[Speaker 1] As many of our UNT students face
unexpected challenges and expenses
related to the coronavirus,
the new UNT Cares Fund is here to help them persevere.
Gifts made to this special fund will meet
short-term needs so our students
can continue to have long-term success.
Visit one.unt.edu/untcares to make a gift today.
Your generosity will go a long way in
helping UNT students stay safe,
healthy, and on track to graduate.
(music playing) You're listening to the OLLI at UNT
podcast produced by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
at the University of North Texas.
This podcast features conversations with UNT faculty,
other subject matter experts,
and Lifelong learners in our community.
To learn more about our courses and events,
please visit our website,
olli.unt.edu, or send us an email at ollli@unt.edu.
Now let's join our host OLLI at UNT member, Susan Supak.
[Susan Supak] This is Susan Supak speaking at
the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at
the University of North Texas in Denton,
Texas, known to most of us is OLLI.
I'm speaking with Joshua Butler,
founder and director of the Thin Line Fest,
a five-day film and
multi-genre music festival right here in Denton,
Texas from March 24 to March 28.
I might add Joshua is
a 2006 graduate of UNT in the field of radio,
television, and film.
Welcome, Joshua.
[Joshua Butler] Thank you, Susan.
Really happy to be here.
[Susan Supak] It's great to have you here.
As I understand it,
this is the 14th year of the Thin Line Fest.
How has it evolved since its beginning?
[Joshua Butler] Wow, that's a big conversation.
Actually, the word evolve is
appropriate because in order to survive,
and I'm sure this applies to all events and
all towns but from
my experience in order to survive in this town,
you really have to adapt.
That means seeing what doesn't work most importantly,
see what does work and then change
a little bit every year to make it more sustainable,
more capable, just do a better job
delivering so that people come back
and we can continue to produce it.
I mean, if it's too hard to produce,
then we might not do it (laughing) again so we have
to balance that service with capabilities.
[Susan Supak] How did you get started with Thin Line fest?
What gave you the idea?
[Joshua Butler] I came to Denton in
2003 to attend film school.
It would have been sold to me
like a mini Austin and I had
never been done before so
my expectations I guess we're a little high.
I learned many years on later
that as these things do happen secretly,
the previous group of students had done
some things in the film media space
locally but, of course,
and as most always happen in this town,
they graduate and the energy
and effort that they brought goes with them.
I encountered it right after one
of these phases and so there wasn't anything
happening that I could perceive at the time
to galvanize the film community at the time.
I wanted to shoot music video
actually and wanted to use the union,
the Student Union, one of the ballrooms there
because I wanted to build a huge 30-foot green-screen.
It was a totally crazy idea at the time, I know now.
I went to the Student Union and I said,
"I want to use this space," and they
told me it was going to be $400.
To me, that was like
rent plus at that point and I thought,
what are you talking about?
I'm a student, I don't have money.
They told me that, if I were
a student organization then I would get access for free.
That just got the wheels on spinning.
I went down the student activity office
and I found out what I needed to do to
create a student organization so then
I needed some students to come on board,
I needed a faculty sponsor.
I thought what organization is needed right
now for the film community,
the film-making students and
that's really how it got started.
Then one of my trips to the student activity office,
I saw a flyer for running
a concession stand at the Dr. Pepper ballpark in Frisco.
I thought I played baseball like baseball,
I thought this is going to be
a good way to raise some money.
I just blindly signed us up
to operate a concession stand that required
10 people for the entire season which was
75 home games (laughing).
We did it for three years in a row, actually,
we raised about $25,000 every summer.
It took a huge effort.
I had to convince back,
can Joel bribe, you name it,
people to come out and work that concession stand
but we always raised
enough money to support our activities through the year.
That first year we got a office and we became
an official 501C3 non-profit
and created an official bylaws.
One of the original goals
of the organization was to create
a film festival in
Denton within the following three years.
