Press conferences are the bread and butter of film festivals, where the filmmaking community and the media are shoved in a room together and expected to get on for about 30 minutes or so before the doors are eventually unlocked. And mostly, they do, with some thought-provoking comments made from directors and actors about their craft, amusing anecdotes revealed with which to pepper otherwise dull articles and insightful questions asked by journalists who actually bothered to watch the film in the first place (or, at least, didn’t fall asleep because the press screening was at 9am). But there are a few amusing quirks about such events – especially ones I’ve attended in the Middle East – that still make me chuckle despite cropping up time and time again. And these have already occurred on several occasions in just three days of the Doha Tribeca Film Festival 2012.
THE CAMERAMAN VIDEOING THE AUDIENCE All too often in a press conference I've looked up from my scribble-littered notepad to see a camera pointed in my face. It's a weird feeling, and the first thought to crop up is usually along the lines of 'er, shouldn't you be recording the people on stage?'. From what I've been told, these audience shots are for the bits in the video where they'll pan away and let the sound go over the top to give the viewer a different image on screen, but from what I've seen they seem to be video the crowd a whole lot more than they do the actual 'stars'. I just wonder how much footage of me picking my nose is still lurking on various memory cards.
THE TRANSLATOR If you were impressed by the skills of a filmmaking auteur, just wait till you've heard an translator digest their fast-paced, 10 minute-long monologue and fire it out in another language at 100 words a minute (or thereabouts). A thought I've always had is: when someone from the audience is asking a question to someone on stage, but in a language they don't understand, what is that person being asked supposed to do they're talking. For the most part, it seems to be to look at them and nod intelligently along while the other person is rabbiting away, and – in my mind – thinking 'I have absolutely no idea what you're saying'. A couple of times, bilingual guests on stage have actually corrected a translator, which makes me worry just how many other incorrect quotes have made it through before.
THE LONG QUESTION THAT ISN'T ACTUALLY A QUESTION In most press conferences there's one; someone in the audience who – perhaps just due to a deep obsession with their own voice – decides to pick up the mic and ask a question that goes on and on and on and on. After about 30 seconds or so you start to hear the tell tale deep sighs from the rest of the crowd. And unless there's a fairly forthright moderator, often those on stage sit there with that wide-eyed, polite smile that suggests they've got no idea where the person is heading with this one. All too often, after the end of a long, rambling, monologue that few people are sure had any connection to reality, let alone the film, there's no question at all, nothing. Odd. Just odd.
