FirstGlance Film Festival founder Bill Ostroff is quite adept at juggling many responsibilities. When not working as a full-time moviemaker, writer or production coordinator, he finds the time to run the world's first and only bi-coastal film festival, FirstGlance. Taking place in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, Ostroff hopes to eventually franchise FirstGlance to cities throughout the nation-perhaps the world. Here, Ostroff talks with MovieMaker about creating his own festival, the differences between Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and his desire to give a voice to struggling moviemakers the world over.

Jennifer M. Wood (MM): Though it is now a bi-coastal festival, FirstGlance originated in Philadelphia. How did you decide to start a festival there?

Bill Ostroff (BO): I went to Temple. The festival was originally started by me and three friends who didn't see an avenue in Philadelphia to show underground, independent film projects-student or professional. You had your little student film festivals, but that was between you and the students in your classes; you never got to show or exhibit your projects anywhere.

MM: What was the very first festival like?

BO:With $300 out of my own pocket, we started our own festival. We put a couple of our own projects in along with some other people's films and suddenly made a profit. We held the festival in a theater space, in two little rooms with 40 seats each for three nights. In total, we showed about 20 projects.

MM: Had you planned on making it an annual event from the very beginning?

BO: After the first one I thought 'that was fun,' but I suddenly started getting e-mails and phone calls from people asking 'When's the next one?' so I suddenly felt obligated to keep it going. People really appreciated that we gave them the venue to interact with people who were just like themselves.

MM: In Philadelphia, do you find the festival attracts more professional filmmakers or more students?

BO: There are a lot of pros. They student thing is growing, and we want it to grow. One of our goals is to have student coordinators all over the country. We would like to have the winners of FirstGlance LA and Philadelphia actually travel from school to school showing their projects.

MM: What changes did you see in the second year?

BO: The second year was five nights, in two separate locations next door to one another with 50 to 60 seats each. By our second year, we had people flying out from all over the country to come to the festival.

MM: With all going so well in Philadelphia, what made you decide to start FirstGlance LA?

BO: We had our third year in Philadelphia, everything went well, and I decided to move to Los Angeles because I felt that I needed to open up my horizons as far as filmmaking and what I wanted to do creatively. So I moved to LA and thought, 'Hey, if we can do this festival in Philadelphia, we can do it in LA, as well.' So it took me about a year or so to refigure everything and turn it into something bi-coastal. So it took a little time, and it took a company called New Imaging Productions to help me out with my Web presence. They're a multimedia production company and a sponsoring partner.

MM: Philadelphia and Los Angeles are extremely different cities. What are some of the differences you found?

BO: In Philadelphia, it's so much more a community. People come, hang out and watch the whole festival. They vote on their projects, they vote on other people's projects. LA is more of a "me" town. People come to see their project and they leave. We learned that our first year. Everything is trial and error.

MM: Knowing this, do you approach the planning of the Philadelphia and LA festivals differently?

BO: No. I want to try and keep the same mission of it being a competitive festival where the people at the festival vote on their favorites. Some people might consider that a little biased, like whoever has the most friends wins, but two of the projects that won in LA this past year were projects that were from the East Coast.

MM: Speaking of your voting process, how did you decide to make it a competitive festival based on audience choice?

BO: I felt, first off, it was the most fair way, as opposed to having a committee saying that they are filmmakers and they're the ones deciding what gets in and what doesn't. I just felt that there's entertainment in all different types of projects. I'm not a huge documentary lover, but at the same time, someone in the committee might not be crazy about experimental films. I want to try to create the type of community where all these filmmakers who had no place to go with their stuff now do.

MM: What types of films are you showcasing?

BO: Shorts, documentaries, features, experimental films, animation, student projects-pretty much the whole gamut of whatever is out there. It keeps it wide, it keeps it fun and it keeps people interested.

MM: Are you trying anything new at this year's Philadelphia fest?

BO: We are going to give out an actual award to a Philadelphia born, raised or educated filmmaker. Someone whose home is Philadelphia. We did online voting, got about 2,000 votes, and we're going to be presenting M. Night Shamylan with an award on the opening night.

MM: Do you have any larger plans for the festival in the future? Adding more cities, perhaps?

BO: We're interested in finding other, maybe smaller festivals, that are interested in franchising and becoming a FirstGlance Festival. Places like Boston, central Florida, Chicago or Seattle. We hope to become not only a festival, but a distributor of short programs, features and more. We could take the winners from each festival and run them on the FirstGlance channel, which would run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We're working on putting together an annual screenplay competition.

MM: That's a great way to give voice to struggling filmmakers who might not otherwise get a chance.

BO: There's a great amount of talent everywhere, but there's so many people that don't have an avenue. If I can create an avenue for, say, 50 directors each year who can say 'I won FirstGlance LA,' or they get to talk to a distributor, or Miramax looks at their feature, it's a little step, but it's a step they didn't take previously. They get to make that first step through us.


For more information on the FirstGlance film festivals, visit (http://www.newimaging.com/firstglance).