Are you a Festival Fanatic?

Frequently-Asked Questions

Got a question that isn't answered here? Ask me using the Feedback Page, and I'll get you an answer; maybe I'll add it here!

• What's this all about?

  Festival Fanatic seeks to improve the film festival experience for serious film fans.

  Film festival attendees usually have just a few screening opportunities to see each film, so the Scheduling Assistant can help you see more of the films you really want to see.

  As time goes on, I'll add features for coordinating your schedule with your friends', and for discussing the films you've seen with others. I'd also like to work more closely with festival organizers to promote community among attendees.

• How do I use this thing?

  First, sign up, so I'll know who you are when you come back to the site.

  Then, click on a festival in the list on the home page; this will take you to the "Your Film Priorities" page for that festival.

  (This next part is easier if you've got the paper schedule for the festival; alternatively, you can open the festival's own website in another browser window.) For each of the films in the festival, decide how interested you are in seeing that film: you've got five choices, from "I don't want to see this" to "I *really* want to see this". Enter each choice on that Film Priorities page.

  When you're done prioritizing the films, click the "Scheduling Assistant" tab; if there are times where you can't attend the festival, enter them. Then, click "Schedule Films" - your priorities will be used to select screenings of as many of the films you prioritized as possible.

  After your schedule's been generated (it takes a moment), you'll see "Your Festival Schedule": your schedule for each day, with the selected screenings color-coded.

  You can make manual changes to the screening selections by clicking on the grid. If you click on a screening for a film you're scheduled to see at some other time, the other screening will be unselected for you (because why see it twice?); likewise, if you're scheduled for any screenings at the same time as the one you clicked on, they'll be unselected too (because you can't be in two places at once).

  As the festival proceeds, as you hear good or bad things from your friends,you can revise your priorities, then ask the Scheduling Assistant to rebuild the rest of your schedule. You can also enter ratings for the films you've seen.

• How does the automatic scheduling really work?

  In computer science, there's this thing called the "traveling salesman problem": given a salesman who wants to visit a bunch of cities, how can you determine an optimal route?

  It turns out that this problem is really hard, and the problem of finding an optimal schedule for seeing preferred movies at a film festival is just as hard.

  So, this site takes the easy way out, and doesn't try to solve the problem perfectly; it just tries to do a pretty good job: the site makes a list of the films you've ranked, but haven't picked screenings for; it sorts this list by a combination of your ranking and the number of remaining screenings (the fewer remaining, the higher in the list the film goes), then tries to assign screenings in that order, without ever letting two assigned screenings overlap.

  There are probably better strategies, but this one seems to work pretty well.

• Do you share my information?

  First, I'm not going to share your email address with anyone; I'll only use it to contact you about the site, and I try to notify you if the festival announces a screening change that affects your schedule. Next year, I'll probably let you know when next year's festival's schedule appears here.

  Soon, I'll be adding a feature to let you enter ratings of the films you've seen; I will share anonymized summaries of these ratings with you, other users, festivals, and filmmakers.

  Soon after that, I'll add ways for you to contribute comments, links, and background information (what I call "buzz") to films. These details will be public and visible to other users, and attributed to you by username. (More details on this will come before I roll this feature out.)

• Can I add my own favorite festival?

  Not by yourself, just yet. In the meantime, drop me a line on the Feedback Page if you attend a festival that you'd like to be able to schedule here.

• What other features are you working on?

  I'm most excited about the "buzz" features I mentioned above, but the list also includes (in no particular order) better printed formatting, and better features for smartphone users. Again, if you can think of something to add, I'd love to hear about it.

• Where'd you get the nifty icons?

  The flags ( ) and many of the other icons I use (like and ) come from web developer Mark James, who asks only that I link to his site to use them - done, and thanks, Mark!

• Who created this, and why?

  

  I'm Bryan Stearns, a web software developer based in Portland, Oregon. I created Festival Fanatic to get more out of the festivals that I attend, and to help my friends as well. (It's been very successful by this measure — I've met a lot of great people as a result of this site!) It's free (and will continue to be), and I don't make any money running it.