There’s was plenty to see at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival in Seattle this past weekend.
The prize, face time with SyFy Channel execs, wasn't something to sneeze at, and the entries were all high-quality productions.
The first showing opened with a hilarious mock trailer Pokemon: Apocalypse. A live action “dark retelling” of the kid’s show.
Now that’s a Pokemon movie I’d go see!
The other two screenings were all of excellent quality. The grand prize went to the gorgeous stop-motion animation short "The Astronomer’s Sun." The audience favorite was "Hector Corps," a dark comedy with a swarm of tiny killer penguins.
But in the intermission between the two blocks the organizers did something very interesting. They had the theater’s digital projector show a chat screen for the festival, hashtag #sffsff. So basically, people who were there at the festival could tweet to everyone seated in the theater.
It was a little interesting, but towards the end, more and more joke tweets were sent, mostly about pants. And the audience responded. They ate it up. The last couple of tweets got plenty of laughs. Sure they weren’t great jokes, but that didn’t matter.
A receptive audience makes a gag more than it really is. That’s how a lot of comedians still have a career. And this was new because it added something to Twitter. It added an actual social aspect to social media.
I wasn’t the only one in attendance who was impressed. Some fellows in the next row immediately started to discuss how to install an Open Tweet night to their bar. It doesn’t take much. Just a digital projector and a Twitter hashtag or a Facebook wall.
So could open Tweet night be coming to a club or café near you? We’ll have to see won’t we 😉
