{"id":9991,"date":"2015-03-04T21:38:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T02:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9991"},"modified":"2015-05-21T00:19:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T04:19:47","slug":"playr-festival-pushes-envelope-into-a-new-frame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/playr-festival-pushes-envelope-into-a-new-frame\/","title":{"rendered":"PlaYR Festival pushes envelope into a new frame"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Creative people thrive on engaging with and in the world around them, and the minds behind the Multimedia Film Festival plan to do just that with the newly rebranded PlayYR Video Festival.<\/p>\n

PlaYR, the new moniker of the festival founded by the Children\u2019s Aid Society of York Region and Family Services of York Region, is intended to awaken a new energy in the community while engaging residents with the issues that are important to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had a very formal feeling to it,\u201d says John Watson of their old image, noting it wasn\u2019t necessarily reflective of the energy that rolled in through video submissions year after year. \u201cI think it was really important we created something that had a more fun, flashy exciting image. It is really important in not only engaging filmmakers and their friends and family as an audience, but in engaging new audiences that haven\u2019t heard of the festival before, haven\u2019t been involved, or maybe have heard of the festival and didn\u2019t consider becoming involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is about creativity and engaging artists, and I felt very strongly that we had to approach it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Film, video, and photograph submissions are now being accepted through April 1, via www.playr.info. This year, coinciding with the rebrand, puts a decreased emphasis on the world of film, encouraging anyone with a talent for video, whether with a camcorder or iPhone, to get creative and send a message. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, we framed ourselves as a film festival,\u201d says Mr. Watson. \u201cWe are a film festival, technically, but the problem is the majority of young people that are producing films don\u2019t necessarily consider themselves filmmakers, or what they do filmmaking. They are producing videos, they are digital producers, and one thing that became very apparent in our outreach last year was the difference in response to identical ads that framed ourselves as a film festival and one as a video festival. There was a significant increase in the response and engagement of participants to the ads requesting people submit their videos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Watson came into the festival\u2019s fold in its first year. He says he was almost dismissive of the idea of making a submission because he is one of those filmmakers who doesn\u2019t consider themselves to be filmmakers. His submission was made with no budget and recorded on a point and shoot camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy understanding of \u2018film festival\u2019 conjured up things like TIFF and large, big budget productions,\u201d he says. \u201cI really made my career and established myself using platforms like YouTube. Most young people make digital content, but they don\u2019t identify as a filmmaker or photographer. The internet levels the playing field and it really, truly makes us accessible for everyone in the community, which was the intention from the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the changes, one thing will remain consistent from years past, and that is the complete lack of reluctance to push the envelope in conveying the messages that are important to the creators and, in turn, the community. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the rules that is really important is we can\u2019t and won\u2019t showcase anything that is, in any way, oppressive or hateful,\u201d says Mr. Watson. \u201cThat being said, we also say we welcome difficult content. We want films that deal with real issues of people that live here. This is about an authentic and often raw dialogue. I see it as our duty to provide a platform with as few limitations as possible. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere needs to be a line drawn at content that could be incendiary or discriminatory or hateful because that is not what we\u2019re about. I guess it is a subjective issue and we deal with it on a case by case basis. In the past, there has been some content that pushes the envelope. We hope there continues to be content that pushes the envelope because that is what we\u2019re about.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creative people thrive on engaging with and in the world around them, and the minds behind the Multimedia Film Festival plan to do just that with the newly rebranded PlayYR Video Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2B9","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-11 03:46:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/2015-03-05-10.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}