Buffer Festival
 |
|
| Location | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2013 |
| Language | International |
| Website | bufferfestival |
Buffer Festival is an international digital video festival, held annually in Toronto, Ontario. The festival, founded in 2013 by Corey Vidal, Corrado Coia, and Samantha Fall of the ApprenticeA YouTube channel, showcases the talent of online video creators who have debuted their work on YouTube. Buffer Festival has been called "The Digital version of the Toronto International Film Festival" and "The World’s first festival dedicated to YouTube content".
The concept for the festival was conceived in 2011, and was inspired by the Toronto International Film Festival. Vidal's vision for the event was sparked specifically by his visit to red carpets at TIFF in 2011. He describes leaving the festival and wanting a communal viewing experience focused on YouTube videos, saying that "traditional Hollywood and television have these experiences, and now it's time for YouTube to have these experiences too." “YouTube is moving toward a direction of professionalism,” said Coia, "Some of these YouTubers have feature-length films in episodic format, and they do actually rival Hollywood quality. So they need to get the proper treatment — get them in a nice theater.”
In 2012, the ApprenticeA Productions team (led by Vidal) applied to the Canadian Film Centre's media accelerator programme, ideaBOOST, in order to produce the festival, and the application was successful. The team was one of seven teams participating in the ideaBOOST programme in its inaugural year from 2012 to 2013. The ApprenticeA production team approached both YouTube and TIFF from the outset, to ask them to be partners for the event. "If they’re not on board, we shouldn’t even bother doing it," said Vidal.
The festival was launched via an official announcement video on YouTube on September 4, 2013.
The first Buffer Festival was held from November 8 to 10 2013 in Toronto's Entertainment District. The festival's screenings were spread across six different movie theatres, including TIFF Bell Lightbox, Scotiabank Theatre Toronto, Glenn Gould Studio, CN Tower Maple Leaf Theatre and Jane Mallett Theatre. Theatrical-length shows (averaging 90 minutes of YouTube footage and host dialogue) were shown over the course of three days. The event also featured meetups at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre which gave fans the opportunity to meet their favourite YouTube creators.
...
Wikipedia