The 2022 Scottish Short Film Festival

On the weekend of 24/25 September 2022 the 10th anniversary Scottish Short Film Festival (SSFF) was held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in John Knox House on the Royal Mile. The red carpet was out, the banners were up and the stage was glittering with awards from Judges’ 1st Prize to Golden Raptor.

One of the growing list of independent film festivals that has sprung up in the past decade to showcase and encourage film in and about Scotland, the SSFF has continued to shine a light on home-grown talent, providing a stage for those interested in pursuing careers, dreams and passion in the film industry.

This year the festival received a record-breaking 122 entries, or around 22 hours’ run-time, all with a relation to Scotland. These films were then carefully scrutinized by seven experienced and qualified judges, and reviewed and rated across many criteria, from editing to sound. Those film-makers whose films were unable to be shown were given advice and feedback on their craft for perhaps getting their films shown at festivals in the future.

Me and my Wallace & Grommit tie

The festival has been held in many venues over the years, including the Grosvenor Cinema in Glasgow when their inaugural festival was hosted by celebrated actor David Anderson in 2012, Howden Park Centre in Livingston, The Bathgate Regal, The Glasgow Art School and even the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the banks of the River Clyde.

Returning festival director Chris Young said, “Every year we are consistently surprised and delighted by the creativity, ingenuity, style, talent, skill and humour that exist in the film-making community in Scotland, and those around the world with an interest in Scotland.

“It was wonderful to host the event right in the centre of the capital this year,” says Chris. “surrounded by so much historic Scottish culture, and in the Scottish Storytelling Centre no less, because isn’t that really what film is all about?”

The SSFF not only awarded 19 prizes this year, but most came with nominations, giving even more accolades for people in the industry to add to their résumés.

Asked if there are ever any challenges to be overcome, Chris said, “There are always hiccups and surprises along the way. One year I was prevented from getting into Glasgow for a radio interview because it was so hot the rails were melting and signal boxes malfunctioning. Sometimes technical equipment that was working fine one moment just refuses to the next.”

The red carpet

But the last straw for Chris was getting his I-phone stolen halfway through an event in Glasgow in 2019. “I’d either stupidly or naively left it on the sound desk during the intermission. It was a sell out crowd thanks to the amazing efforts of Gina Vereker, and things were going great. I was using the phone to message host William Samson notes about each film backstage. But when I came back from the bar it was gone.” Panic ensued. The technician went away to check CCTV footage, leaving Chris in the booth with a sea of incomprehensible buttons and lights before him, and the mics didn’t come on for a Q&A, rendering the host and film guests on stage speechless, literally. “But we got through it. The worst part was trying to learn how to read train timetables again in order to get home.”

From that night Chris vowed it was his last film festival. But fortunately Gina Vereker was there to carry the torch over the next two years, expertly navigating the pandemic and lockdowns, taking everything smoothly online and into the 21st century.

Awards!

“This way were able to go worldwide and reach a much bigger, international audience with the films. We hosted the 2020 awards ceremony live-streaming while adhering to social distancing guidelines, windows open and cats everywhere, using a green screen in Gina’s kitchen. On camera it actually looked great.”

The 2021 awards ceremony was live-streamed from the Glasgow studio of one of their long-standing sponsors Acting Coach Scotland, hosted by Olivia Millar-Ross. “Olivia and the Acting Coach Scotland team were a real pleasure to work with. Professional, experienced and charming.”

The 1815 team

With Gina at the helm and Chris as advisor and technical assistant, running the festival online presented its own challenges. “It was like building a plane in the air,” says Chris. “We had no idea what to do – we just had to do it using what we knew and what we had available.”

After the success of two online events, Gina was ready to move on, and asked Chris if he would take the annually recurring event back on again. “Gina and I both love film events, but making films and organising events are two separate skillsets, one more stressful while the other more creative,” says Chris. “And I’m getting to an age where my body doesn’t always agree enthusiastically with what my mind tells it to do.”

But despite all the niggling worries and concerns, Chris agreed to take the festival back on again. “If I can keep a work-life balance and be more zen-like about the whole thing, maybe it’ll be okay.” And this year, with plenty of exercise, pre-planning, healthy eating and drinking, and a smaller, more inclusive venue, it worked.

A key pressure-reducer was the kind provision of accommodation in the centre of Edinburgh by another sponsor: Private House Stays. “One of the worst parts of the situation is trying to get home after a screening when you’re buzzing and exhausted and have mind-fog. So I called up Private House Stays hoping to get a discount and share some mutual publicity and they offered me a free stay, not just for one night, for two!”

