Miami International Film Festival

CREATIVE PLANNING

Each year the festival hosts dozens of films, events and seminars and our biggest challenge was managing the large volume of festival content and creatively delivering it across a wide variety of media. Due to the complexities and the confidential nature of the film selection process, much of our work needed to be produced within a very short window of time. Designing and producing both creative and accurate content required lots of advance planning and timely collaboration with festival organizers and staff. We designed every bit of collateral that was visible to the public including advertising in local and national publications, the festival poster, program books, media kits for press and industry members, sponsor packages, ticket order forms, invitations to events and galas, awards and ballots, a daily festival newsletter, tickets and credentials, festival merchandise, street banners, official vehicle graphics, and the festival website. 

THE VALUE OF PRINT

During our tenure with the festival, the age of the internet was just beginning and the printed page was still the primary source of information for festival attendees. The two most valuable resources were the festival program and the daily newspaper advertisements which provided detailed information about the featured films, seminars and festival events. We re-designed the festival programs into a larger format, and limited the color signatures throughout the book to reduce the unit cost—using the savings to produce more programs and increase their local distribution. Full page ads in the local newspapers heralded the festival’s arrival and provided detailed synopsis of each film. Smaller daily ads featured details about each day’s events, and up-to-date information about appearances by featured directors and actors. In later years we designed a daily newsletter that was widely distributed throughout the festival venues and Miami community that provided expanded information on daily events including interviews with featured film’s writers, directors and producers. 

WORLD WIDE

In 1996, we designed and built the festival's first website. The internet and the world wide web were still relatively new, and the Miami Film Festival was one of only a very few film festivals with a web presence. Over the next five years, we expanded the festival's site to include ticketing, events, sponsors, and merchandise—growing it into one of the most extensive film festival sites' in the world. The site had a significant global reach and impact, and played an important role in promoting the festival to a world-wide audience.