The idea was to make MQFF’s 2017 festival ident out of political hate speech to demonstrate how valuable queer cinema is in the fight for equality. At a time when vocal conservative politicians are trying to silence queer voices, MQFF is a vital celebration of resistance. We wanted to demonstrate this with an animated ident that uses voice data from famously bigoted anti-LGBTIQ speeches from conservative politicians, transforming them into something beautiful and empowering. The recorded voice data from these hate speeches became the basis for every aspect of the ident’s design, animation and sound, creating dynamic exploding shapes in the festival’s bright colour palette that ultimately form the shape of MQFF’s powerful icon. For audio, we worked with a data sound artist to create a slightly unnerving, cinematic atmosphere directly from the voice data. The desire was for the ident to have a genuine impact on an engaged cinema

Once we had determined which speeches to use to create our ident, they were broken into single statements that became the foundation for the design process. Each clip was analysed and its data used to create the film’s speed, colour and the movement of particle set ups. The colours were taken from MQFF’s bright colour palette and a series of patterns was built from the data that we felt represented the power and impact of MQFF, while a custom shader was used to drive the simple geometry of each form. Once visuals were set, the audio from the speeches was processed in custom programmed audio software and separated into streams that were controlled to feed a range of effects and key parameters that could drastically effect the sound. The intent was to create a cinematic soundscape form the politicians’ voices that could drive the visuals while silencing their hateful words.

Attendance for MQFF 2017 was better than all previous years, achieving a record box office. Overall, the festival registered a younger audience outside their regular core attendees. Crucially, the cinema ident was instrumental in demonstrating the political power of MQFF rather than it being seen as just another entertainment event on the Melbourne cultural calendar. According to MQFF Executive Director, Dillan Golightly, “the festival has never achieved this level of cultural impact. This idea told a really important story about the transformative power of queer cinema and Melburnians responded in droves.”