So was it a success this year? “I think it was. My job at the end of the day was to turn up, make sure the films played, and hand out a few awards. As long as those things went smoothly, I was happy, and they did. We had a great team. The staff at the SSC were fantastic, our volunteers Ben McBain and Ryan Vallo were invaluable, the film-makers seemed happy with the way their films were played, and the audience were satisfied with the amazing selection of films this year. We also couldn’t have achieved what we did without our sponsors, including Wexpresif in Livingston, who helped fund a live captioner to transcribe anything said on stage into captions on the big screen, and Solar Bear who provided a sign language interpreter for any members in the audience who were deaf, making the Saturday screening much more inclusive.”

Eric Romero & Rachel Flynn (Terminal Happiness)

The winners:

1815, written & directed by Neil Boyle, won : Best Actor (Iain MacRae), Best Sound (Scott Walker), Best Cinematography (Kasparas Vidūnas), Best Script, Acting Coach Rising Star Award (Kayla Caldwell), Saturday Audience Choice and Judges’ 1st Prize.

Terminal Happiness, directed by Eric Romero, won : Best Costume / Make Up (Kerttu Reinmaa & Elise Sepp), Best Music (Margaryta Kulichova), Best Director and Sunday Audience Choice. 

Whale Heart, written and directed by Phillip Edge, won : Judges’ 2nd Prize and Private House Stays Most Creative/Original.

Snapshot, written by Steve Johnson and Carrie Dodds, directed by Steve Johnson, won Best Actress (Kirsty Strain).

Shooting Animals, written and directed by Libby Penman, won Best Documentary.

Professor Henry Bowfax’s Fantastic Journey Through Time! written and directed by Robert Howat, won The Golden Raptor Award.

Neolith, written and directed by Garry & Ross Ferrier, won Best Editing.

The Longest Line, directed by Ellie & Matt Green, won the Thomas Haywood Best Use Of Scottish Landscape Award.

Love Letter To Glasgow, by Myria Chrystophini won Best Animation.

So will you run it again next year? Chris says, “Don’t know yet. It was a great weekend with so many outstanding films and heart-warming to see so many smiles and meet new people, but I need a rest. Ask me again in a month or so.”

Find out more about the film festival by visiting www.scottishshortfilmfestival.com
Facebook - www.facebook.com/ScottishShortFilmFestival
Twitter - @ScottishShorts
Instagram - Scottishshortfilmfestival

Heart Of Scotland 4 : Aberfeldy & Dun Coillich

Woke up at around 6:30am and decided to try my hand with the volcano kettle. Unfortunately we were only allowed to make a fire in the fire pit at the corner of the campsite near the river, which made lighting with the zippo problematic. Also, the sticks we'd harvested from the bush near our house turned out to be not very flammable. Experimented with building a small fire with kettle on it first, which didn't work, then starting the fire first and putting the kettle on top, which burnt my hands, before trying to light a fire outside the fire pit, which someone else had done on the sand, which didn't work either. Luckily, however, between the three ways the water had, although not boiled, gotten hot enough to make coffee.

We had a nice breakfast and I began to feel better after my volcanic failure. Used the gas stove to heat more water for tea. Ahh, technology!

At some point we realised our son had left his walking boots outside the car in the car park back in Callander 50 miles away. Wonderful. No doubt because he'd been so absorbed by the crappy blue cap gun and its crappy silencer. I'd toyed with the idea of driving  back to see if they were still there (50% chance of that, I reckoned) but in the end decided the two hour round-trip, cost of fuel, wear and tear on the car etc. all probably accumulated to about the same cost of a new pair of boots. So we decided to drive in to Aberfeldy for some new ones instead.

Castle Menzies

Stopped at Castle Menzies for coffee and carrot cake. If my second name had been Menzies we may have even forked out the twenty odd quid to go round the museum. (Actually on second thoughts I'd probably have felt we should have gotten in for free!) Saw a stallion urinating in a field round the back. That was a first. No idea if he was Italian so don't ask.

Aberfeldy Cinema Cafe Bar

Aberfeldy, described (perhaps a little unfairly) in the Lonely Planet Guide To Scotland as "a shabby town and rough after dark", seemed fine to me. We parked behind Tesco and walked up to the centre where we saw a nice cinema/cafe/bar and had lunch in the Fountain. (There I killed a wasp with said Lonely Planet and put another outside by trapping it within two coke glasses, elevating myself to undisputed wasp-exiting legend in the eyes of staff and customers both). I had lasagne, my wife had a baked potato, and our son had an enormous cheese burger and chips which I helped him finish (Delicious. The clever lad had even had the forethought to put a few chips in the burger). 

