Library Teen Film Fest: How Ours Works

So here comes a combination of a program idea and shameless self-promotion. For the past four years, we've held a Library Teen Film Fest, and this year, I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we do it.

Basically, teens (ages 13-18) create a video using a theme (typically the Summer Reading theme for that year), and then we show the films at the library and give out cash prizes.

This year, the videos will all be Short Films (up to five minutes long), created around the theme, "Beneath the Surface." Once the films are created, we have teens fill out an entry form, and upload their video to our YouTube Channel.

The first year we held the festival, we allowed participants to submit on YouTube by giving us a link to their video, or giving us a DVD. But, we found it was difficult to promote these videos on social media, and also made the Red Carpet Event (where we show the films) not go as smoothly as we would like.

Now, when a participant enters the competition, they are given the username and password for our Film Fest YouTube Channel to upload their video. This allows us to keep the videos all in one place, and makes setting up the Red Carpet Event much easier.

While I've found most teens who enter the competition would have done so anyways, it never hurts to have some incentives. We ask our Friends of the Community Library Network group for funds to offer snacks, refreshments, and cash prizes.

Well that's about enough for this post, but I'll be writing next Monday about ways to make the Film Fest work better (sometimes you got to learn the hard way lol, and sometimes there are ideas that you just can't quite implement that might work for others).