Now that everything is all said and done I can say the webfest blew me away. Okay, I’m not intending to throw cliché phrases. I also wish I attended Vancouver WebFest because then I’d have something to compare it to. Suzette Laqua certainly was one of the many big personalities at the festival. She promised The Press Pass a media pass for the Vancouver WebFest 2015.

            Speaking of web series festivals, there’s apparently going to be a Montreal WebFest in 2015. Any developments on that will be on my social media. Montreal would be much more cost effective than Vancouver, and totally worth the travel. Montreal is not only home to a greatly self-sufficient film industry, but some great web series call the city home as well. This includes the incredibly successful Heroes of the North.

            Anyway, TO WebFest is a success for several reasons. One reason being that they had fantastic panels, and some incredible speakers from the U.S. and the U.K. Not to mention Simon Zsebök from Viewster, which has its HQ in Switzerland.

            It’s a great networking opportunity, not to mention that everyone that Jermain and I met were fantastic at all the after parties.

            Another reason for the apparent success of the festival is that people are still talking about it (myself included). All day I’ve seen at least ten different articles in my social media feeds discussing the merits of TO WebFest. Several of them were wordpress blogs, and it says that the festival had more of a resounding effect than, say, L.A. WebFest.

            One criticism that the festival might want to change next year is the screenings and the panels scheduled at the same time. I didn’t attend most of the screenings because I was in the panel. The screenings were free, which is fantastic, but I got the impression it made for some low attending because people were in the panels. I think the screenings are a great idea, and essential to a good festival. The thing about a web series festival is that most of the screenings are shows you can watch online for free, or through a subscription service that costs less than Netflix.

            Either way I look forward to the festival next year, and believe that TO WebFest has set the bar high in terms of Canadian web series. Check out their website for full details on the panels, screenings, and their sponsors.

 

**Also stay tuned for the results of Dailymotion’s Trailer Contest come out tomorrow!

I want to give you guys a little blog post before I head out for the last day. Saturday was possibly the most insane, long and exhausting day of my life. Both Jermain (my camera man) and myself had late nights and had to get back to the Habourfront Centre for 11am before the first panel. Unfortunately we missed the presentation of the IWCC Profile Study.

            From the 5 seconds that I did catch the presenters of the study said that YouTube is leading in online video distribution with Dailymotion leading in the second slot. That I already knew, too bad I didn’t catch more of it.

            Anyway after that we filmed five panels back to back that were an hour long. Jermain and I had five minutes to reset in between each panel. Not much time to change batteries, switch out memory cards and dump footage. The worst part is that both of us forgot to bring something to dump the footage so we could free up the memory cards. That was an adventure and a half. Jermain did an amazing job problem solving that us. You think you bring enough SD cards to prepare for the end of the world, but you don’t.

            Some of the panels were great, some of them had one person talking for a while. Either way we’re gonna try and make our coverage of it interesting. Cut out all the lag.

            After doing that for five hours straight. We took a break for dinner, and came back just in time for the awards show. Jermain and I managed to get some great footage of that! I’m excited to sort through it. Congrats to all the winners! I’m going to try and compile a list over the next couple of days.

            The awards were short and sweet and then we interviewed panelist for a couple hours. A lot of the people we caught from out of time were amazing to talk to. Jeff Burns, Bernie Su, Enrique Soissa, and Dominik Rausch had a lot of cool things to say about the panels and TO WebFest. Hopefully we’re gonna get more out-of-towners today. After that I went out for half a drink with a few friends and called it quits before I fell asleep standing up!

I’m very excited today for Jeff Bruns’ Super Geeked Up live at TO WebFest! I’ll try and tweet about that if I’m not holding a camera.

The first day of T.O. WebFest was a lot of trial and error. My second in command Jermain, aka the person that keeps me sane, helped out my getting me some extra equipment. We arrived at 2:30, and left around 11:30. Jermain stuck around a little bit longer to enjoy the opening night party.

            The first day had no panels, only two screenings and an after party. The Press Pass spent most of the day getting interviews. Everyone answered the same set of questions, we kept it fun and related to web series. I had a hard time keeping track of all the people I interviewed.

            It reminds me a lot of when the IWCC had their launch party last year. It was this month last year to be exact. I hosted their live stream, where I interviewed whoever the IWCC brought to me for about two straight hours. I don’t remember half the people I interviewed that day. Today felt a little similar, only with a Sci-Fi/Fantasy as a break. The screenings were fantastic.

            But I’ll talk a little bit more about the interviews before I call it a night. We interviewed some awesome people! Everyone had their own take on the questions and it was neat to see the different answers we got. Lots of people were taking pictures of the interviews. If anyone wants to post their pictures in the comments below that would be awesome! We also interviewed Suzette Laqua, executive producer and founder of Vancouver Web Fest. She was awesome and offered us a press pass for Vancouver Web Fest next year! Very excited!