The Tyler Film Festival is back in person! Peyton Weidman - City of Tyler Public Information Officer and a member of the festival’s planning committee - details the festival’s origins, the categories it features and its schedule. She also unveils the intricacies of the festival’s judging process.
Weidman shares her personal journey with the festival while shedding light on Tyler’s visibility in the film community. The conversation includes thoughts on the commercial aspects of filmmaking and recounts success stories from previous festivals. Weidman also touches on the potential future of the historic Liberty Theater, the venue for the festival and her vision for the growth of the Tyler Film Festival.
MIKE LANDESS: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. The Tyler Film Festival has been around since 2011, and it’s coming around again this year. One of the four members of the Tyler Film Festival Planning Committee is City of Tyler Public Information Officer and former TV reporter, Payton Weidman. Welcome.
PAYTON WEIDMAN: Thank you, Mike.
LANDESS: Now, the festival started 13 years ago. That’s a pretty good record.
WEIDMAN: It is. This is our first year back in person since 2019.
LANDESS: So, the event begins on Thursday, Sept. 7. Give us a rundown of the categories and the schedule.
WEIDMAN: Sure. So yes, Sept. 7, Thursday. We’re starting it off with our Young Filmmakers’ category, so that’s filmmakers who are 21 and younger. We have a couple from East Texas-Tyler, Longview. We’re very excited to showcase the next generation’s talent. And then on Friday, Sept. 8, we’re doing “Everywhere Else Night,” which is anywhere outside of Texas. And then Saturday is “Texas Night.” So, filmmakers from the Lone Star State just showing off their creativity and their passion for filmmaking.
LANDESS: How do you go about judging this? Who are the judges, by the way?
WEIDMAN: Yes, so we have three judges. One is our festival director, Craig O’Daniel. And then we have Catherine Mortimer, who’s a filmmaker from Utah. And then we have Shadai Perez, who is with Lightbox Collective here in Tyler, and Shadai has been a previous judge for us before, so we were excited to bring him back.
LANDESS: Interesting that the film festival is drawing- I mean one would think that it would draw well beyond Texas- How many people have actually registered to this point?
WEIDMAN: By registered?
LANDESS: How many people have submitted films so far?
WEIDMAN: So, we had over 60 films submitted, and then we selected 24 to be shown Thursday, Friday and Saturday between the three categories.
LANDESS: Amazing. Now this is available to the general public to be able to see this?
WEIDMAN: Yes, we’re selling tickets at LibertyTyler.com. Students of any age if you’re a high school, college, elementary, students are getting in for free this year. We decided we wanted to really allow this opportunity for everybody to experience the film festival and hopefully get some creative juices going and see more people submit next year.
LANDESS: Now, how did you get interested in the film festival?
WEIDMAN: So, as part of my job with the communications team, I do a lot of the marketing and advertising. And when it was time to start planning for the film festival again, they were like, “Peyton, do you want to help us out? Do you want to market it?”
LANDESS: (laughs)
WEIDMAN: And I was like yeah, this sounds like a new adventure that I’d love to dip my toes into.
LANDESS: We have Julie Goodgame and Adriana Rodriguez.
WEIDMAN: Yes.
LANDESS: That’s quite a team and a fourth player as well.
WEIDMAN: Yes, Craig O’Daniel, who’s our festival director. We recently hired him, back in June, to be our multimedia producer for the city of Tyler, and before that he was already the director and a previous intern of ours.
LANDESS: What does the film festival represent for Tyler in terms of visibility in the film community?
WEIDMAN: It provides an outlet for our local filmmakers and just for any filmmakers, because it’s such an affordable cost to showcase their passion, to showcase what they’re interested in with film, and we also have a film noir shot in black and white that we’re going to be showing on the filmmaker’s night, which I did not know how difficult it is to do the lighting for a black and white movie, so that was interesting to learn. But we’re very affordable for people to submit to, and so it just creates avenues for these filmmakers to get some accolades and to show off their work to an audience.