That was in September of 2004
and then almost to the year,
three years later on Labor Day weekend,
2007, we launched the first festival.
[Susan Supak] Wow, that was
a very fortunate series of events for us.
Thank goodness you have the where with all and
the stick-to-it-ness to do all that.
[Joshua Butler] Stick-to-it-ness, that's really what it
takes because let me tell you there's no money in this.
(laughing) This is a non-profit thing.
In order to constantly improve and constantly grow,
it takes just tons of resources,
both people capital and real capital and so
it does really take some perseverance to just keep going.
[Susan Supak] Are you the only documentary
film festival in Texas?
Are there others?
[Joshua Butler] Yeah. Over the course
of maybe 30, 40 years,
there have been different documentary film festivals.
The one that existed before us
was done in Bryan College Station.
I think it was student thing but they
ended in 2002 or maybe in the San Antonio.
There was another one in this day and it
ended in like '01 or '02.
There wasn't one at the time in 2007.
That was a big deciding factor for us
because I came from a very business background,
the family was in retail and I've done a lot of
service type business and I knew it was
important to distinguish ourselves somehow from
the really large statewide film community.
There's 25 film festivals
right now in the Dallas Fort-Worth Area.
[Joshua Butler] Then you consider like Houston,
Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso,
and all these other towns,
and you can just really imagine
how many film festivals that are in Texas.
We wanted to distinguish ourselves.
It was very important that we were unique.
Then also, the University of North Texas was
really focused on documentary production at the time,
the faculty and staff,
there were some very
well-respected documentary filmmakers
and there was a masters program
in documentary film production.
There was already some energy
and history in the documentary world,
and so we just built on that.
Plus we wanted something that would reflect
well on the community and
on the university and vice versa,
so it seemed like the right decision.
[Susan Supak] Do you still have
the same people helping you or
have your compatriots changed over the years?
[Joshua Butler] Yeah. We do
have some people with this now that have been with
us for seven, eight years.
But I think typically it's like a 3-4 year cycle.
Someone will come in and contribute very
heavily with their time and energy for
a few years and something happens in
their life and it's they move on to the next big project.
That is always a struggle.
I think with every non-profit that's a struggle
because you bring people in
and they get trained and they
understand the systems and then they
contribute to those systems and
then they're potentially gone,
and then you have to go through that cycle again.
It's definitely one of those things that prevents
the non-profits from the improving and growing it.
Maybe the rate at which
a successful for profit if that work.
[Susan Supak] We mentioned adapting the festival.
You have had quite the motivation
to adapt here since COVID has reared its ugly head.
How has that affected your thin line fast?
[Joshua Butler] Can't really speak to that without
also speaking to how it has
affected my overall life.
I've been working professionally in
the virtual hybrid events space for about 15 years,
and quit that job in
December of 2019 to start
my own virtual event production company.
Little did I know at the time that
the entire world would shift to virtual event production.
We were really well-positioned to take advantage
of the new found interest in virtual events.
But I also knew how to do them.
I knew how to produce virtual events and do them
successfully and with little investment.
So that first year,
I think in 2020,
we had a meeting, I think March 6 or 7,
and we decided we were going to go ahead and go
virtual at South by Southwest
had I just canceled the day before,
but there weren't a whole lot of
cancellations at that point.
We decided we were going to do it.
Then I think two weeks later is when the lockdown began.
It was like March 23rd or something like
that and a festival was scheduled to begin on the 25th.
We had about two to three weeks
to transition the festival,
which wasn't too bad because we had the solutions,
we had the platform,
we had the resources,
the people, the know-how,
and it was great because as a company,
we were able to really focus our efforts
on creating a successful virtual event for thin line,
and we got a lot of great press about it
and the festival was immensely successful,
and we did it in a way,
in a format that was revolutionary at the time,
it was just how we'd been doing it,
but when all of a sudden everything went virtual,
you had a whole lot of people not really
knowing what to do and how to create
these events and everyone was guessing
because the people who had done it often,
there weren't that many of us around.
