An open letter to TROPFEST

Dear TROPFEST,

I’ve been growing a bit cynical about your festival over the last few years.

It’s gotten to the point that I spend a day or two each year building a ‘bingo card’ that attempts to predict the tropes in each year’s finalist films, and for the last 2 years running I’ve ticked all 9 boxes.

This year’s:

Children/Elderly

Questionably Real Documentary

Stunt-cast Actor/Famous Director

Token Foreign Entrant

Toilet Humour (has been the centre square since the beginning)

Narration

Animation

Gratuitous Sex/Nudity/Violence/Gunfire/… the list goes on, but basically it’s Style Over Substance

TSI Added As An Afterthought

I’ll admit that 'Narration’ is a cheap shot. But the other 8 are things that I feel shouldn’t be showing up en masse year after year after year. Each year, I’m surprised by how easy it is to predict the general shape of most of the finalists based on the previous year’s group.

Ordinarily I’d say this points to a lack of variety in submissions, but I can’t believe that there weren’t 16 films submitted that didn’t rely on toilet humour, or having a famous actor, or any of the other bingo items, to pass the selection process.

In short, either the selection process is tremendously biased towards a very narrow set of personal tastes, or the pool of entries is very, very homogenous year-over-year.

I strongly suspect the former.

So, with that in mind, I’d like to suggest a few CHANGEs you might want to consider this year:

Overhaul the shortlisting and finalist processes. This could be as simple as bringing the deadline back a month (i.e. October this year for the new December screening). At least give your selection team (of whose methods we know nothing about) more time given the massive increase in number of entries in recent years. I refuse to believe every entry is being given a fair chance when there is barely a month between the close of entries and the finalist announcements. Clarify the festival’s mission. Currently the public perception is that TROPFEST is a springboard for up-and-coming filmmakers and a chance to showcase the best short films the country can produce. Empirically this is not what the festival has become. Some films are from multiple-time finalists, most finalists are not fledglings but rather have been honing their craft to the point that they are ready to play in the real world. Unlike what John Polson has been parroting for the last few years, most films are not made for 'a few hundred dollars’ - there are a large number of entries putting significant money on the line and the end results are usually fantastic. So, TROPFEST needs to own up to what it has become and make the most of it. It is now (in my view) solely a showcase for the best premiering short films produced in the last 12 months. Stop pretending it’s about up-and-comers or low budget production because that is disingenuous at best. Recognise the producers. Currently all the prizes go to the directors of the films awarded. When the majority of winners were producer/directors this didn’t really matter, but I think the number of films with producer/director teams are ending up with the incredible work of producers going entirely without recognition or reward. I’m not suggesting you ape the Oscars and have separate Best Direction and Best FIlm awards, but at least co-award the Best Film prize to the producer(s) as well as the director(s). UPDATE: Turns out, after reading your terms and conditions, that the producer(s) should be awarded the Winner’s Prize. So why does all the PR talk about directors receiving prizes? Recognise the other key creatives. I’m not sure if my memory is failing me, but i’m pretty sure there used to be awards for Editing, Score, and even Cinematography… Where did they go? I understand with the time pressure on a live event and the limited appeal of relatively technical awards might mean you won’t want to award them as part of the main event, but perhaps they can be announced afterwards? So many creative people get involved with Tropfest shorts in order to get recognition and currently the best they can do is say “I worked on that film”. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to say “I won Best Editing for that film”? I’m sure the various industry guilds would be more than happy to help if you feel that the general judging panel may not be able to judge fairly. Cap repeat entries. I have a feeling this one will be contentious. There’s no reason why anybody should be able to be a finalist more than twice in a row, unless their films are absolutely stellar. And, in my opinion, the only person who this currently applies to has not made particularly stellar films. Especially not this time around. (Refer points 1 and 2). Split off documentaries into their own competition. The festival is now too big to contain both scripted and documentary films in the same competition. As a result, the selection pressure on documentaries in the competition means that the only ones we have seen recently as finalists are tepid, vaguely uplifting character explorations about quirky people. No hard-hitting documentary is going to make it through shortlisting against the onslaught of comedies and dramas because they serve fundamentally different purposes. I suggest you treat them like TropScore and screen them separately. Stop treating submissions from Australians abroad as foreign entries. All three films credited as originating from overseas this year were produced by Australian expats. Indeed, your website credits them as being from their original states but during the event they were credited as being from USA, Canada, and Mexico. This deceit may be intended to make the finalist range feel more international but it rings hollow when none of the producers are actually foreign. Furthermore, isn’t the point of the international TROPFEST network of festivals to allow films produced in those countries to compete amongst themselves? Unless you’re renaming the festival here to TROPFEST International, it might be wise to leave the foreign entries to your own foreign events. Or, at the very least, only credit films as overseas productions when they are genuinely so. Fire your live event producers. For two years running now, the live experience (at least in my home town of Melbourne) has been marred by two awful things. First, the use of a Credit Squeeze to show live pictures of Sydney while we try to watch the credits of each film. Second, the choice to allow the crowd noise in Sydney to come through the live feed even during the main action of each film. After the first year I had assumed this was some mandate from Movie Extra who wanted to save money and produce one feed for broadcast and for the live sites. But this year SBS was the broadcaster and their feed was on a long delay - so why on earth would we need to be completely disrespectful to the hard work of everyone involved with the production of the films and distort the credits to the point of illegibility? Let alone the insanity of leaving the crowd audio live during films. I can only assume somebody at the live event production company thinks that the crowds at the remote sites won’t feel “engaged” or might even be bored for the 30 seconds or so that the credits roll for each short film. They are wrong. Re-educate them or replace them. No film festival in the world interferes with credit rolls. None. Actually use that exclusive license you get from the finalists. It’s pretty galling that the 16 finalists are required to hand over an in-perpetuity exclusive license to the film they produce and actually have to pay you $45 for that privilege. The least you could do in return is actually exploit that. Run the shorts before feature films at cinemas around the country. Put them in the international events as pre-show entertainment. Cross-pollinate! Finally, rotate hosting duties. It’s been a long time since Tropfest was a Sydney-specific festival. It’s nation-wide, and there’s no reason you couldn’t rotate the main event between the sites. I’m sure you’d receive support from each state’s film body to bring the main event there once every few years.

In conclusion, whilst I might be a cynical bastard about the event as a whole I do think there’s a nugget of opportunity there - to CHANGE the festival into one that celebrates excellence for its own sake, not as some constructed journey from hardship. One that celebrates Australian creators as Australians in their own right. One that provides insight into a world-wide art form. But above all, one that is respectful to both its audience and its participants.