LANDESS: Are there any success stories that you can share from previous film festivals and individuals who were involved in it who want on to do more?
WEIDMAN: Yes, so we actually have a filmmaker who submitted this year, Grayson Lackey. He’s from Tyler. He submitted, I believe, back in 2017 for the first time, and that was the first short film that he’d ever produced. And now he’s gone on to create many different short film works, and I believe he’s won some awards at different festivals.
LANDESS: Do some of these filmmakers actually get into the commercial aspect of a filmmaking — in other words, they’re not making films that will be seen in the theater or necessarily be broadcast on television, but they might be involved in commercials or infomercials or whatever.
WEIDMAN: Our judge, Shadai Perez, is a great example of that. Yes, so he submits to film festivals. He had submitted in the past to the Tyler Film Festival, then came on to help us judge a couple of times now. But he makes commercials, and so he shares on our podcast how some of that helps with his business.
LANDESS: So, we have the artistic side, then we have the “I got to pay the bills” side.
WEIDMAN: That’s right.
LANDESS: Exactly — that’s the challenge for every artist. Let me ask you about something totally different here. The old Tyler Theater is gone, except for the sign outside of Rick’s. The old Arcadia Theater is gone, except for the sign in the building which is going to come down at the new courthouse. Is there confidence that the Liberty Theater is going to be able to continue to be the last one standing on the Tyler Square?
WEIDMAN: Oh yes, we are dedicated to Liberty Hall and making sure that it has a thriving future in downtown Tyler. Like you said, it’s the last remaining historic theater. There were, at one time, 11 theaters in downtown Tyler. And so we’re very proud of the history that Liberty Hall provides for downtown and for the future. You’ll see, we have three to four, sometimes more, events each month there, and so with the return of the Tyler Film Festival this year, we’re very excited that we’re bringing people back to Liberty, giving them a new experience at this theater and then continuing it into the future.
LANDESS: So, let me run this by again for people who are listening to this or picked up our interview halfway through. Thursday, Sept. 7-Young Filmmakers. That’s opening night, right?
WEIDMAN: Yes.
LANDESS: OK, and then Friday, Sept. 8, Everywhere Else, which I still love the title of that, films produced outside of Texas. This is, I believe, the way it was described goes, this could be Oklahoma to Australia.
WEIDMAN: That’s right. That’s right. In years past we’ve had many international films submitted. This year we only had one, so we’re hoping this upcoming year, we’ll get some more interest in it. But being the first year back, we know that people might have slipped their minds, especially if you’re international. So, but we have some great films for our Everywhere Else night.
LANDESS: And Saturday, Sept. 9, the Texas Shorts and then the reception. Texas Night is quite a night for you guys.
WEIDMAN: Yes, yes, that’s the night where we have the most films showing. That’s the category where the most people submit. We will have quite a few different filmmakers coming into town to watch their films on the big screen with a crowd around them and see the reactions. And then, like you mentioned, following the screenings, we will be going over to Plaza Tower for our award reception. And one thing that we’ll be doing each night is asking the people to vote for their favorite film. So, for young filmmakers and Everywhere Else, we’ll take the top voted films from those nights and show them again on Saturday at Texas Night, so that way everybody can vote on their overall favorite film, and we’ll present an audience favorite award.
LANDESS: Like a people’s-choice type thing.
WEIDMAN: That’s right, that’s right.
LANDESS: Sounds great. So, the Tyler Film Festival. What is your vision for that in the future? How do you see it growing?
WEIDMAN: So, we just see more people participating by submitting their films. I mean, it was honestly a very tough competition this year, even with just the 60-plus films that were submitted for our Texas Night. The lowest score we accepted for the films that will be shown on Saturday was a 7.55.
LANDESS: Wow.
WEIDMAN: So very, very high scores for the films.
LANDESS: High quality.
WEIDMAN: Yes. And so, we just see that getting better and better each year.
LANDESS: Our guest has been Tyler Film Festival committee member and City of Tyler Public Information Officer Peyton Weidman. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)