Face to Face with... Joe Bateman

The Rushes Soho Shorts festival launches this evening with a screening of Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. As all the months of preparation come to an end for the 10-day long event programme, festival director Joe Bateman tells us about the its relevance to the filmmaking community, what he’s especially looking forward to and parenting a troublesome teen.

How has all the preparation been going?

Very well. Posters Up. Magazine published and available both at venues and on the website. Goody bags and delegate bags stuffed. Films tech’d. Festival Team on standby. We are ready to go.

Tell us about the process...

We began the production process in December, preparing the submissions platform and creating the necessary documents to support the next year’s intake. In the last seven months we’ve been short listing, judging, event planning, editing the magazine, compiling the master programmes and sourcing the guest programmes. In total we’ve ended up with 115 events and screenings, 148 films from 27 countries in competition, whittled down from well over 1200 entered from 53 countries, and we could’ve programmed a lot more work! Somehow now that we’re here it feels like we could have added a couple of extra events each day (I like to say that, because I’m sure it’ll get a reaction out of the festival team!)

It's hard work, but an awful lot of fun.

Tell us about this year’s features and events...

Weekday mornings kick off at The Hospital Club with pitching events, Q&A’s, panels on the best way to get a reputation in advertising and how to find representation in the music promo world.

Lunchtimes and afternoons we've got seminars and screenings in Soho covering insurance, feature filmmaking on micro budgets, sound techniques, and case studies with award-winning, Oscar-nominated filmmakers alongside 24 guest programmes from Australia, the USA, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Panama, Italy and of course the UK. 

Evenings we move via the ‘Future of’ Panels at the Apple store to the ICA and the competition screenings. Plus there are some great events, networking sessions and screenings with long time festivals partners. 

For the weekend, in addition to the Fujifilm and RSSF screenings at the ICA, we’ve got a case study with the directors and team behind the Parallel Lines challenge at The Hospital Club on Saturday and we've teamed up with BAFTA for the third year running to produce the Short Filmmakers Market with 16 seminars being held throughout Sunday 24 July alongside 20 trade stands, a networking breakfast sponsored by Skillset and a drinks reception provided by YouTube at the end of the day. 

After all these years, how do you manage to keep it fresh and exciting?

It’s just about listening to what’s going on. We work with over 150 companies to bring the festival together, each with their own agenda and point of view, so it’s a great mix and they provide a constant news feed of current trends and relevant topics.

Then there are the submissions we receive each year, many of which reflect recent world situations, so you have that political edge or social commentary clashing with fresh, experimental ideas as well as productions from established professionals who are either fulfilling creative projects that they’ve long dreamt about or creating work to show off a different discipline or genre in filmmaking. You also have the brands challenging filmmakers to create content and the more traditionally commissioned content all been added into the pot. This is what we’re watching from January to April each year and as we watch the films we’re also planning the events.

Short film is a great medium to reflect people's opinions, ambitions and passions. With those influences and the ways in which our industry has evolved in the 21^st century, sometimes we wish we had more space in the programme to cover everything. Actually, that’s also why we started as a five-day event and now we’re 10 days.

And what about Orbital London; why did you decide to launch the competition?

We were having a chat in the office, discussing what many London-based funding bodies ask: how do you engage the outer boroughs? That discussion moved on to the idea of the legacy for London after the Olympics and the cultural Olympiad. A large portion of our audience comes from across London and we were excited by the idea of bringing London-based short film groups together and celebrating our city. It’s been a great experience. We had over 100 teams enter the challenge and we’re screening all the completed work during the festival. All the films will also go up on a dedicated YouTube channel for people to see, there are some inspired productions. It just confirms how ingenious filmmaking folk are. We’re already planning next year!

How has the rise of platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo changed the relevance of the festival?

Online platforms have directly affected the filmmaking community and I’m certain they’ve affected the relevance of our festival and festivals worldwide. To what extent this is true, though, I think it's too early to say. Showcasing work online has given the creation of short format content and events a massive adrenalin injection.

The other crucial element of festivals is that they are an opportunity for community forming and networking. Online platforms provide a far more extensive network than we could achieve on our own but, while I don’t believe that we’ve yet fulfilled our potential for engaging our audiences through online platforms, I don’t think anything can compete with physically engaging and communicating with people. Certainly the opportunity to have a few drinks with said people means that projects born at film festivals are often that much better than those created online.

What are you most looking forward to this time around?

In truth my very favourite part is watching all the films when they are submitted and planning the events. The festival is a great opportunity to meet up with everyone we’ve been calling, emailing and texting over the last seven months – we all finally get to have those drinks we’ve been planning for but kept putting off because things were too busy.  The Awards Ceremony is always a highlight – it’s just a shame we can’t give all the films an award, because they all deserve one.

Are you worried about 13 being an unlucky number?

Are you kidding? When Elizabeth turned 13 on The Waltons all hell broke loose with flying pebbles and smashing vases. If that can happen on Walton Mountain, Virginia, how will it compare to Soho, London? That was my first thought. As it turns out we’ve kept the flying objects to a minimum and despite our superstitious sensibilities we’re doing okay. But in all seriousness, we’re planning on being a really troublesome teenager. It’s a great excuse to shake up our programme a bit. Not that it’s too evident this year (we’re a late developer) but next year the hormones will have kicked in and we’ll be breaking out in pimples!