Over the course of 20 years, thousands of films have been evaluated for the Vaasa Wildlife nature film festival. Nature pedagogue Vesa Heinonen has seen most of them.
A couple of thousand films from different parts of the world were offered this year for the Vaasa Wildlife nature film festival and competition.
The jury chose 1,200 of them to watch, and one by one the films were eliminated so that 200 films will compete for the win in different categories this weekend at the festival finale.
– From spring-winter to the beginning of June, I watched 180 films. It’s a big deal when you still have to compare them. Explain why someone is left behind.
Vesa Heinonen is the founder of Nature Center Terranova and the Vaasa Wildlife nature film festival. Over the years, he has been at the event in many roles, from producer to judge.
Heinonen remembers when nature filmmakers were invited to participate in Vaasa’s first film event twenty years ago, and the organizer was offered more films than he had dared to hope for.
However, showing the films to the festival audience proved to be difficult.
– There was no predetermined format for the films, so we received huge reels of film that could only be shown in a cinema. There was beta and vhs, Heinonen recalls.
In the first year, a couple of thousand viewers went to see the films.
– It was one of the best years.
Technology or story?
According to Vesa Heinonen, in the first years of the festival, the films often focused on presenting some kind of animal or, for example, animals or plants from a certain region.
– When you compare the first films that were watched and today’s films, there is a huge difference between them, Heinonen says.
– The first films showed a picture of a chicken hawk or something else. Now we know that there has to be a story.
Technology has also developed.
– Drones have made it possible to move cheaply and easily at the level of a bird, and now it is possible to stop even a drop of water or the beat of a bird’s wing.
Heinonen is happy that with the development of technology, making nature films has also become cheaper than before.
Of course, making a long nature film still costs both euros and time.
The festival has seen big and small budget works.
– The biggest \\makers\\ may spend half a million to a million euros to produce one film, but the cheapest they have managed was a project of a few thousand, says Heinonen.
Since it is difficult to get financial support for making a nature film, Heinonen knows that many potential filmmakers are content to shoot stills and sell them.
In Vaasa, world-famous nature films such as the BBC have been seen. But also films from unknown or unexpected countries and makers.
– It has been nice to see that today there are also creators from countries that you wouldn’t necessarily think of, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and African countries.
*The topic can be discussed until Saturday, October 1, at 11 p.m.*