Since then, most film festivals have become more of
an on-demand format where
you can login and then watch whatever you want,
like Netflix style,
and then once the festival is over,
I'm using air quotes, then
you lost access to that content.
But it was a very on-demand ish.
We did a fully live festival
on March 25th and went four days and we did
live films and live intros
and live Q&A's with filmmakers from around the world,
and we're really able to create that live experience,
we are accustomed to having during the festival time.
That's the format we stuck with whereas
so many festivals gone this on-demand route.
But then we saw, even this year,
Sundance did a fully live festival.
They did have some on-demand pieces,
but they made sure to do everything live.
Because that is the festival experience
is just festival does not equal Netflix.
Those two experiences are not really the same.
It was important for us to maintain as much of
the live experiences as we can.
[Susan Supak] That's awesome.
You got to capture that energy.
I know exactly what you're saying.
That's the fun part of a festival.
I didn't realize Joshua,
you are go-to guy there then for
virtual experiences when all this COVID happened.
There has to be advantages to having it virtually.
You certainly can have
people join in that aren't really there.
They don't have to be in debt.
They can be in Japan or whatever.
Then I'm sure also though,
there must be some challenges to not having in-person,
as you say, there is that energy with a festival.
[Joshua Butler] It was nice last year
because the filmmakers and
distributors weren't really ready
for everything to go virtual,
and so there weren't a whole lot of restrictions.
You see with a physical screening,
there is a built-in geographical restriction.
An attendee is not going to fly
from Japan to attend that screening.
If you are a distributor,
you know that if you have a screening in Denton,
you don't have to worry about the Japanese audience,
the UK audiences, the Canadian audience,
or even the California audience.
You're only being distributed to
a very small geographical area around that festival.
Virtual blows that all to
pieces because the geographical restriction has gone.
What they have done,
distributors, filmmakers over this last year,
as implemented a requirement to what's called
geo-restrict access to a particular screening.
It's not all filmmakers,
some they're like, yeah, more people the merrier,
but other films require us to limit access to,
let's say, only the Dallas,
Fort Worth area, or potentially only the state of Texas.
In one way, it's good that
everyone can see it but on the other hand,
the content owners in
this industry don't really like that because they want to
withhold those licenses for
the big streaming platforms where they can
obviously make a lot more money on that license.
[Susan Supak] Where does the name thin line come from?
[Joshua Butler] An interestingly enough,
it was actually created
a board member at the time came up with it.
His name is David Alvarado and he's
a very successful documentary filmmaker now in fact.
It looks like we're going to be able to open
with his film,
which is his next film,
which is world premiering at South by Southwest here in
the next few weeks called We Are As Gods.
That is looking more like it's
going to be our opening night film,
and then we also have a film,
his wife's film from
last year South by Southwest called Red Heaven,
about a group of scientists that starts to
study and learn together what it would be like to
live in and work on Mars,
and they've created a little habitat.
I think it's in a desert areas on where maybe Arizona.
He's definitely involved with
us and we get his films every chance we can,
we use that card like you
created the name so you have to give us your fields,
but he's always very gracious and does so.
But it was about this idea
that there's such a thin line between what is
real and what is
contrived and within the documentary genre.
Because we all think of documentaries as
being fact, it's true.
But in actuality,
it's a story., it's a film,
and it's facts potentially that
I've been filtered through
the artistic process of a filmmaker.
That includes the decisions of
what to show and when to show it,
and how long to show it and
what music to plays over top of that,
the sequence of scenes to create a specific effect.
All of those things are contrived,
artistic choices that will
ultimately change the story from the original facts,
and so you have to approach
a documentary with some questions,
like where does this filmmaker come from,
and what is the motivation behind the story,
but also from an entertainment perspective.
