ASFF: Aesthetica Short Film Festival

On the 8th of November we went to York to go ASFF. The official website describes ASFF as 'a celebration of independent film from across the world, and an outlet for championing and supporting short filmmaking'.

Beggars logo

Our primary reason for going to the festival was to listen to Craig McNeil talk about music videos and his work at the Beggars group. The beggars group is an independent British record company that owns or distributes several other labels, including 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador Records, and XL Recordings. The companies’ roots stem from the Beggars Banquet record shops, which first opened in 1973 with a shop in Earls Court,London. 




Craig McNeil talked about a variety of things related to music videos, all of which were very helpful, especially considering our music videos that are we are currently making. He talked about the history of promotional videos (music videos) and how artist used MTV and other channels to promote themselves instead of the typical 'top of the pops' method. He also spoke about what makes a good and bad music video. From this I took how important it is to be simple and original, and if it takes more than a sentence to describe your video idea it is probably too complicated. 

He spoke about influential videos such as Thriller and how a good music video can change an artists career. He continued to talk about the development of the music video and talked a lot about the how much YouTube has helped and what a great media platform it is. As we will be using YouTube as a method of feedback and promotion for our video this was good to hear. From YouTube things like lyric videos have been developed which also help to promote the artist. This is something we could consider doing as part of the promotional side of our video as well as the dance video we are thinking about. 

At the ASFF there are venues across the city showing screenings and talks. We went to the venue at White Stuff which was screening music videos. From watching these it also gave us ideas to help our music video. One of the most influential videos was ... In this video they used lighting at the beginning to the beat of the music to help reveal the character. This looked really effective and is something we can definitely consider as an opening for our video. Another element we noticed from watching the music videos is that point of view shots worked quite effectively. This could also be easily connected to our video as we can show the older and younger PCD point of view.






Information taken from:
ASFF website
Beggars group wiki