There was a guy outside at a table who was the spitting image of Eric Clapton and I was tempted to go out and ask for his autograph (even if it was "To Chris, all the best, Dave").

Made our way up the road apiece to a shop called Munros which had some good walking boots and a face scarf for our boy, 4 replacement Maglight bulbs (which I'd been searching for for about twenty years), and a bunch of other great stuff. Very helpful staff too. 

Made sure to get the hell out before sunset.

Climbing Dun Coillich

After stocking up on supplies we drove back to the campsite, and I decided I was going to climb the hill at the back called Dun Coillich (572m - known as a Marilyn on Walkhighlands.co.uk). Our son said he'd join me.

We drove up the 500 yards to the car park (as per the campsite owner's advice) only to find a message on my phone from wifey asking us to bring the cool box back to the campsite to put the recently purchased perishables into. So we drove back to the campsite, off-loaded said cool box, and returned to the car park (I got the turning right this time) and at last set off.

Our route up Dun Coillich.
Note Geographical Centre Of Scotland nearby

The way was marked with green and white markers which helped greatly. (If only life was thus signposted. "Fame and Stardom 50yds on left") They were painted stakes stuck in the ground every 20 yards or so. We were to follow green & white until roughly between the two hills, and there was to be another path branching off to the right that would hopefully take us up to the peak. I was wearing my blue shorts, waterproof jacket and JCB work boots. Son was in new boots, black trousers and black jacket. I thought to take the umbrella just in case. Turned out good we did as it f*&^ing p*^&(*ed down.

I was a little concerned about ticks and checked and rubbed my legs continuously. My son and I took turns taking point and pushing on through the ferns, nettles and showers as best we could. It wasn't long before our feet were thoroughly soaked, and the hill didn't seem to be getting any closer, although the views of the campsite below were definitely getting better and further away. My son kept voicing his concerns and I did my best to encourage him and press onwards and upwards. It helped to focus on our feet and not fret about the immensity of the task ahead.

Whose idea was this again?

At last we came to the turn off - white dots on green. We turned right at a red marker and followed the new ones up between two more peaks, unsure which one we'd be scaling. It got pretty steep and we decided to just keep our heads down and rest at every marker. After the steep bit it levelled out again and a little later we came to a solitary, final marker in the mist, but no cairn. And it didn't feel like we'd reached the top. Felt more like we were in a saddle. But no more markers. On a hunch we headed up the right hand slope, doubling back southwards, just tramping over the shallow heather/gorse/bracken, slightly ascending and looking back now and then to keep the final marker in our sights.

The cairn! Damn, forgot to bring a rock. Back to the bottom!

We made it! After about a hundred yards we reached the top, and simultaneously found the cairn, saw a cloudy, mist-laden panoramic view, and were blasted in the face by quasi-sleet being blown hard at a 30º angle. We only paused at the top to take a couple of out-of-focus selfies, partake in one or two well-earned high fives and catch our breath before withdrawing to the lee-side of our approach and back to the relative safety of the final marker.

Click to expand

Coming down we were rewarded every few yards with what seemed like a different photo opportunity, and there was a lot of fishing in the pouch for the camera to snap a great view. It had taken us about an hour to get to the top and we took our way down slowly and carefully.

This, however, did not prevent me from twisting my left ankle badly and taking a tumble, ending up with a few spikes from some thistle or other in my palm, but otherwise unscathed. Fortunately this happened near the foot of the hill. Turns out my JCB steel-toe capped workbooks were not suitable for hillwalking after all.

These boots were not made for walking

Glad also it was me and not my son, because that would have put him off hill-walking for life and completely negated the whole point of the character-building exercise.

We got back to the car and my ankle felt fine. Very glad of the walking stick I'd bought on instinct in Callander. Poured water out of our boots. Dried off as best we could. Note to self: Have dry shoes, socks and a towel in the car next time you go hiking in Scotland.

The descent also took about an hour, meaning a round trip of two hours up and down. Would have been 1:45 without tumble and selfies.

Really glad of the automatic Toyota as we drove down the hill back to the campsite (no need to use left foot on clutch).

Anyway, it was a great experience and I hope my son will carry it on in the future.

