Buffer Festival: A film festival for the Internet Age

Robin Careless —

Corey Vidal, at 26, has created more that many people do in a lifetime. His Youtube Channel, ApprenticeA Productions, boasts more than 200 videos, over 222 000 subscribers, and his vlog channel (ApprenticeEh) just passed their thousandth continuous day Vlogging. (For those of you unaware, Vlogging is when someone makes an autobiographical short video, similar to a journal entry in video form. These vlogs are wildly popular on Youtube). He also just got back from 6 months of filming a Documentary, and has now graciously taken the time to sit down with me and answer a couple of questions about his latest creation, Buffer  Festival.

So, Corey, what is Buffer Festival?

Buffer Festival is a multi-day theatrical event that showcases the best creative work from video creators on Youtube. What that means is  it’s a Film Festival for Youtube Videos. We have 36 screenings over three days, in four locations, with six different theaters in total.  It’s important to note that all these theaters are within walking distance of each other, and I actually did the walk myself just yesterday.  Beyond that, there are meet ups, if you want to meet the creators, and we have some public parties we are throwing with DJ’s and Dance floors. But what Buffer really is about is a group of people, coming together in a theater with the lights down, to enjoy videos.

And you’re showing them in groups?

Yes, we are tying them together in one of two ways; Either by the person who created those videos, or with a common theme.  So on the Creator side of things, for example, there will be a show on Wheezy Waiter, there will be a show on CTFxC, and one on Daily Grace. All the shows are 90 minutes, and we have over 25 Creator shows. And the other half are Theme shows. So for example we have one that are all the Canadians, one for Daily Vloggers, and one for Musical Parodies. These are the kinds of content that people are watching on Youtube, that people really enjoy.

I know some festivals do individual tickets, where as others you can get festival passes. How is Buffer doing it?

All the tickets are $15, that’s per show, and you go to as many as you want. We’ve sold a lot of individual tickets, but what we’ve found is that a lot of people are buying the 8 ticket pass, and so people are seeing two or three shows each day.

So how did this all get started?

There is a joy of sharing these videos, there is a laughter and  connection there. We have all pulled friends around a computer and said “Hey watch this!”  And showing Youtube in a theater, it will let these people share together, on a much larger scale. Hearing 500 people laugh at a joke in a Youtube video is something that rarely ever happens, which I think is a shame.

You see, my entire life, I have been a big fan of cinema, and of going to the movies. I love the experience of going to a movie theater, the lights going down, that movie going on and it looking and sounding it’s best. Movies are designed to be seen in a theater.  Watching in your living room, watching it with your friends is great, but there’s something about a movie you can’t pause, that you have to pay attention to, and if you have to pee it’s an emergency. I’ve always really cared and enjoyed about that, and it’s one of the reason’s I got into Youtube.

What’s amazing is that Youtube has given us this platform to create content and share it across the world.  But what I feel is a shame is when someone makes a video and hits upload, that video’s premier on Youtube, on their end, is met with silence. You hit upload, it goes live, and that first view comes in, that first comment, the first like and dislike. You see all of that, sitting at your computer, and most of the time you’re alone. And it’s such a shame because it’s just so anticlimactic. You make a video and then the rest of the day you’re just checking the comments. It’s something really quiet that you do from a laptop or a cellphone. And I feel that Youtube, in some respects, is missing the really big premier, the “Hey this is a big deal” Even Youtubers that release a video and instantly get tens of thousands of comments are still sitting at a computer by themselves.

So I went to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011, I had a wonderful time and  left thinking “I wish there was something like that for Youtube.” And while Youtube does have something similar, Vidcon, it wouldn’t be compared to a film festival. Vidcon would be compared to Comic Con. It’s a convention, and you have an Expo hall and panels and performances. And I’ve actually talked to Hank Green (founder of Vidcon and a Youtuber in his own right) about how at Vidcon, there isn’t a lot of Video watching, just like you don’t go to Comic Con and watch Comics. Where as you go to TIFF, and you sit in a theater and watch movies. So I wanted to create an event where people who love watching Youtube videos can share that experience with each other.

Most people watch videos at home on their laptops, alone, and the creators are making these videos alone. We are going to bring everyone together and laugh and be entertained together. I can just see that being such a fun experience for everybody. And honestly, it wasn’t something that really existed before.

You just finished filming a feature length Documentary, “Vlogumentary.” Is that going to play into Buffer at all?

Unfortunately not in the first year. While we do want to premier Vlogumentary at a film festival, and How cool would it be if it was ours. But the difficulty is that Vlogumentary is continually growing. We did three months of shooting, and then we released the Trailer at Vidcon. And because of how well that went, some really great things have happened since then, with people who couldn’t be in it, or weren’t originally interested, are now coming forward wanting to be a part of it, which is just fantastic. But because of things like that, it looks like Vlogumentary is going to take another year until it’s finished. It’s not a Youtube video, it’s not something we want to rush, and it’s also not a simple matter of taking what we have and editing it together.

We shot 200 hours of footage, and we need to make a 90 minute film. The narrative of that film, the stories that we share, the order that we share them in, how we tell it, down to every single line needs to be analyzed by people and there is so much good footage to go through. With the hundred people we interviewed, if the movie is 100 minutes, that means that everyone is in it for 1 minute. So we have to drop so many people, and really figure out where our stories are. And that’s the beauty of documentaries. When we put together the funding, we knew we wanted to tell the story of Vloggers, but we didn’t know what the specific details were. And now we have a really strong grasp of the story we want to tell. And we want to make sure that it’s satisfying to the hardcore fans who have seen every vlog, but also be accessible to the public, so that it’ll make sense to everybody, and everybody’s parents. There is such a delicate balance, because we are telling the story of when the cameras turn off, of the money and the drama and the depression and the fights and the fears. But we also don’t want a 90 minute documentary that is incredibly depressing to watch, so it’s all about hitting that tone, which means taking our time. So sadly, not this year.

So, the big question is: What show are you most looking forward to?

“If I had to pick 3, I would say the Musical Comedy show, the CTFxC Show, and the “Canadian’s Eh” Show. I feel like all of those shows are going to be a lot of fun, and I love Charles and Ali [Trippy of CTFxC], they’re some of my best friends in the world, and I just can’t wait to see them up on the big screen. And the Musical show will be a lot of fun, and with the “Canadian’s Eh” Show I’m really excited to share all kinds of Canadian content, and really give it a spotlight.”

Buffer Festival runs November 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th, and more information, such as show times and tickets, can be found at their website, www.bufferfestival.com