Hello,

The fact I’ve merged these two posts together is down to the fact that I was so tired last night when I got back that I never got round to it. So I thought I’d do these two posts together to make up for it!

SitC Day 3 was shorter than I’d have liked it to be in an ideal world, but it worked out for the best in the end.

I waited to get in at 11, as I had the previous two days and when the doors opened, I wondered casually (as opposed to all the girls running and screaming) towards The Midnight Beast’s stand, to buy myself a t-shirt and one as a present for Lucas (because I’m a good girlfriend) and then, me and the friends I’d made wondered pretty aimlessly around until we decided we wanted to go and queue for the Short Film panel.

We went an hour and twenty minutes before the panel started, but we also were the first people in the queue and got to be front row so… totally worth it.

The panel was hosted by Elliot Gough (far right) and featured a few of my very favourite YouTubers and filmmakers so I was really keen to hear what they had to say.

The thing with a lot of these panels as that you do end up hearing a lot of the same things – if you want to make it you just have to keep making things, churn out loads of content and keep practicing. At the end of the day, it’s all storytelling.

Sammy made a good analogy that getting into the industry was like climbing up the steps of a ladder and YouTube, in a way, is building a new ladder to climb up. And to further the analogy, it’s much harder to climb up the ladder when millions of people are trying to.

They reiterated that you need to be constantly making things and putting stuff out there, whether it be with writing or any skill. Hazel Hayes then said that showing promise can be more important than having loads of views or subscribers.

Short films can work as proof of concept or as a shorter form of an idea for a feature film, a series or a generally bigger idea and a lot of these filmmakers works was originally an idea for a feature film or something that they thought could possibly be continued but they wanted it to be rounded off and seem complete as well, so the YouTube audience wouldn’t be left feeling unfulfilled.

And in terms of management or getting funding, it’s best not to have a “baby” project. If you put so much into an idea that you’re then reluctant to let it go and don’t have any other ideas, it’s unlikely that anyone’s going to take you seriously so be working on a few things at once.

One thing I figured out whilst listening to that panel is that I’d really like to write something that’s very dialogue heavy – I really like writing dialogue and it would be nice to have that challenge and write about something that matters to me.

It was a really great panel and I’m glad it was the last thing I went to at SitC. After the panel, a bunch of us wondered around a little bit – having another look around the convention (like we didn’t know it inside out at this point!) and then went for lunch. And it was at this point that the others went to another panel and I went to the hotel to pick up my suitcase and get the train home.

I was absolutely shattered from the weekend and I didn’t want to be fighting with rush hour London on a journey home where I knew I’d be struggling to stay awake. I’m glad I left when I did because the underground journey was easy and there was a train at the station ready to leave in less than ten minutes when I arrived at Waterloo and I was home by 6, eating Chinese and watching Robot Wars by 8.

A lovely, relaxing evening to end an absolutely brilliant weekend.

And I suppose, I don’t want to ruin it really by saying I haven’t worked out or written a single word at all this week. I’m struggling with motivating myself and being able to think positively right now – depression is a difficult thing and it’s so hard to let myself fail when I’m so scared of failure but here I am, failing. Sorry.

Thank you for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed my posts about Summer in the City,

Sophie xx

 

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