My very long, annual rant about the recent Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) from a photographer’s point of view. If you’re not somehow involved with TIFF then you might be advised to skip this post.
The point of this is not only to vent my frustrations with the 44-year-old film festival but also to make suggestions to the folks that run TIFF. It seems that someone at the film festival reads this blog because some of my suggestions get implemented the following year. Thank you very much.
After the film festival, TIFF sends out a survey asking for journalists’ thoughts about the event. There’s no such questionnaire for photographers. This post provides my answers to a nonexistent questionnaire.
TL;DR: As always, some things got better, some got worse and a few things haven’t changed. You’d think that after four decades the event would be a smooth running, polished machine. But no.
The red carpet area at Roy Thomson Hall has seen several changes over the past few years. This was probably due to all the complaints from photographers like me :–)
Changes have included an actual red carpet, three sets of lights, blue gels for some of those lights, a clear roof on the media tent, white-only barricade covers and letting photographers wait under the tent before an event if it’s raining. All of these necessities were obvious to everyone except TIFF.
But the covered photo area is still too small and too narrow and there are no photo risers (at any venue).
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