The Trebek Technique had its premiere at the Setting Sun Film Festival in April and it was a blast. Our film screened on the last evening, alongside Wingman and Through The Haze, which had both had long festival runs.
As the lights went down and the near-full theatre settled in for the next two hours or short films, it was hard to expect how the audience would react to The Trebek Technique. We had only shown it to a few people in its finished form, and some had honestly not responded in the way that they thought for a comedy. Perhaps they had missed the line…
The first couple of films came and went and got applause, so at least we knew that the audience was up for supporting the films. Sure enough, most of the crowd was made up of the filmmakers themselves and their friends, but at least there was a supportive atmosphere.
When the screen changed size from the 2.4:1 for the preceding film to out 1.85:1, it felt like you could cut the air with a knife. And then, BANG, it was on. The Sun Theatre had done a wonderful job of the transfer from our 30gb Prores4444 file to the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) for the big screen. Not only that, the work of BCW Film Scores in cleaning up the audio meant that our film was one of the best sounding ones on the night. Shot on a pair of Canon DSLRs, once up on the big screen, our film did not lose anything to those shot on high-end REDs and Sonys, which a couple of the others were.
The first real laughs were not due until about the three-minute mark. Were they going to laugh? Were they going to get it? Thankfully, we got more (and bigger laughs) than we could have hoped for. For some reason, the collective audience really responded to some of the funny lines and once the laughs started, they were in the mood to find the funny in the rest of the film. A huge sigh of relief!
Murray’s score was well received, especially for the minute-long netball scene, but the best part was listening in to some of the other audience members talking about the performance of ‘the two girls’ – Brydi Frances and Katy Nethercote.
Without a doubt, having our film playing on the big screen with some other fantastic films was such a buzz and the culmination of a lot of hard work by many people. Of course we have the filmmaking bug, and when an audience response as positive as this one comes through, it makes you itch to get back and write the next thing.
