Director of Programming James McNally is attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival from January 22nd to February 3rd.
T-1 day until festival begins
Got a decent sleep and an early start this morning. I was up at 7:30am and had plenty of time to shower and eat some breakfast before heading for a 9:30am start at HQ. Today was our training day, but in reality most of my time was spent helping Bobby put together the check-in folders for our 31 film teams. There are a lot of different components that have to be included, and it took us most of the afternoon. He also presented me with a huge binder of material that included our full schedule as well as “face sheets” for every screening, listing times as well as headshots of all the talent attending. Extremely useful. He said he wanted me to have the exact same information that he has, so that really made me feel like more of a partner. I think we’ll work really well together.
It took me a bit of a long time to get from HQ back to my lodging since the shuttles aren’t on festival schedules yet, but i had a bit of time to eat and get cleaned up for the Staff and Volunteer Party, which was held at the head office of Skull Candy again this year. I got out there (there being Kimball Junction, about a half hour shuttle ride) by about 9pm and quickly ran into some familiar faces, including Kim Z. from Chicago, whom I met at my first Sundance way back in 2015, and Jake, my roommate from last year. Through Kim, who works in Events, I met Scotty from Richmond, Virginia, a non-drinker who happily gave me his two drink tickets, leading me to stay out a bit later than I planned. But I was back home just after midnight, writing a blog post, and ready to get up again at 6am for the first day of the festival!