Inside the Avalon Film Festival: Ben Welsh’s Diary of Chaos, Creativity, and Cinema #4
Renowned creative leader, author, and former DDB Australia CCO Ben Welsh takes us behind the scenes of the Avalon Film Festival in a candid and entertaining diary series exclusive to Campaign Brief. From navigating the chaos of last-minute preparations to celebrating cinematic gems that capture the soul of the Northern Beaches, Welsh documents the thrills, spills, and sausage-making realities of pulling together a film festival.
DAY… I’VE LOST TRACK
I know I have missed a couple of days, Thursday and Friday I think. Both blurred into one because both had the same challenges – just as we were thinking we’d got everything sorted we discovered we hadn’t. I guess we were in Act 2 of our story, where the brave protagonist overcome one set back after another (maybe overcome should be ‘encounters’, we shall see).
I can now say we are in Act 3, as last night was the opening night and I have to say it went pretty well. At least, the two films at the cinema did.
David Denneen’s movie, The Restraint, premiered to a packed audience and received loud applause. He looked like a happy man, and Anna F could relax for a moment.
Morning of the Earth got a good crowd too, I suspect everyone there had seen it at least three times before.
Woy-Woy: Venice of Australia, a 1936 short about the delights of the area was a surprise delight, and Jae Morrison’s masterpiece captured our hearts depicting what would be a uniquely Avalon encounter (don’t forget to ask Jae who filled in for Bryan Ferry).
Meanwhile, at the SLSC, we were still in Act 2. A small, but loyal group of fans had assembled to watch Ben Player talk about his film Far North. And it’s just as well we had Ben, because I couldn’t get his fucking film to play. Our mutual friend, ex creative and founder of Good Citizens, Nik Robinson came to the rescue. Would you believe I hadn’t actually downloaded the film (you probably would). I swear it was working at home. I did manage to resolve the situation by streaming it from Garage and I can thoroughly recommend it.
Ben is a very impressive human being, both on the water and off it, so while I was trying to fix things people were happy to listen to him. But one problem remained – the sound, which had a nasty bassy growl. Now, at first I thought this was part of the sound design – the film is so well crafted both sound and vision, with a wonderful lyrical narrative – but it wasn’t. Enter Stuart Quin to the rescue. He turned down the bass and all was well. Fuck, I’m an idiot.
The film is only 40 minutes long, so I was faced with a further challenge, playing film no.2, a doco on the town of Lahinch in Ireland – where a lot of Ben’s exploits occurred. Guess what, turns out I hadn’t downloaded that either. Where was the IT department when you needed them. I offered everyone a pass to another film and all but two left – they had come for Ben. I remained with these two stalwarts, before joining everyone for a much-needed drink at Bar Elvina.
Lesson for all you creatives in agency land reading this – you really should appreciate all those people in the agency, who are rushing around trying to make your vision a reality, a hell of a lot more.
I wonder how today will go?