We treated ourselves to a hot chocolate as a reward

Heart Of Scotland 3 : Glengoulandie

We packed up, checked out and assured the nice Chinese man at reception that everything had been perfect even though it would have been more beneficial for him to know that it wasn't perfect for the simple reasons that:

1) I had no bedside table until we bought the camping one

2) there were no biscuits with the tea and coffee

3) breakfast had not been included (even though I hadn't paid for or ordered any)

Map of Callander (click to enlarge) 

   My wife wanted to stroll around town again so we did that and stopped at our usual place for coffee and danish. The young woman who was assisting the boss quipped some very funny one-liners in a kind of laid-back, stoner style which made me want to sign her up immediately for a podcast. Instead, we ordered our brunch, including among other things a gluten-free muffin for my intolerant wife. She opened the wrapping and then decided to read the ingredients. Turned out the muffin had gluten coming out of its ears. It had gluten up the wazoo. It had more gluten than you could shake a stick at. It was basically a wheat muffin. She was not impressed. I was charged with returning the product and informing the owner of the extent of its glutenness maximus. The owner was mortified, very apologetic and grateful we had pointed it out as her child was also gluten intolerant and appreciated how bad a situation it could have become. They gave us a refund and our son a free apple & cinnamon bun that was so delicious he ended up eating half the wrapper. Luckily it had no nuts in it because that would have been ... ironic.

   After getting a new fishing reel and a cheap, crappy, blue cap gun with no caps included (I had not been privy to this transaction) for our son, I wanted to at least do one of the walks in the booklets I'd procured from the tourist info. So we set off, with our car and roof-box all fully packed and ready to go, in search of Bracklinn Falls. We drove up to the woods, changed into our walking boots, and set off.

Bracklinn Falls

   It was a pleasant stroll and a good choice for a small family training for the Munros I thought. We were to go along, over a bridge, up the other side, over another bridge and back down to the car park. Sadly though, our walk was cut short as the first bridge near the falls was shut for maintenance, so we had no choice but to retrace our steps (deja vu, I know). 

A nice bridge, but alas currently not functional

   We got into the car, changed our shoes (while my son complained about the crappiness of the crappy silencer on his crappy blue cap gun that had no caps) and headed to Tesco's for supplies before setting off on the next leg of our four-legged journey, along the top of Loch Tay to Glengoulandie campsite.

   On the way I tried to progress our son's musical education with a listen to 'Hour Of The Bewilderbeast' by Badly Drawn Boy, but to my dismay he fell asleep almost instantly. At least he didn't throw up.

Map to Glen Goulandie Campsite

   I had hoped to stop somewhere on the north bank of Loch Tay to spark up the volcano kettle but unfortunately the road was too high for access, so we had no choice to drive on. I took a turn prematurely (Ooh, Matron) and we had a moment of disorientation (at one point there were three cars pausing at an intersection probably all thinking the same thing - where the fuck are we?) before realising we could just continue parallel to the road we'd been on towards Coshieville, hang a left, and push on through the driving rain up the 1.5 track road to the campsite. Our son was no help, snoring as he was in the passenger seat, blissfully unaware of either Badly Drawn Boy or our moment of being lost.

No idea what this is

   Our son came to just as we pulled into the campsite, we checked in (very nice couple) and succeeded in getting the big green tent up in between showers. What hassle that was! All the doors and windows had been left open and the guy ropes were all loose and tying the thing up. The beast was half inside-out. We'd put in the groundsheet too early and the straps which were now over the groundsheet should have been under it. It was like trying to put a lime-green, screaming toddler octopus into a car seat.

Warning: Both male and female chickens check these toilets

   The shop only sold coffee, snacks and other essentials, so we had to depend on what we'd purchased from Tesco for the night and breakfast tomorrow. We dined in the tent at the table, played some cards and D & D and went to bed when the light failed badly enough for us to not be able to read the monster character cards. I didn't sleep that great, but if I'd known how bad it was going to be the next night I would have appreciated it more.

A view of Glengoulandie Campsite. Deer abound

   The soporific sounds of raindrops on tent carried us off on a one-way ticket to airbed unconsciousness. 

   Next - Part 4 : Aberfeldy & Dun Coillich

Heart Of Scotland 2 : Beinn Dearg

Woke up still a bit painful behind the eyes and almost threw up attempting to look at myself in the mirror. Now I know how other people feel. (Having to look at my face, I mean, not their own). 

After nursing a gentle breakfast of croissants, fruit and coffee, though, I began to come around while watching Nightmare Kitchens USA with Gordon Ramsay, which was a lot of fun (I mean he was on TV, not we were sharing a room). I used to work as a waiter and kitchen porter so I can totally understand where he's coming from a lot of the time. It's very satisfying seeing him butt heads with people who think they're king of the castle.

