The Tribeca Film Festival starts today, and its ninth iteration sees producers making a big push to expand the festival's audience with a comprehensive online video and community component, TFF Virtual.
"You get virtual content in smaller doses, but there isn't this strong of a virtual element with any film festival," said Tribeca Film Festival executive director Nancy Schafer, who is also the senior vice president of the festival's for-profit wing, Tribeca Enterprises. "For nine years, we've talked about taking Tribeca out of New York to broaden the audience, but it never made sense to just have a screening in Sacramento. That doesn't capture the buzz and community of the festival."
Tribeca Enterprises chief creative officer Geoff Gilmore, who left his post as Sundance Film Festival director last year to help expand the Tribeca brand, had a hand in this new direction, but so did two big factors that festival producers have been monitoring for years.
"We feel technology is finally there to let us do this well," Schafer said, "and people are watching films online more than ever."
The festival partnered with on-demand software provider KIT Digital to stream free events like select red carpet arrivals, filmmaker interviews, and the April 29 award program. Beginning Friday, $45 premium passes will give as many as 5,000 virtual attendees access to eight features, select shorts, panels, and Q&As for one week.
Virtual passes went on sale in March, but Schafer says they really started moving last week when tickets to the actual screenings and panels were released.
But festival producers didn't want TFF Virtual to just stream content. One feature of both the premium and free virtual events will let online participants communicate with each other about the content. During many of the live events, their questions and conversations will be worked into the panel discussions and Q&As happening in front of live audiences.
TFF Virtual, like most of the festival, will see most of its action after programming starts with tonight's opening screening of Shrek Forever After, but it did get a trial run yesterday. A kick-off press conference with Schafer, Gilmore, and festival co-founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal took questions from press at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center and online.
