Karen Sproul’s Cannes Diary: In the bunker
Exit Films producer Karen Sproul is Australia’s representative on the Film Craft jury. Sproul, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.
I have spent 3 days with my ‘jury mates’ now, in our small, dark bunker in the depths of the Palais.
We feel as if we’re living in a parallel universe. We start early in the morning – and there are not many people around at that time – but we’re always very envious of the people doing the morning yoga on the Carlton jetty – because we’d all love a good stretch after so many hours of sitting. We hear people coming out of their seminars at the Palais during the day – talking excitedly about what they’ve seen. We know real life is happening outside our doors, we just can’t reach it.
I have always been told that these days are intense, because of the number of entries we need to view in such a short time, so I am not surprised about that. What I am surprised about is the speed of the judging.
You have to spend several weeks prior to the Cannes week pre-judging up to 500 pieces of work – and this on top of your daily life is a challenge to get through in the time. But once you’re in the little room, you are judging in real time. Each piece of work is viewed, and you vote immediately, as you are going straight into the next piece of work. I am amazed at how fast it all happens.
It’s very important that entrants give a good summary description and a context / explanation to their work, so judges can get some clarity and insight into how the work is being used, or how it was produced. As you can imagine, working at this pace, any little insights are helpful.
So far, our team has been split into 2 groups each day, and the categories of work are also split – so each group is judging half of a category. This is the first pass, and we have only just completed this first pass on each category today. Tomorrow we will start to form the shortlists, then we move into the more serious business of deciding about awards.
It’s hard to start talking about the work yet, because the sheer volume is making our heads spin a bit, but we are seeing definite trends emerging. We can’t wait to get to the next stage, where we can start to discuss and analyse the work more as a group.
By the way, we are having some night fun though, we just turn into pumpkins around midnight, so we get enough sleep.