A beautiful big church dominates Callander square

After breakfast, it being a much cooler, cloudier, breezier day, we strolled down the north side of the street and popped in and out of occasional stores that piqued our interest. In the hope of musically educating our son during car journeys I bought a couple of CDs (Finley Quaye ("It's great when we're together..." A Scottish musician!) and Badly Drawn Boy). A cup of coffee and apricot danish which we (I) enjoyed while sitting outside near the church went down well and put paid to my headache. The Main Street was so busy with caravans and motorhomes it seemed that Callander was just a place to pause in transit - or just drive through - on the way to and from other spots for most people.

Some nice architecture in town

We continued our stroll and bought the last camping table in Regatta for £25 (which would turn out to be invaluable), an ornate walking stick for £30 in the fishing/camping shop (to fight off wolves and bears while climbing Munros), and a Dungeons and Dragons starter pack for £25 in the games shop. "I haven't tried this one yet," said the shop assistant, "but I want to." "Something to play with the kids," I said, and then worried it sounded like I thought role playing games were not a dignified way for adults to spend their time, "And myself of course!"

Don't forget to hashtag Hashtag

We came home, had a very nice lunch, and my son and I played the first half of D & D and killed a few monsters using too many dice with too many sides, before going out to attempt to climb a nearby hill called Beinn Dearg (427m). 

I was beginning to realise that a Munro was out of the question for my family to do together, so a touch of training was in order. I scanned the walkhighlands website for nearby hills under 2000 feet, and Beinn Dearg came up.

The path to Beinn Dearg never did run smooth

 Only trouble was, there was no route to the top according to Walkhighlands. There was a path halfway up and then Google just drew a rather optimistic 'as the crow flies' blue dotted curve to the summit. On closer inspection there seemed to be a line through the trees I thought we could follow. So we set off in the car around 3pm. There must be a way, I thought, if there's a will.

A mountain to the north, viewed from Beinn Dearg, capped with cloud

The drive southwest from Callander was pleasant enough, and it was easy to find the car park next to the loch (we could have used the volcano kettle on the shore but alas no coffee, milk, tea or sugar! (note to self : keep stuff together!))

The views along Loch Venachar from Beinn Dearg were well worth it

We walked up a zigzag forestry commission road which allowed for some great views up and down the loch, but after 45 minutes' climb it just stopped at a viewpoint, and the trees uphill seemed impenetrable. Insects were also beginning to devour my wife. Turned out there was neither a will nor a way, so we retraced our steps. Failed to reach top but good starter hike for us all. Total walk round trip: 90 mins. Then back to town.

Who could forget that shop where we bought the fudge?
What was it called again?

Went back to the hotel after waiting 50 mins for our order to be made up at the Chinese Village restaurant (I was about to walk out before ordering (as I'm sure Gordon Ramsay would have done) but we were assured it was worth the wait by a couple who left, and it was. To be fair, everywhere in Callander seemed to be short-staffed, probably due to the change in lockdown restrictions. We got prawn fried rice, sweet & sour chicken and I had a kind of sweet garlic and honey chicken strips thing with boiled rice and a side order of prawn crackers. It was delicious and we stuffed our faces with plenty to spare. They'd even given us an extra order of fried rice, either by mistake or by way of apology. Very kind!

This could be Rotterdam.

After finishing our game of D & D, our son was out like a light and we all followed suit.

Next - Part 3 : Glengoulandie

Heart Of Scotland 1 : Callander

I had the vague notion of wanting to do some hiking this trip, possibly an easier Munro or two (Scottish mountain over 3000 feet), so I researched the route using a combination of booking.com for the hotels, walk highlands.co.uk for the Munros, and pitchup.com and Google for the campsites. The plan was to alternate between two nights in a B&B and two nights at a campsite : total 8 nights.

Ben Vorlich (985m) was supposedly a good one for beginners, and seemed within easy reach of Callander.

Our Intended Route

Before leaving, I spent the morning searching high and low for the fishing reel for our son's rod and tidying up the (blisteringly hot) shed, but to no avail. (Note to self: keep all your stuff together) In the end we had lunch at home (onigiri rice balls) and set out for Callander at around 2:30pm.

The Dreadnought Hotel

We checked in to the Dreadnought (£161 for two nights, room for three), put the bags in the room, and then went to reacquaint ourselves with the town. We bought fish and chips which we ate near the grassy knoll at the river, followed by the mother and father of all ice cream cones (mine was choc chip in a chocolate-dipped cone costing £5.50!)

Shops have amusing names in Callander

After strolling along the river to a play park and across the street, a woman stopped us to expound the faults of the mini golf course next to the hotel, slamming it repeatedly and mercilessly, recommending the one instead near the river, saying it was, 'much better.' We thanked her for her advice, but it was all moot anyway as they were both closed. 

