How to make it in the film industry with Flickerfest’s Bronwyn Kidd

Just hours before opening night Pedestrian caught up Bronwyn Kidd Flickerfest’s Festival Director of 14 years about what it takes to make it in the film industry whether it’s behind the camera or behind the scenes (apart from simply staying abreast of Pedestrian’s Jobs site for all the latest Film & TV jobs and internships )

What’s your advice to someone looking to break into the film industry from a behind the scenes perspective whether it’s working for a festival or a film company?

Be really passionate and determined and get experience. We’re a really small team and Flickerfest is predominantly run by volunteers. People come back each year and they get to watch all the films. If you want to have a career in the film industry you’ve got to forget the glamour and you’ve got to be passionate about film not just your own film-making, but about other people’s story telling and what’s happening in cinema.

So many people have great degrees and they come out of uni and they think, “I want to work in the film industry” but often it’s the person who’s got that great degree as well as volunteering over their university career. Whether at festivals, or production companies or putting up their hand to work on a short film and being part of a crew. It’s often all that extra-curricular work that you don’t get marks for and you often don’t get paid for that will get you a career in the industry.

Most of the roles at Flickerfest are volunteer positions but I know that you do have more permanent positions in and around the office can you talk us through what you’re looking for when someone’s coming in for an interview?

I’m looking for people that have festival experience. I’ve got two people in my team at the moment one’s come from four years of founding the Glasgow short film festival. So she’s come to Australia and has all this fantastic experience working on programming. I’ve got a young girl that’s working in a paid office assistant role and she’s come from being an intern and volunteering at the festival last year.

When people come for interviews and I ask them whether they’ve come to Flickerfest or if they go to other film festivals and if they say no that says to me that they’re not that passionate about it. If you’re going to work in an industry but you’re not engaging with that industry it’s really hard for an employer to give you a chance. Arts jobs are labours of love, it’s not a career you go into to make lots of money from. So if you don’t have that enthusiasm I don’t think you’re going to last very long.

You would have seen thousands of short films over your 14 years as the Flickerfest director. Can you talk us through what catches your eye in a short film?

A simple beautiful idea. A film that did that for me this year in the (Flickerfest) Australian program was a really beautiful film by a young guy who’s in the UK and he rings his grandmother at home in Australia and she’s dying. It’s a very beautiful subtle film about relationships and family. Very low budget, two young film makers who haven’t made a lot of films before it’s a film called ‘From Here.’ Really simple idea but really beautifully done.

It’s always about the idea. Having a script that is unique, something that you’re passionate about and telling that story in a really moving way. We’re not looking for clichés. We’re not looking for the next Quentin Tarantino remake. We’re looking for individual voices. Stories that are moving and contemporary that our audiences can relate to.

One of the things that gets spoken about regularly in regards to Flickerfest is the Academy Award and BAFTA accreditation can you talk us through some of the success stories?

Recently I had to do some statistics and since 2002 when Flickerfest first became Academy accredited we’ve had over 30 films that have gone through our festival that have either gone on to be nominated or win an Academy Award. There’s obviously films like Harvey Krumpet that won the Oscar, there’s films like Miracle Fish by Luke Doolan, The Geographic Explorations of Japer Morello was nominated, Birthday Boy which won an award at Flickerfest won an Academy Award.

Another thing that I’m also really proud of is the amount of filmmakers’ careers that we’ve nurtured over that time as well. People like David Michod who’ve had all of their short films in Flickerfest before going on to make Animal kingdom. I remember my first year at the festival way back in 1998 when Joel and Nash Edgerton and Keiran Darcy-Smith had made one of their first films called Bloodlock. They won the audience award and their Grandma was here, and their mum was here – we were all young back then!

Miracle Fish

The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello

Birthday Boy

Flickerfest celebrates it’s 21st birthday tonight (6th Jan) and runs for 2 weeks at its spiritual home of Bondi Beach before touring nationally across 37 locations till May. Highlights include the Sundance bound short-film Bear from David Michod and Nash Edgerton and a Pedestrian presented Friday the 13th special entitled Short Bites of Horror featuring the amusingly titled “Rotting Hill”

Tickets are available for all sessions but if you’d like to win one of 5 double passes to our Friday the 13th special simply give us your best horror themed film title pun in the comments below.

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