Events
This concerns the setting up and organisation of the different Festivals that are planned to constantly feed the desire for Altair.
On this point I have based myself on my own experience. I willingly admit that what you are about to read may be completely silly and useless to set up.
Here are my observations:
– There is a frequency problem. Most major festivals are annual. So, except when you’re a child and you never see the time for holidays, birthdays, presents – and so a year is an eternity — the adult reaction will be: again!
– There is a problem of content, and of organisation that becomes absolutely fixed. This is surely great for people who love their slippers and their little habits. It’s atrocious for others.
And, well, no : I really like my slippers, and always park in the same place. But I still get bored at most Festivals.
– There’s a cost problem: it’s a huge organisation, it employs a maximum of extra staff, for logistics, set-up, preparation etc.
So: I don’t find it is at all relevant to get involved in a Festivals programme if it’s to do like the others.
Let’s come back to the fundamentals: what’s the point of a Festival?
It’s communication: no interest, the internet has swept that away. Spending so much money and energy for 4 days of com’ that will be drowned in billions of other information: no.
It enhances productions: ah yes, so there… no. I don’t have that much philanthropy. We could do like golf contests : everyone pays and those who make the cut are reimbursed for their expenses. – Basically those who will be noticed by the Festival.
Well – it’s rotten for the poor. And unfortunately, the living shows companies are … poor.
In any case, this point is not relevant to set up a Festival when you are a private company – unless you are a company whose purpose is to carry out Festivals and make a profit from them. There are lots of them – I know. But then to add that to Altair, I think it’s just too much. A theatre, a virtual show production company and a profitable festival organisation company? No, the last point is too much. No?
Have you seen this? I bent the subject to you, hop, it’s over, the Festivals are suppressed : expensive, not original, still needing a branch of business = trash.
And yet I bore everyone with my Festival ideas.
So I am, as usual, a bit of a bad faith.
I want to set up Festivals in Altair’s programming – not to lose all the good places for press cards that will lay out articles that everyone will forget in two hours (have you seen the French critics on Tenet? frankly it’s a pain – for the critics) – but to attract an audience that we don’t have yet and creators that we don’t have either.
When the aim is to attract an audience, I have a little less financial worries with that organisation.
Especially since I intend to run most festivals on both levels: one real and one virtual.
When the aim is to attract creators – it’s not to be nice: it’s to identify Altair’s next productions. And productions necessarily thought in real and virtual. In other words, it’s about launching the virtual show production company machine.
As I am targeting the young audience, I know that they are watching: the specialised press (which has forums where all the cheats of the games and a lot of other information are exchanged); memes, youtube. Information that interests them goes by very, very quickly and doesn’t have to wait until the editor-in-chief has said: yes.
If I want them to come to my Festivals, in real and especially virtual, I have to manage to make them want to come.
So I avoid: institutional things, places of admiration – and I propose single-use Festivals. In any case, for their ages, there will only be one.
There won’t be an Impossible Festival every year. There will be one every 7 years (in fact, a priori, there will only be two). This will have left time for a change of generation. – I admit that I still hesitate about the frequencies, but it’s a bit selfish: I would very much like not to die before seeing the last one.
These young people, I’m not going to invite them to come in my way as an old adult: come and see the beautiful show ; but in theirs: with their participation in their own way, by playing. I don’t have any communication budget to plan for that. It’s going to be a big deal.
That is the first point.
Now the content and frequency – what I have nicely called: the Crescendo concept.
Whatever the subject of the Festival is, it won’t come back for another 5 years.
With this, I create stories in the memory of the spectators. And I leave time to forget.
I’m not saying that I refuse all “normal” festivals: in the first years of Altair, we will have to go and find the audience.
So yes, a Circus Festival to get the children and their families, it is necessary.
A Dance Festival – we can even vary this according to the dances or the atmosphere.
Comedy Festival
A Street Arts Festival etc….
But they will only take place once every 5 years.
Which means it’s on the move.
And while it’s spinning, I’m laying the groundwork for my “big” Festivals: did you win the Circus Festival? Ok, you are selected for the Impossible Festival. And I’m ordering you this show, because I need it for the story that will take place live during this Festival (which is why we’ll have to have this d*** thing unrolled before launching Altair).
I want the same principle for the public: do you want to participate in the Impossible Festival? Go ahead, show me what you can do.
Thus I’m calling: the public and the pros.
And above the Impossible, I put the Legendary. Two Impossible Festivals to give a Legendary Festival.
Above all, the Mythical – I have already mentioned all that.
I’m still wondering about the relevance of the structure: if I ask only these 4 moments : 2 Impossible, 1 Legendary and 1 Mythical form a total story, then I need to structure them also according to a narrative structure – a story in 4 narrative arcs, spread over 25 years.
I can’t make the “characters” follow each other – because after 25 years we will surely have something new. So I started with a more epic structure (so more in the spirit of games,- yes I love beautiful epic stories), which tells a story that develops over time.
Impossible 1: year n° 0
Impossible 2: year n° 7
Legendary: year n° 16
Mythical: year n° 25
I can’t agree to put on a Mythical Festival more often than once every 25 years.
And even I think it’s too fast.
And then, in the end, one can even think that just to put the legend of Altair down and not relaunch the principle of these 3 Festivals after the Mythical. In short, these are details that are not at all on the agenda.
It’s not to pay me words – even if those 3 words resonate really loudly in the little hearts of all video game players – it’s to create a kind of spiral of calls to Altair – that respects the spirit of the times: it goes fast and it changes.
And then, yes, spend time, energy and money for that, all right.
That’s the concept of going crescendo: Festivals, yes, if we go from strength to strength. At the start of the first cycle, they will have 25 years to come up with a new idea. That’s good, you won’t say I’m putting crazy pressure on that. Will I ?
Featured Image : Well… scores. What do you want I say about scores ? Pardon. I’m yet not impressed by the Gamescom. Nothing more to say. I don’t have a feeling for shows in Doom. It’s not really the genre. Or else, it’s awful and we sell that for Halo too: my God, all my artists eaten by the Flood. I still haven’t seen anything that amazes me, it annoys me.
Here it is: one festival a year, to present the ‘new releases’, what does it produce? Nothing at all. We went back to Ratchet and Clank – seriously! Is that what entertainment is all about?
Tomorrow I’m back to my screenplay Impossible Festival. For the moment it’s rubbish with two good ideas. As we say in Algeria: Children, we are in couscous. But… so far, so good.
ALTAIR - Concepts 