I’ve tried not to be worrying about it, but nevertheless there was a bit of concern today as I logged into the account and looked to see if any films had arrived. I did this a few times between other things like teaching and working on issues to do with another film project, and each time there was nothing. I was confident that there were some films on their way, since various students from the teams who entered the film competition had emailed me about various clarification issues (duration, what does midnight mean exactly, etc.) and so I know that not all of the 19 teams who submitted their application to enter the competition in October were going to be no-shows… but how many would “not all” end up being? This is the issue you get when you set something up, advertise as much as you can, and then sit back and hope that people come. You never know until they do. The same thing happened with the pre-registration phase. I’d been running around doing as much as I could to build awareness since the end of August, but until the very end I did not know if I would get a single entrant. In the end 19 teams (around 90 students) got involved!
So here I am again. There’s no turning back… the splendid theatre is booked for the showcase, the judges have been selected, the upload space is sitting waiting, the over-sized prize checks have been printed (ok, not really), and there’s nothing I can do but wait and see. The good news is that a little while ago I looked and there was a film there! For real! Just to be sure, I looked at it and… yeah, it is real. They’ve put a lot of work into it, and it is a real entry. So two more films at least and I can give away all the prizes and all is well. Anything more than that I am considering a bonus (but of course it would be nice to have a good collection for the showcase). I predicted a 50%-60% attrition rate, so we will see how far off I am. (In fact, even without films having been delivered, I’ve heard from students that they found the whole exercise a valuable one, having collaborated with people outside their fields and learned from each other about how to communicate science in the process of trying to pitch the film to me in October, and think about making it… so it’s a win-win overall already.)
…and I checked just now and there are two! This is great! It has not been all going on in my head after all.
It is going to be an interesting evening watching for more…
-cvj
