One of our favorite things to do at IMVDb is to find film festivals that feature music videos of any kind (highlighted by our continuing coverage of this year’s SXSW). But, what we really love is when we can find an event completely dedicated to music videos – and going on its 8^th year, it appears that the Sprockets Music Video Festival in Athens, Georgia is the longest-running. Entry to this year’s festival is currently open, and we talked to Danielle Robarge, director/producer of Sprockets Music Video Competition, to find out a bit more about the event.

Doug: What exactly is the Sprockets Music Video Festival and why did you decided to start it?

Danielle: We have a local musical festival called AthFest that kind of takes over the entire downtown area. Back in 2004, when our organization was just starting, they asked us if we would add some sort of film aspect to their festival. The obvious choice was music videos. We put the first one together really quick and had a great response. It was pretty much 100% local at that time. We never restricted entry, so as time went on, we’d get further and further out, to where last year we got entries from all over the country and even as far as Hong Kong. This year will be our 8th festival.

Doug: You said that music videos were an obvious choice. Why were they the obvious choice?

Danielle: Athens has a reputation of being a music town. This was a music festival and so when we wanted it incorporate film, we wanted it to be a marriage of the two art forms. That was the thought behind that.

Doug: You said it started as 100% local. Do you encourage entries from everywhere?

Danielle: Yes. We really feel that Athens is known for the music that has come out of the town. We get some great acts from all over the world and we want to continue to grow the entries that come from all over. We’re going to try to add workshops and panels this year and make it more than just the one show as a well to help stimulate that.

Doug: Obviously a big part of having a music video festival is having music videos screened on a screen in front of an audience, and like you said you’ve been doing this for eight years. You have a lot of experience being with audiences watching music videos. I’m curious, what kind of reaction do you see from audiences in this atmosphere?

Danielle: The show is actually at 40 Watt, which is a music venue. It’s almost like a rock show where people can stand up and they are a little bit more free to move around a bit, just like as if a band was playing. I think the crowd feeds off each other as far as the energy for the videos. We notice that usually the more lighthearted and the comedy-style ones really seem to get the crowd going the most. With everything else being so music-centric, we try and really highlight the filmmakers for this. It’s definitely an opportunity for them. Rarely do you get to see a music video on a big screen. It’s a lot of fun and some of them are premieres and there will be a lot of folks that come to the show that were in the videos.

Doug: From your perspective, has their been a growth in music videos over the past 8 years?

Danielle: There’s definitely been a growth in the production value. Digital is so much more accessible and people are producing music videos more often. I also think certainly interest in the event itself has grown. People create videos for this event, specifically knowing that they will have a place to show it.

Doug: What is the entry process?

Danielle: We have on our website filmathens.net/sprockets. There’s all the information about how to enter and we can do it pretty much all digitally with folks since the form is online. There is a PayPal option for the entry fee and we can take files from some specific file sharing sites. Most of our entries do still come in the mail on a DVD with the printed form.

Doug: What are the deadlines?

Danielle: April 1st is our early deadline and then our late deadline is April 15th.

Doug: About how many videos are you guys going to be screening at the festival?

Danielle: We have a prescreening committee and they go through the videos and choose what’s going to be in competition and their task is to get it to be a 90-minute show. Usually it ends up to be about 22 videos - somewhere in the low 20s.

Doug: How many entries did you guys get last year and how many are you expecting this year?

Danielle: I’m curious to see how it goes this year. We usually get certainly over 50 in the last few years. This year we tried to make an effort of posting on some websites out of the region, to get the word spread.

Doug: And then at the end there are two prizes awarded, right? What is there? A judges and an audience award?

Danielle: Yes, exactly. We have five judges, who are all industry professionals, either in music, film, press, education, or a combination of all those. They choose the best music video award, and then the night of the show everyone gets a ballot for the audience choice award. We have the main prize which is a trophy made by a local artist - they are awesome pieces of art. Our artist is Mike Harboldt, who lives here in Athens and he is a potter and a welder.

Doug: Who are your judges? You said it’s industry and film professionals. Who do you guys have?

Danielle: We have Christopher Roberts, who is head of artistic relations for Vice Media; Colleen Haynes who is executive producer for RSA and Black Dog Films; Heather Macintosh, who is a cellist and a film composer; Jennifer Smith, who is a writer and a director and she is a professor of video production at the University of Georgia; and Steven Pitalo, who is a writer, editor and a music video historian. All very good judges.

Doug: If people don’t want to enter and just want to check out the actual festival, when is that going to be?

Danielle: That is going to be Saturday, June 15th, in Athens, Georgia. We have an awards show that will be on the following Thursday. The local entertainment newspaper here in Athens, called Flagpole, has their annual music awards and so we jump right in there. That’s a big event in and of itself, we present the winners there.

Doug Klinger is the co-founder/content director of IMVDb and watches more music videos than anyone on earth. You can find him on twitter at @doug_klinger.