Pictures from DocFest!

Posted by Sam Cook

Here we are a week or so after DocFest and I finally have some pictures to put up! The weekend was fantastic and I cant really thank First Light enough for the opportunity and the fact that they paid for everything!

The weekend started with a long train ride and a night in the Copthorne Hotel before moving a couple of meters to our second hotel the next morning.

We got up at 9 30 , checked out at 10 and had to wait until 2 to check into the Jury Inn and so used the opportunity to first find and secondly register for DocFest.




After searching around most of Sheffield and getting
to know the area, we finally found the main hub for
all of the events where we received our delegate passes and a free goody bag which included a memory stick, a music CD and a really nicely presented festival guide book.





We left the main registration area, after securing our tickets for Banksy's Exit through the gift shop, and headed over to the HUB rooms. These rooms had a variety of different things going on inside, including BBC Academy workshops, networking sessions and the chance for big shots to fund peoples documentaries that were being pitched.




We hung around the HUBS for a while as we waited to attend the BBC Academy 3D Camera workshop which was being held in HUB B.

The workshop was really interesting and informative as we got the chance to see consumer and professional 3D set ups as well as see previews of some of the projects and tests that BBC are doing with 3D.

                                                                                    
We saw a nature show in 3D, a cooking show in 3D, JLS in 3D and a short documentary about peregrine falcons in 3D.

Some of these things worked better than others as you can imagine. A cooking show in 3D....

We then left the workshop and found ourselves checking in at the Jury Inn and briefly meeting the London Digital Documenters team , before heading off to the Exit Through The Gift Shop screening.

It was a busy but great screening which had the editor and producer on hand afterwards for a brief Q+A session.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film and found the ending incredibly un expected.

In the next few days we got to see a few more docs including, After the Apocalypse, But film is my mistress and the other shorter docs that played before every feature.

One thing we did find is that because there was so much going on that we ended up missing things.

Either way, we had a fantastic time and thouroughly enjoyed the experience and would recommend going in the future!