Three people sit in the warm projection booth of The Athena Cinema, checking the sound levels and the projection of a film being screened at the Athens International Film and Video Festival.
Yang Miller peers through the projection window — where he can see the people in the theater and the movie on the screen — to make sure everything is operating smoothly.
Meanwhile, employees at the concession stand sell tickets, make popcorn and fill drinks.
Even though this year’s film festival has ended — it took place April 3-9 — the staff of the Athena spends most of the year planning the annual film festival.
“You know how, like, you wake up with a hangover and you’re like, ‘I’m never drinking again?’ I’m never seeing another movie, ever. And I work at a movie theater,” Miller, the technical director and audience experience coordinator at the Athena, said.
It took Miller almost a month to download all of the movie files for the film festival. The files are given to him through different methods, Miller said, such as physical copies on hard drives and through Dropbox or Google Drive.
Some of the movies took overnight to download due to the size of the files, Miller said. Whenever he hit a snag, he would move on from the file giving him problems and come back to it later.
Steve Blue, a senior studying screenwriting and producing, worked the festival last year, but this was his first time in the projection booth. The job consists of a lot of switching between different file formats, but he likes being able to watch the films and work at the same time.
“(I like) just seeing all the different films that get submitted,” Blue said. “A lot of them are films that we don’t have normally throughout the year, so it’s nice to get all that different variety in one week.”
Ron Shalom, a freshman studying accounting, business pre-law and screenwriting and producing, is one of the employees who works at the concession stand and maintains the theater. His job is to make sure “people have the best experience,” he said.
On top of schoolwork, Shalom worked three days during the week of the festival, one of them being a 10-hour shift. The best part of working the festival, to him, is seeing the diverse audience.
“The best part is when they come out of the film, people who really enjoyed it they’re just standing out in the lobby talking about it and really having a great time,” Shalom said.
Working the concessions can be stressful, especially when big waves of people come through the theater’s doors, Shalom said. The biggest concern is running out of the essentials.
“Everyone always wants popcorn, and we do run out fairly quickly,” he said.
This year’s film festival was well-attended and went on as planned, Alex Kamody, the director of the Athena, said.
“We’ve had to compete with really nice weather this weekend, and we also had Palmer Fest in town, those things can present challenges getting people in the movie theater, but it has been a good week,” Kamody said.
Leading up to the first day of the festival is always stressful, Miller said. This year’s festival went smoothly for him, and he said it was a success on his part.
“When everything works out and the people leave the theater and are smiling and happy it’s like, ‘It was worth it. All the stress and the hair pulling and coffee chugging was worth it,’” Miller said.
