The Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival (VIMFF) celebrates outdoor adventure and mountain culture through films, presentations, workshops, and panel discussions. This year, the festival is taking place between February 23rd and March 3rd in-person and until March 24th online, showcasing over 70 curated mountain films.
VIMFF 2024 also brings 10 expert-led presentations and workshops on writing and publishing, filmmaking, storytelling, pitching and funding. Here are four events to look out for:
Outdoor filmmaker Scott Secco will lead a 60-minute workshop on best practices for shooting and editing an action scene. Drawing from Hollywood cinema such as JOHN WICK and MAD MAX, the session will cover the basics of composition (rule of thirds, depth, contrast, and lighting), and editing (the 180-degree-rule, match cutting, eye tracing, and j-cuts).
FROM BOOTS ON THE GROUND TO BOOKS AND BLOGS
Adventure travel writer Taryn Eyton, guidebook author Craig Romano, and adventure travel blogger Leigh McAdam will host a panel discussion on all things outdoor-themed publishing. The panel covers books, blogs, web content, and articles, as well as outdoor ethics, the challenges of crowded trails and parks and how to mitigate overuse, reaching diverse audiences, and respectfully including Indigenous context.
Outdoor, travel, and adventure writer Meghan J. Ward will host this 90-minute workshop on how to get your adventure stories published. Drawing on 15 years of experience as a professional writer and editor, Meghan brings knowledge from both perspectives to discuss story ideas versus story angles, how to write a query letter, think visually, and other tactics. These insights will be valuable for photographers and filmmakers looking to learn about the industry, press, and pitching to magazines.
Award-winning mountain landscape and travel photographer Paul Zizka will lead this workshop on what it takes to create stand-out images, the resources he uses to plan and execute his most memorable photographs, and the impact they have made in his life. For him, photography is much more than documenting a journey and picking up on great opportunities: it’s an avenue for play and pre-visualization, a process where imagination means real-time conditions to conjure and capture “the impossible”.
You can find the complete list events on the VIMFF website.