That's always been one of my big angles.
We've documentary films.
It's great I learned something,
but I also want to be entertained.
I want to enjoy the film watching experience,
and so that's why
this thin line idea like is it real or is it not,
is always very appealing to me.
I loved the documentaries that are so crazy and
the subject matter is so crazy or
the subject person is just over-the-top,
and you think there is no way this is real.
[Joshua Butler] Your whole movie you're thinking,
is this made-up or is this real?
Those are the films I really enjoy watching,
and I really enjoy programming,
but there's not that many of those around.
When it comes to documentaries,
is it entertaining, is it's informative in some way?
Those are the real primary objectives for our program.
[Susan Supak] Wow, listening to you talk makes
me want to watch them right now.
(laughing) That is so true,
and it's so true that you can tell
the same story in so many different ways.
Make it a whole different story depending
on what you do to tell the story.
Where are your Festival submissions come from?
[Joshua Butler] We use an online
service called FilmFreeway,
where anyone can submit their documentary.
We get hundreds of submissions from around the world.
We are an international festival,
so we get quite a few international submissions.
This year we've got a really great programming team.
One of our senior programmers for odd has
really curated a great international lineup.
In fact, it's about a dozen films
that are all US premieres.
This was a really big deal
for us that we were able to get
these many really
high-quality international documentaries
I have never been shown before in the US.
[Susan Supak] Can you give the listeners an idea of
what documentaries you include?
What categories?
Are they different links,
are there different levels of
artistic talent, that thing?
[Joshua Butler] The documentaries run the gamut.
I mean, all the international stuff is very interesting.
For Afghanistan and South Africa,
Russia, and all over Europe, Canada.
Very diverse geographical locations for these filmmakers.
Then we try and be very
diverse just in terms of subject matter,
so might be some social issues,
some arts topics, potentially like crime,
documentary, some historical matter.
We try and hit
everyone's watching preferences in some way.
One question you asked earlier that I
wanted to expand more on was
the advantages and negatives of doing things virtually.
I mentioned the positive of
it being no geographical area.
I think overall, and especially coming from my business,
seeing the way in which all of
these virtual events have
dramatically grown their user base.
So many more people are able to
attend virtual events that it's going to make it
really hard not to do virtual once
everything does return to
whatever the new normal will be.
I mean, I think there will always be a segment of
the population that is like, you know what?
I'm going to stay away from large groups of
people because it could be anything.
It can be the flu. It's important
that as we transition back that
we still want to capture that digital audience,
that virtual audience that
isn't going to drive to dentin.
On the hard side, I mean,
clearly we don't have the physical thing.
So much of the way that a festival is organized
and built is based on the physical location of the event.
Thin line, for instance,
very dentin centric in terms of
our sponsorship and our advertisers and our attendees,
and the overall experience.
The music is very local style music,
and so when all of that goes away,
when you remove the geographical part of the festival,
then you remove the incentive for those sponsors,
the city is not getting
the same benefit that they were when 2,
3, 4,000 people were coming into town.
The festival has to again really adapt
and find new ways of creating revenue,
and also to really understand
the new economic model because your costs are different.
Everything is different in many ways.
I personally have enjoyed the transition to virtual.
I have found it a lot easier to manage and to execute.
We can do more.
I only have one screen.
No, I actually have infinitum screens,
like I could do 20 screens at one time if I wanted to.
I'm really only limited to people resources,
equipment resources, and I happen to have
a lot of those things with Falcon Events and my company.
I love the virtual format,
and we're definitely going to
continue in some virtual capacity.
I mean, yes, we hope to get into a theater,
and we hope to still be able to have
beers with our attendees and the artists
because that's a key part of the festival
but now we're doing some things this year that
are going to help us bridge that experience gap a bit.
Last year we used a platform and out-of-the-box
platform that I have used professionally for a long time.
This year, we're actually building
out our own web environment
to create a virtual event
or virtual festival experience for people.