On The Grassy Knoll - a Bon Motte (The Hill Of St Kessog)

We bought some breakfast supplies in Tesco (the hotel booking was room only) where my wife met the 'crazy golf lady' again who set forth the pros and cons of various shelf items in the supermarket. 

By the time we got back to the hotel and upstairs I had developed the mother, father and great grand parent of all head-aches. I lay on the bed feeling terrible while my wife and son watched TV and enjoyed their first night on holiday. I realised later that the headache was probably due to the heat of working in the shed earlier and dehydration, coupled with a sugar rush. The salty fish supper probably hadn't helped much either.

What a way to start the trip!

Next - Part 2 : Beinn Dearg

The 2020 SSFF Awards Ceremony

Which ancient philosopher said, "It's times like these we need film more than ever"? Plato? Confucius? Probably neither, if like me you believe the first film ever made was 'Le Voyage Dans La Lune' by Georges Méliès in 1902.

   But there were many points when the Scottish Short Film Festival 2020 might not have happened at all.

   The first was just after SSFF2019 at the Glasgow Art School when then festival director (me) had his I-phone stolen and was almost stranded in Glasgow City Centre at 11:30pm on a Saturday night. Stressed, dehydrated, suffering from a lingering back pain and not quite turning a profit (even from a sold out event on the Saturday) and after seven years, I turned to festival manager at the time Gina Vereker said, "I'm sorry, that was the last one for me. If you want to carry the torch as festival director, it's yours."

   Gina, who is a freelance events manager, took a while to think it over, and thankfully said yes.

   What followed was a total revamp of the format, website, and entries re-opened for another year in November 2019. Gina deftly breathed new passion into the project and carried things forward, building momentum and anticipation throughout the whole marketing process, and despite being unable to secure funding from sponsors, plowed onwards undeterred.

Gina Vereker & William Samson. Photo by me on Gina's phone

   Then, around March 2020, the Covid-19 coronavirus reared its ugly head and decided to ruin everything for everyone, everywhere. The venue Gina had been pursuing at the CCA Glasgow, due to government's guidelines, had to shut its doors to events, and Gina and I were forced to sit down and rethink the festival. With patience and understanding from the filmmakers, we considered moving the whole thing online, only then realising the huge opportunities this opened up:

   1: We could show more films over the course of a week, as people would have time to spread things out and watch them in a relaxed manner.

   2: We could show films to people overseas, possibly putting names and faces in front of important people in Hollywood.

   Thus encouraged, we looked into various ways of doing this, considering pay-per-view or something similar, but decided in the end on embedding password-protected films on the website.

   Meanwhile we had received an amazing 64-strong submission total via Film Freeway, for which we were extremely grateful. The films, as ever, exhibited a huge amount of energy, creativity and imagination and were a joy to watch. However, it wasn't all a case of sitting back and letting the films wash over us; each judge was tasked with assigning a score to each film over the following 12 categories : Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Editing, Best Costume/Make Up, Best Music, Best Sound, Best Director, Best Script, Best Documentary, Best Cinematography, Most Creative/Original and finally all round Best Film. We also strived (strove?) to give back encouraging and helpful advice to each and every entry received.

   As this was going on, progress was being made towards presentation of the chosen films. Thought was also being put into the Awards Ceremony and how that would work, while keeping everyone safe and staying in compliance with government guidelines. I figured we could at least conduct it from my office using the green screen and suggested selling tickets to a large scale Zoom event. Gina on the other hand was tempted by the opportunities offered by a public Facebook live-stream, which would increase publicity for the film-makers, actors, and everyone else nominated for an award.

   I, who had adorned the tech hat for this year's Awards ceremony, wasn't exactly sure how that would work, but decided to rise to the challenge and find out. 

Gina and me. Photo by William

   A judges' meeting was held on Zoom to thrash out the shortlist, the nominations and winners. What came next was a gathering of Q&A videos, because one of the highlights of any film festival, we're sure you'll agree, is the connection with the filmmakers - the glimpse behind the magic curtain to find out how the film came about and what challenges were overcome. Again, I suggested password-protecting the Q&As as they were golden content and should add value to, and therefor move, more tickets, but Gina opted to keep them public so the filmmakers could use them to promote themselves.

   Everything was coming together. The humorous and dependable William Samson was re-recruited as host. All that was left was how to do the live-stream Awards ceremony.

   First of all, armed with the list of nominations and winners, 12 nomination videos ('Nom Vids') in a kind of Oscars style were put together. These were automatic and William had to familiarise himself  to get the timing right, as there would be no pausing or going back. Hence the 5 second countdown in each corner.

