YOUR DAILY GUIDE TO THE 2010 TACOMA FILM FESTIVAL >>>

Rejection hurts. We encounter it in every stage of our lives - as the school dance wallflower, a student ignored by the universities, an employee not considered for a raise. If you take filmmaking seriously, chances are you've dealt with festivals uninterested in work that claimed months or even years of your energy.

A humor-filled workshop with Warren Etheredge can put your film in perspective, and replace those nagging feelings of self-doubt with confidence. On Saturday morning I attended his class at The Grand Cinema, put on in conjunction with the Tacoma Film Festival. The man knows his medium - he's fought in the moviemaking trenches personally, and as current curator of Bumbershoot's 1 Reel Film Festival, plenty of shorts, both excellent and questionable, fall under his scrutiny.

Held annually in Portland, his discussion is titled "What's Wrong with This Picture?" Etheredge takes an opposite stance from most lecturers, arguing that audiences can learn more from flawed films than flawless ones. Moreover, cinema is not this hopelessly subjective art; most of us know good (or bad) work when we see it.

With this commonsense approach, the personable moderator and his audience examined three shorts not accepted into this year's Festival. The filmmakers stood courageously by as our group freely voiced complaints with issues like story pacing, audio, and performance.

Etheredge offers to aspiring artists these nuggets:

• Given its nature, a short must set up its situation quickly. "A story should be as long as a piece of string," he quoted a former teacher as saying. Every aspect of the production, even running time, serves the plot.
• Beginners should let someone else edit their footage.
• Don't fill your cast and crew with friends; only hire those who can do their job better than you.
• Pay SO much attention to sound. Etheredge says, "Audio can level your film faster than anything else." Your audience will never lose themselves in movies with poor soundtracks.

Just this week I submitted my own piece to a Seattle fest, wishing I had known a few of these guidelines. But we grow with every new project. None of us can escape all rejection and criticism, but by caring enough about the craft, you can deal.       

Click here to see a schedule of today's Tacoma Film Festival films.

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