You will actually click a link to go to
Theater 1 or click the button to go to Theater 2,
and all of the content for
that day will be streaming in that theater.
Then we're using another tool that is
used regularly by events that allows people to,
it's going to be hard for me to totally explain.
This is one of the things you have to seed
and experience to really know.
But everyone that enters
this environment does so as a video user,
it's like with Zoom
where it just assumes you're going to be
there in-person and have
your camera and your microphone on,
and you can talk to people and see
other people that are there with you.
That's what it's going to be like with our music events
and some of our VIP filmmaker lounge type things.
But for music, you're going to enter a venue.
Last year we didn't do music because it was too quick,
too hard to transition.
This year, we are definitely doing
some music like 20, 30 acts.
It's going to look very similar to
a regular festival where we've
got four or five acts in one show,
7, 8, 9, 10, 11 thing,
building to a headliner,
and you will go to the venue.
Don't take me literally here.
You're not going to a physical venue,
but virtually you're going to go to
these venues either dance solely for rubber gloves,
and you're going to
actually see everyone else that is there,
and your camera will be
on before each show and in-between each act,
you will be able to mingle
and socialize with everyone
else that has at that show with you.
There will be a floor plan,
and you can go over to the bar area
and sit with eight or 10 people at the bar,
I'm using quotes bar,
and have a conversation with them.
You can sit at different tables.
You can see where your friends are
sitting and go sit at a table with them.
When the music performance is going to begin,
all of the table conversations,
they go away and
everyone has to focus on the presentation,
which will be the music performance.
Trying to create that social connection
amongst people that happens
naturally as a part of a festival experience.
The festival is going to be live,
all of the films are streamed live.
All of the music, although
mostly pre-recorded will be streamed live.
It'll be like premieres. It will be streamed live.
All of the filmmakers will be on for live Q&A afterwards.
Even after that, you can go into the lounge and have more
one-on-one face time with filmmakers.
Got all these great music.
We're going to have some educational content as well,
some panels and some workshops
as all going to be accessible,
all for free, all through
our website then (inaudible) US.
[Susan Supak] You don't have to worry about finding
a good seat or sitting together.
[Joshua Butler] That's right.
Absolutely. We were going to do
the whole social thing with our films as well.
I decided against it because
I think a lot of people will go to movies.
They're not exactly social people.
They're like lights are off, I'm going to watch
this movie, and then I'm going to leave.
Music is a little different.
This year we are actually adding the ability to
cast so for the technical people out there,
you'll be able to Chromecast and Apple
airplay the content too with
your television and your living room or
your theater with your surround sound, the whole bit.
That's going to be a much higher-quality experience
even last year.
But just as easy to use and even
easier to engage with fellow attendees.
[Susan Supak] Then you have a group of
jurors that give awards for your different categories.
Now, looking on your website at last year's jurors,
you had some pretty big hitters.
Are you going to have the similar jurors this year,
and can you talk a little bit about
how the documentaries are judged?
[Joshua Butler] It is a really great lineup of Jurors.
We're super excited to have all of
these very professional filmmakers
and industry people contributing,
past filmmakers, some local filmmakers.
It isn't really great lineup,
and they are going to watch all the best of content,
and they're going to make the recommendations
for all of our wards.
[Susan Supak] Do you still have an award for
the dentin connection to Texas connection?
[Joshua Butler] Yes, we are doing in
Denton award this year.
I've been in communication with
Susan our film programming
director about who are
the possible recipients of that award.
We've got some great contenders.
[Joshua Butler] Last minute, once you had a film come in
I think, I don t think it's ready.
I think he's going to be ready like
the week before the festival potentially,
but it's a local filmmaker
and always happy to support our local filmmakers.
[Susan Supak] How does your attendance go with
this virtual versus having it on site?
Are you noticing that you're having more attendance?
I know you just have last year to
base it on, and I'm curious.
