The Best Festival Trailer Ever?
26th Jan 2012
Last week I blogged about the popularity of the 2012 ShAFF trailer (produced by Alastair Lee of Posing Productions). It’s currently had 66,780 hits. Phenomenal, and with the festival still over a month away it looks set to be significantly higher. We are obviously chuffed to bits with the trailer, but what’s been even more gratifying is some of the comments we’ve received in response to the film.
First email landed about 2 minutes after I sent out my mailing list to announce the trailer launch. Granted, it’s from a friend, but the sentiment is clear:
“Wow ... wow ... what the ... cool ... hey look at ... whoa! Awesome trailer.”
One of my favourite filmmakers of all time (since spotting his work online in 2009 I’ve always screened at least a couple of his shorts at ShAFF each year) is French mountain guide Seb Montaz Rosset. Just a few days after the trailer hit Youtube Seb emailed me direct and said
“Very nice trailer matt, one of the best if not the best I have seen for a fest ! shared already!”
Ok, so he’s happy to have more of his films screening at ShAFF this year than ever before (4 of them in fact!). But a few minutes later another email landed in my inbox. This time from Greg Quail, producer of Crossing The Ditch, screened at ShAFF in 2011, and winner of the grand prize at the 2011 Kendal Mountain Festival, was also not exactly holding back in his praise:
“are you kidding me? that is the BEST trailer I have ever seen! WOW! I mean really... it's incredible...”
The next was from presenting sponsors Patagonia. Their head man in the UK Jonathan Petty said it in one word:
“AWESOME!”
Then comes one from the guys at Reel Rock in the States, no strangers to producing popular trailers themselves:
“Nice trailer” from Kate Mason.
Kris Holm, unicycler extraordinaire and pretty hand filmmaker to boot:
“Thanks for sharing. That was beautiful!”
Then there were messages from representatives of Banff Mountain Festival and Kendal Mountain Festival. Nice that ShAFF is on their radars. An email from the guys at Outside Magazine in the States asking if they could post the video on their website which we gratefully allowed.
But our favourite so far is from an anonymous American citizen who sent us this:
“What an amazing film festival! Coming from the US, which airport would you suggest flying into? Do you recommend any specific accommodations? Although I'm half British, I've never been to the UK! Any information you can provide will be greatly appreciated!”
I have’t really touched on the reams and reams of Tweets that were generated (and are still being generated).
Suffice to say that we are pretty pleased with Alastair, and looking forward to buying him a pint when he returns from Venezuela.
What do you think? Is it the best festival trailer ever?
