through which had the stylings of a slasher film chase sequence - which was pulled off fantastically). Afterwards we saw a couple of 8mm short films the director had made - I think one broke part way in, so they cut to the 3rd of 3 shorts being shown. Then afterwards the director (Julian Richards) did a Q&A session, which was quite informative about the movie and quite interesting too.
Next up was "Boy Meets Girl", which I was pleased to finally see - it had been banned in the UK for 7 years, but I'm not sure if it's really out there all that much even now. It was a very tough movie to get through in one sitting like we did yesterday, an incredibly twisted movie. After a couple of scenes that set things up, it's essentially 80 minutes of the victims strapped to a dentists chair being physically and mentally abused by his captors.
After it was shown the director, Ray Brady, did a Q&A session, which was again really interesting. He and some filmmaking friends made it in their first year at film school using a list of 'all the things the BBFC never wanted to see in a film' and promptly put most/all of those things in Boy Meets Girl - including (literally) domestic violence (the use of a microwave to fry someone's hand - inspired by real torture techniques discovered to be used by the Iraqis during the first Gulf War). It was really interesting to hear the story being the film, and frustrating to hear they'd lost £100,000 of royalties they could have had if the BBFC had granted them a certificate. Also interesting to note that Brady suggested Ferman, who ran the BBFC back when Boy Meets Girl was banned, was essentially sacked ("asked to step down").
Then it was the Sharp Shorts segment. It was a mixture of qualities and weaknesses and was a good experience to see what other people were doing and learn from other's mistakes and successes. There were some really funny ideas in there, some neat little visual things going on and I'm pleased to say (after fretting all day that it woudn't be well received) that "VHS" (my film) was received well.
Annoyingly the moron operating the DVD player turned the DVD off before the end of the credits, so I had to shout 'there's still some left!' and then the operator spent ages getting it back in position (no idea how he found it as hard as he did!). Anyway, people got to see the post-credits scene, but the humorous effect of it was ruined thanks to that bugger up. It was however, like I said, well received and got some laughs at the right points.
Interesting that the sound mix appeared a bit different to when I had been editing it (VHS was re-edited, it was just their equipment playing it differently), so I learnt something there - despite that however, I feel "VHS" was the most interesting aural experience on show there. It also looked good and stood in good steed next to the other short films I'm pleased to say.
I had my camera with me and recorded it being shown (although after fearing all day I'd forget to press "record" - I bloody well DID) - I missed the first 2-ish minutes of it being shown, which was annoying, but it got some laughs in that first segment - people seemed quite amused by the fact the shelves in my bedroom are heavily-laden with DVDs and videos. 
Anyway, after that it was time to screen "Left for Dead" - the filmmakers were supposed to be there, but couldn't make it, so they'd put together an absolutely hilarious double-act-style introduction video. Then the film started and about 10 minutes in the DVD player stopped reading the disc and there was a gap of about 20 minutes to fix it and it came back on, by that time however I had to leave as I was being picked up. So I left at 10:30pm and made my merry way home...
OOH! I forgot - before Left For Dead screened they did a kind of raffle-cum-first-one-who-answers-wins-competition thing for some items supplied by Forbidden Planet. First up was the question - "who was the principle actor in The Omen?" - my hand thrust forth into the air and I bellowed "GREGGORY PECK!!!" (after the end note of my film being f*cked up by that moronic DVD operator I was gonna get something good out of it to boost my spirits) and I won The Omen Trilogy on DVD - in one of those fancy 20th Century Fox black box things with art cards, stills, one-frame-of-film and whatnot in it. So that was cool.
Next question I knew, but decided to be kind and let someone else win - it was "who directed Friday 13th" (Sean S. Cunningham - of course) and a guy won a book about the Friday 13th movies. Next and final question was for the Book of the Dead (a book about zombie films) and the question was "who directed The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue" - and everyone let out a collective "ohhhh" as it left the tip of everyone's tongue retarded with lack of knowledge. Then a guy got it with Jorge Grau and won the book - just as he said it I was like "oh yeah, damn". Had I known the answer I would have said in the moment of pause and not felt bad about getting two prizes, but my mind failed me - anyway, I didn't wanna be "that guy who won all the prizes, greedy twat", ha!
Then on the drive home I got some great night-time driving shots. No idea how I'll use them yet, but it's good to have in the library of footage you know. 
*sigh* A long old post I know, so I'll shaddup now - I'll post a short video of the screening of "VHS" (bugger up at the end included for your viewing pleasure) soon.
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Originally Posted by MinionZombie
. Things are moving, but moving slowly, yet things have been progressing nonetheless - slow, but good and in the right direction.
its quite good, a little slow in the middle but i thought ,dont know how i got the idea, but i thought it was a zombie film, was it actually based on a nightmare then?
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