LIVE SCREENING OR ONLINE SCREENING: BIG QUESTION TODAY FOR FESTIVALS !

Live Screening or Online Screening for Film Festivals is one big question in today’s time. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Live screening gives scope to filmmakers to have a one on one interaction with other filmmakers around the globe and with the festival curators too. Live Screenings are basically events hosting the screening of films which are submitted in the particular festival. Filmmakers from around the globe come together and watch all the films and even get appreciated for their work. This sure creates a good relationship and further scope of work for the filmmakers. But with a shift in the filmmaking industry, a shift to online space and online screenings seem to be a good idea too.

Online Screening focuses on time-saving. One can submit their work by sitting at their homes. This process saves a lot of time and at the same time also gives people opportunity to submit their work at as many festivals as they want, as there is no scene of live screening they can just submit the work and wait for the results for a lot of festivals during the same time period without any hassle.

This choice is quite tough because both the mediums have their good sides and bad sides. Few filmmakers are of the opinion that no matter what they like the idea of live screening because they feel a sense of honour that their work is seen and appreciated by a bunch of audiences. On the other hand, few filmmakers are of the opinion that they feel it more convenient to go through the online screening process as it saves a lot of time. It is not always possible for people to travel to a particular place for screening, but due to the online screening, the festival curators overview the films through digital medium and notify the filmmakers about their success. It is a very good concept and in favour of those filmmakers who have a hard time visiting different cities to attend festivals.

So, both the concepts have quite different approaches from different individuals and I think It is very hard to choose one to be better from the other. It is a debatable topic which has no sure answer as it caters differently to different people as per their needs, wants and approaches and likings. Festivals should choose a particular screening medium as per what their target audience and submitters are looking for or prefer to in order to garner more submissions and popularity and succeed more like a film festival. Though the festival curators have all the rights to choose any one medium as per choice and the loyal submitters would submit no matter whatever the screening medium would be. Although live screenings are been taking place since a long ago this huge thunder of pandemic has shifted all the focus to online screenings. Even big film festivals who use to host Live screenings have to take the way of online screening in these tough times. So the festivals should keep in mind about this drastic conditions too and may also be open to this digitized version in near future or can preferably think of an idea or way which can balance both the mediums perfectly in a way that it would be beneficial for both the submitters and festival curators.