   From previous experience I knew we needed an encoder, so with limited budget I downloaded the free OBS for Mac. This was sometimes temperamental but had a lot of great features and resembled VLC Player in terms of playlists. You could use chroma key with images in the background, fade to video clips, and have intro and outro credit sequences queued up ready to go. The most useful was the 'Your Livestream Will Start Soon' video loop, which a) gives you those ever precious seconds to get yourself together, and b) adds anticipation.

   Warning : Deep Tech Ahead! Feel free to skip the next few paragraphs.

   Problem: How to connect the Zoom audio into the OBS livestream? Ordinarily I might have tried to connect an audio jack from the speaker output to the mic input of my MacBook with a Y splitter cable connected to my headphones. But new MacBook pros don't have mic input jacks.

   Solution: Download and install a free virtual cable called VB. Tell Zoom to output to this, and tell OBS this is where you want the Zoom input to come from.

Gina, William and me sticking to the two metre rule. Photo by Richard Vereker

   What transpired next was a fortnight-long experimental foray into the unfamiliar territory of live-streaming with green screens, video clips and Zoom call integration. It began with William and I messing about live on the Raptor Newz facebook page, progressed to a half decent but laggy Raptor Newz episode, took another step up with the Judges' Discussion livestream, and culminated in the Awards Ceremony. 

   The hardest part was the Zoom calls. Why? Should be easy, right? Wrong.

   a) There was echo as the voice of the person on the other end would come through the mac's speakers and go into the mic. Hence the use of headsets. We looked into such things as Apple earbuds, but the prices were too prohibitive.

   b) The audio and video were out of synch by 160ms, or four frames at 25 fps. This was because the captured Zoom video took 160 ms longer to reach the live stream than the audio. To fix this, you have to add an offset of 160 ms to the headset mic and the ZOOM audio input (via the VB cable) to slow them down slightly, so they arrive at the livestream at the same time as the video.

   c) There was an occasional nasty flicker. This was alleviated by ensuring Zoom and OBS were operating at the same frame rate (25 fps).

   So far so good, then. Famous last words etc.

   On the morning of Friday 11th September, the day before the Awards Ceremony, while I was walking a group of neighbourhood kids to the local school, one of them, while listening to music on his phone, decided just to walk out into the middle of a busy road at a green light. Every morning up to this incident I'd kept telling the child, "Put away your phone, don't walk while using your phone." Fortunately no cars were coming and the kid was fine, but following this I experienced chest pains making it difficult to breathe. No cough, fever or loss of sense of taste or smell, just chest pains, which I'd experienced at times before of high pressure. I went to bed hoping to sleep it off, missing concerned phone calls from both William and Gina.

  The next day and feeling much improved, I got to work on the intro and credits video clips, as well as the Audience Choice Award video, which had been decided by vote the night before. Everything was moving towards completion and the day flew by.

   Due to a desire for staff safety and adherence to government guidelines of using hand sanitiser, masks, open windows and a minimum interpersonal space of two metres, it was decided that we use Gina's kitchen, which was bigger than my office, despite the slower internet connection. A zoom chat with 'Ghillie' film-makers Mike Marriage and Jamie Cooper was tentatively arranged. The most important part was delivery of the awards, but if possible I wanted to pick up the gauntlet of having some kind of live interaction with filmmakers within the livestream.

   We met at Gina's at 6pm in the pouring rain, with plenty of time (or so we thought) before the 8pm kick off. Set up the green screen and lights, hooked up the Mac to a second monitor and using a wireless keyboard and mouse, I was able to run the tech while William and Gina were able to present the show with the open MacBook screen to guide them and record them using the 720p FaceTime camera. 

   We were all good to go, doing a couple of rehearsals, when another problem presented itself: I needed my headset to monitor everything. William could do the nominations 'deaf' as it were, but he needed a headset to talk to Mike and Jamie. Gina's husband Richard had a spare headset. Much time was wasted trying to get the MacBook to play continuously through two headsets before I realised I could just wipe down my headset before giving it to William. I'd be 'deaf' to the Zoom call, which made me nervous, but during our set up check at 7:30 with Mike and Jamie the levels seemed to look okay. Mike and Jamie popped out of the Zoom Room with a view to popping back nearer the time.

   Ideally we would have had twenty minutes here to stand around outside, chilling and having a smoke in the cool evening air (had we been smokers) gathering our thoughts in preparation. But no, it was one final visit to the loo and then on with the show!

   Shortly after 8pm we went live. 

William and me warming up

   "Okay, I'll switch on the mics now!" said I, only to state loudly a few minutes later, "After this is the short intro." But luckily I don't think I was heard over the trailer audio.