[Joshua Butler] It's going to be hard to be
last year because it was so new.
There wasn't anyone doing virtual that time,
there was one other festival and
had done it up in Michigan
and they guessed and we executed professionally.
We were really one of the first ones out
the gate and we are able to
keep 95 percent of the films I
think that you're going to screen festival
which was huge.
We had a couple of films that they were on and off,
we're not going to shoot and let them screen it or
it's going to be restricted to Texas.
But in the end they decided, you know what?
We're just going to let this be
open and anyone can attend.
We did some press on it and it got picked
up by two national magazines.
This is right as the pandemic began,
so people were stuck in their homes, anything to do,
and this national press really pushed like,
hey, you can watch this screening
for free at this festival.
We had 2,500 attendees the first screening,
and then we had almost
3,000 attendees at the second screening.
Based on our surveys that we took from attendees,
we know that for every registered attendee,
it represented on average 2.5 people.
They weren't necessarily watching just with themselves,
they were with their family or friends and
their living room or wherever watching the screening.
We know just from that one film
yet 7,500 unique attendees,
and that right there is
more unique attendees and we've
ever had in the history of the festival.
Also to note, there's a bit of
a number game happening sometimes the festival,
and it's like it's always the number is
always getting bigger and bigger.
But we made a decision a few years ago to go free.
What that meant was we were no
longer selling tickets on per event basis,
we were registering people for the festival.
We started tracking unique individuals
and the very first year we did that, it was 2017,
I think we had 6500 unique registrants
and that did taper off for the next couple of years,
but we had over
17,000 unique registrants at the 2020 festival.
[Susan Supak] Wow.
[Joshua Butler] I know it was crazy,
two and a half times 250 percent
greater attendance last year.
I'm a little nervous,
I'm like, how am I going to beat that?
It gets going to be such an outlier,
but we're going to do our best
and try and get some more big press and we've
got such a great line-up
all these films are really great films.
Last year we had this period of
time where so many films didn't get shown because
so many festivals canceled or
they weren't comfortable doing the streaming thing,
they wanted to have that festival experience.
We were able to go back as far back as the summer,
even earlier and look at films that just didn't
get the time on the circuit that they deserved.
The lineup is really great this year.
[Susan Supak] Very smart.
You mentioned sponsorship earlier and
the difficulty with more Denton sponsorships
since you're not quite so local,
who are your sponsors this year?
[Joshua Butler] Both transparency here,
I'm way behind those sponsorships.
(laughing) In fact, if anyone
out there wants to sponsor you can send me
an e-mail because that's another
great thing about virtual.
I used to be with physical,
I had a deadline for
my program at physical printed program,
had to get everything done and in
that book before he went to print.
Now that deadline is gone.
I can take an image or a logo and I can pop it on
the website and run it before
movies right up to the day of show.
But just in general,
we are still working on sponsors,
I do have a good list of people that I'm hoping
I'm able to close the deal here in the next week or two.
But definitely the one we
have onboard 100 percent is Panavision,
they've always been a great sponsor of ours and
they do sponsor all of our awards so
that all of those filmmakers can
walk away from the awards
and be able to contribute to their next projects.
Gear is one of the most expensive pieces of any project,
and the feature filmmaker can walk away with
$15,000 credit with Panavision that can be used.
It's almost like a $15,000
Panavision check and it doesn't expire.
They can do whatever they want in the future,
go to Panavision and get full camera rentals,
full lighting package rentals
to support their next project.
[Susan Supak] While speaking as a member
of the Denton community,
I think it is important that we
support festivals like Thin Line in our community.
It's wonderful for our community
to have something like this,
that's of this caliber.
I do think it's important for people listening are not
listening to step up and support this kind of event.
I noticed the previous years you had
something listed in terms of a photo gallery,
will that also be included with this year's or
is that going to wait until you can do it in person?
