Community Arts

“The culture that Film Score Fest fostered gave me as a beginner composer the confidence to attempt composing a film score for an 18-piece orchestra, something that I had never considered doing. It was the perfect balance of creative challenge vs a safe environment in which to share my work.” –Jonathan Koh, composer. Our artistic goals were to: 1) foster individual artistic development in the participating artists, 2) create a community of artistic collaborators, and 3) host an artistically engaging and exceptional event for the audience. Our kickoff event included a filmmaking workshop, led by Missy Whiteman, Sundance fellowship awardee, and a composing workshop, led by Adam Conrad, film composer and conductor of the Improvestra improvising orchestra, which inspired and guide creators. It was also a successful way to sign-up participants, of the 25 that attended, 18 people signed-up to participate. While our kickoff workshop was well attended, there was less networking than in the past because the event was in a classroom setting. In the future, we’d like to host the workshop somewhere that has informal atmosphere to promote more networking. Additionally, next year we’d like to film the workshop component and make available online for those who cannot attend the event. Despite this setback, there were many successful partnerships between filmmakers and composers during Film Score Fest 2016. For example, a pair that met at our kickoff resulted in a film with harmonious music and visuals. The composer said that being able to do things like be on set during the filming helped him strike the right mood when creating the music for the film. In order to foster artistic development, we drew on our partnership with Saint Paul Neighborhood Network to offer a free storytelling and cell phone-video classes, and affordable camera and editing classes. This year we asked participants to volunteer to mentor other artists. This was a successful idea, and we’d like to further promote it next year. Aida Alkadi, a novice filmmaker told us she was able to finish her film in time because her mentor gave her the guidance, encouragement, and the accountability she needed. Last year, we were at capacity, so we moved to the Science Museum of Minnesota for more seating, and as expected we had a near full house with 260 attendees. The 18 original films that premiered that night were well received. In our audience surveys, community members highly rated the event. Yet, a critique we struggle to address is making the festival accessible to artists of all skill levels, while making the event engaging. This year, we had a film selection panel who curated the event. This resulted in a more engaging event with films of different styles and genres, but we’d like to get more film submissions, which result in a richer diversity of films. Next year, we’d like to have our kickoff event earlier in the year, so we have an extra month promote our event. Every year we seek to engage artists from different skill levels, income levels, who bring us films with diverse of styles and genres. Because our event is free to enter and films are based on artistic merit and not skill level, we succeeded at doing this. We also offered a good deal of support to our participating artists, including filmmaking and composing workshops at our kickoff event, free and discounted filmmaking classes through our partner Saint. Paul Neighborhood Network, and offering peer mentorship. Next year, we’d like our event to be more inclusive of artists and audience members from diverse cultural backgrounds. This year we saw an increase of non-white audience members because we partnered with the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center, which serves youth of color, young women, and youth from low income backgrounds. In return for their generous sponsorship, we are leading a filmmaking workshop for their youth in November 2016, with the hope that they will be empowered to participate in Film Score Fest 2017. This year, we had a powerful partnership between Iraqi woman and a Hmong man, who were both refugees of war. They produced a film that critiqued the US invasion of Iraq, a topic that hit home for both. These individuals participated because we made an effort to reach out to filmmaking organizations that serve marginalized populations in St Paul, including the Hmong film festival, Qhia Dab Neeg, Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, and In Progress, a St Paul nonprofit with the mission to “diversify cultural dialogue and pave the way for new voices in the field of digital art making.” We hope to expand partnerships like these in 2017. Music composition requires one to have a music theory background and the knowledge of writing notated music, which can be inaccessible. We recognize that there are many composers who are capable of creating musical scores for Film Score Fest, but are unable to participate because they don’t know how to write sheet music or they don’t write for orchestral instruments. Next year, we’d like diversify our composers by allowing these individuals to submit an audio recording of their score instead of sheet music for the selection process. If their score and film are selected, we will arrange for them to perform the score live themselves or with other musicians of their choice, as guest artists. We exceeded our screening goal by screening a total of 18 films. In our audience surveys, we asked audience members to rate this event from 1-poor to 5-excellent. 35% rated this event 5, 55% rated it a 4, 15% rated it a 3, and no one rated it below 3. We also asked Film Score Fest artists to rate this event on the same scale, 90% rated it as 5, 10% rated as a 4, and no one rated it as under 4.