   We had about a ten second lag, but everything seemed to be going fine. People could see us, people could hear us. All good.

   William and Gina did an admirable job and the first half went swimmingly. So much so that I made the fatal error of thinking, "This is going to be a breeze."

   Then for some reason OBS chose that moment to play up. Remember I said it was temperamental? The Best Sound clip had vanished from the Scene List. 

   Blackness. Dead air. 

   I took a breath and told myself not to panic. Instead I gestured to William to keep talking while I tried to figure out the problem, of which he did an excellent job.

   Skipping ahead to Best Editing seemed the best option, but that didn't work either. I gestured again to William and he in turn gestured to Gina to come on stage and continue the stall tactics. How they both managed to stay cool, calm and collected in front of the camera was beyond me, but they did great, in fact their improv was highly entertaining. So much so, I kept it in the edit.

   I realised I had to re-import the clips afresh. This seemed to work. In fact to be on the safe side I re-imported everything one step ahead of the segment William was at. Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Film, Audience Choice Award. This meant each one started with a burst of loud volume I had to turn down as quickly as possible.

   Anyway, we'd refound our stride, and again I made the mistake of thinking, "We've done it! Just the credits to go! I've reimported them haven't I?" I saw the scene labeled RN Credits at the very bottom of the scene list. "Ah yes, this must be it." I queued it up, Gina and William signed off and I faded it in and sat back with a huge sigh of relief.

   But wait. Gina was saying something. Her lips were moving but I couldn't hear her. I'd gone temporarily deaf for real. Something about "Wrong credits." 

   I was like, "No, this is totally fine, look, white words on black screen going up, it's credits all right!" That's when I noticed the name 'Phil Hole.'

   It was the Raptor Newz Credits. 'Donuts by Phil Hole. Sound by Mike St And. Wardrobe by Ikea. All rights reserved and some left.'

   I knew I should have deleted all the extraneous scenes from the Scene List but hadn't had time to do it.

   I faded in the right credits hoping against hope I wouldn't have to re-import them and they played fine.

   And that was it. Made sure all the mics were off. Disconnected the livestream. Scanned the comments for something about the wrong credits, saw nothing and finally relaxed.

   William, Gina, Richard and I spent the next half hour decompressing and laughing with relief. It hadn't been perfect, but we'd given it our best shot and people seemed happy. Awards were delivered, and the Zoom livestream was perfect. 160 ms, baby!

From top left going clockwise: Mike Marriage (director), William Samson, Jamie Cooper (Producer)

   Looking back over the video to edit it for Vimeo and re-share I found there wasn't much to do, except trimming, cutting out a few moments of dead air and the wrong credits. In retrospect I should have realised the MacBook mic would not be good enough for two people standing apart and perhaps should have tried to connect my H2 recorder via USB. But again, with all that was going on, I'm just glad we got something out there. It might have taken another day to convince the MacBook to recognise yet another audio input.

   A day later and the livestream had a reach of 1,623, with 594 engagements, 128 comments, 5 shares and 765 views, which is none too shabby for an event.

   The 2020 SSFF wasn't without its challenges, but on the whole, if people look at the creativity, imagination and skill of the modern day film-force of and about Scotland that we were able to deliver and recognise, we hope you'll agree it is a worthwhile cause. In fact personally I would count the whole experience as by far my favourite distraction of 2020.

   With Gina at the helm the good ship SSFF has successfully completed another voyage, and long may she continue on her travels!

Scotland Holiday Day 1/11

Today is the first day of our holiday traveling around Scotland. We left home at 11:38am and drove for about an hour slowly northwards and stopped in Dunblane where we were foiled in our attempts at purchasing 3 meal deals in Tesco's due to our choosing the only two sandwiches on the shelves that were not covered. 

   According to the guidebook Dunblane Cathedral was worth visiting so we walked up there and had a look at the impressive old building.

   About another 40 minutes' drive took us to Crieff which seems quite different from how I remember it from when we visited Crieff Hydro with my parents some 30 years ago. The town seems to be slowly closing down, with a lot of shops to let and 50% sales, broken windows and empty churches. Beautiful views and great big detached houses - for sale.

   The B&B is very nice, though, and it should be about £100 per night.

   In saying that though the Italian restaurant in the bank Avanti's was very good albeit noisy with kids' screams echoing off the high stone ceiling. I had a Fabrizio with anchovies and olives, and it was one of the best pizzas I'd had, probably second only to the Four Seasons pizza in the YesBar in Glasgow.

   Lunch £15    Tea £5    Dinner £30     B&B £100    Miles : 58    Fuel £23.

Total cost Day 1 £173

Photos & Text © Chris R Young 2021