Unleash Your Inner Artist at the Toronto Fringe Festival - Annotation
This post discusses a video document:
Unleash Your Inner Artist at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Dir. Primitive Replica. Toronto Fringe Festival. 9 July 2017. Web. 29 July 2017. https://fringetoronto.com/festivals/fringe
This thirty-four second promotional trailer for the Toronto Fringe Festival highlights its key selling points: an urban geographical site, inexpensive $12 tickets, and a variety of “150+ shows”. The culmination of these selling points is supposed to exude a feeling of accessibility to a general Toronto-based audience. This matches with the Fringe’s main slogan, which proclaims theatre that is made “by the people, for the people” (“Fringe” 2017). The video is aiming to brand Fringe as a festival of both theatrical performance, and a celebratory event through its depiction of the Fringe Tent’s social gathering. The purpose of the video is to create a general advertisement for the Fringe for years to come, as the video is not date specific, and is placed on the festival homepage in clear view for all online audiences.
This video lends a great perspective to Fringe’s festival branding and who the organizers might be marketing their video towards. A further analysis of their video shows in many of the shots,they have chosen to included people of colour, including featuring two artists of colour. This, in conjunction with the accessible “selling points” such as inexpensive ticket pricing, and central, urban core plays well to their brand of diverse theatre “for the people” (“Fringe” 2017). In future research pertaining to Fringe organizers’ decisions, it would be wise to keep this video in mind as it the first thing a potential audience member sees when they enter the Fringe website, thus being a focal point to their marketing.
Eventification seems to be an underlying, if subconscious decision on the part of the filmmakers and the Fringe staff in this video. The source depicts a carnivalesque atmosphere, by showing the Fringe parade and the social mingling at the Fringe Tent. Furthermore, the director has chosen handheld shots moving with or around the subject, evoking an active, lively atmosphere to the festival. This source allows me to localize the reading previously done on Edmonton Fringe’s shift to an eventified festival brimming with beer performance by putting the two sources into discourse (Batchelor 2015).
The source’s length is an issue, as it does not lay out the organizers’ goals, rather it is through analysis and interpretation that conclusions must be made. The video was also made in a rush, as it uses footage from the first couple days of the festival and posted shortly thereafter, which is evident because I recognize the performers and artists in the video when I was there on July 5th. The rushed feeling of the video can be cause for concern because it may not be a true representation of Fringe’s branding. However, these qualms aside, this video will be great as supplementary support to Batchelor’s and Hauptfleisch’s readings on eventification, and the effect marketing can have on the perception of potential audiences.
Works Cited
Batchelor, Brian. "'This beer festival has a theatre problem!': the evolution and rebranding of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival." Theatre Research in Canada 36.1 (2015): 33+. Web. 26 July 2017.
"Fringe 2017." Toronto Fringe Festival. 20 July 2017. Web. 25 July 2017. https://fringetoronto.com/festivals/fringe
Hauptfleisch, Temple. "Festivals as Eventifying Systems." Festivalising! : theatrical events, politics and culture. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2007. 39-45. Web. 12 July 2017.
