My guide and experience at Encounters 2021 — Part 3.

Following on from part 2 I will be mainly focusing on the benefits that the festival can have on filmmakers and what happened once Encounters finished and if there are any extra benefits that can come from winning a film festival. I will delve into how Encounters compares to other film festivals out there and whether it is even beneficial to try for encounters. I will be bringing up some downsides to Encounters as well as how these can play into the overall experience of Encounters. There will be a lot of contrast between how Encounters was this year compared to how it was in previous years and how a digital film festival compares to a physical film festival.

This year they seem to be putting in more effort towards preserving the films that were done within previous years plus the ones done this year. With 2020 Encounters as soon as it finished all the content just disappeared making it less likely for an audience that wanted to go back and watch the short films they wanted to see. It gives less opportunity for the filmmakers to continue promoting that short film within Encounters since there is this sense of quickness to the Encounters. This year there is more emphasis on preserving the content and especially the content that won in Encounters. Once the festival was about to close there was a promotion about Encounters doing a cinema tour. This gave more chances for the short films to get a bigger spotlight but also to be shown in many different places other than the online festival that some people may have missed.