[Joshua Butler] Last year in 2020,
we did create a virtual photography gallery,
and it's just not the
same as walking through a physical gallery.
That was the real intention behind
doing the photography festival was to take a lot of
this photography content and exhibit
it and display it in a public space.
The virtual gallery was very well attended last year,
I think we had like 3500 unique individuals
come through the virtual gallery.
We did a contest where
people can vote for their favorite,
but it also felt like we couldn't do it as much justice.
Doing it again that way,
it just seemed like not as important
as doing something with music this year.
The photo festival is not a part of the event this year,
hoping to bring it back next year
once we can get into some physical galleries,
we will however, have
some photo-based educational content.
Some workshops from some of
our photographers that we've worked
with over the past few years.
There will be some content there for our photographers,
but that's a piece that we
exchanged for the effort that we're
putting into the music component this year.
[Susan Supak] Wow,
that sounds like something interesting to me.
I'm glad to know about that. Thank you.
[Joshua Butler] One thing, last year,
we typically do a VIP pass starting in 2017,
it was like a $99 pass where
you got access to the theater first.
You would be able to get
the best seats and general admission had to wait.
You had access to the VIP lounge,
which is refreshments and stuff.
There's a bit of a benefit
of being a VIP during a physical event.
Last year, we didn't offer it because I didn't really
know what we're going to give to the VIP attendee.
But this year we are reintroducing
the VIP ticket and for $99,
you will get some additional access
to not content because it's very
important for us that always
access to the content is free.
There's premium content for
you, that's not the way it goes.
But we are doing this year is for music events if
you are a premium registration registrant,
then you'll be able to do the casting,
you'll get the special link that will allow you to cast
those music events to your television.
Casting will come for
free with film, so no worries there.
On the film side after the live Q&A,
the way we handle Q&A is we do
a little text-based Q&A widget
off to the side of the on-screen player.
People type in their questions and the best questions
rise to the top and they get answered in order.
But they're always answered live,
but filmmaker is on camera,
everyone's seeing them, but there's not like
a two-way communication except from the text.
For VIP pass holders this year,
after the live Q&A,
they're going to be able to go into a VIP lounge,
that social platform we were talking about earlier,
that allows you to see and hear and
directly communicate with other people
at your table or in your area.
If you're a VIP pass holder,
you'll get some one-on-one time potentially
with filmmakers and artists
that are here for each of our films.
[Susan Supak] Nice. Where do we go to sign up and watch?
[Joshua Butler] For everyone who wants
to attend the festival this year,
all you have to do,
is go to thinline.us.
That's T-H-I-N-L-I-N-E.U-S.
Even though I say.us like five times,
you're still going to type.com, it's totally fine.
Just do a Google search for Thin Line Fest,
we will be the very top search return
thinline.us is the website.
It's going to be really obvious for you where to click to
register and then login when it comes time for the event.
That's the only web address you need
for access to all of the films,
all of the music,
all of the social activities,
or all the accessible right there
through our website thinline.us. (music playing)
[Susan Supak] Thank you so much, Joshua.
I really appreciate first of all,
the time you spend on this endeavor.
Having something like this in Denton
is so important and I really
appreciate you using your expertise
and your talent and your time to do this,
and also, I know it's a busy time
for you and organizing everything for the festival.
Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.
[Joshua Butler] My pleasure. My goal is
to be retired at 50,
60, whatever and still be running this festival.
I totally plan on seeing
my 50th festival year at some point in Denton.
We're not going anywhere. The format may change,
but we will remain.
[Susan Supak] Something tells me with your energy you're
not going to retire in 50 or 60,
but that's yet to be seen and
we'll talk about that later.
[Joshua Butler] I might retire at 40
and then just play the whole time.
[Susan Supak] There you go. Thank you so much.
[Joshua Butler] Thanks Susan.
[Susan Supak] This has been Susan Supak speaking with
Joshua Butler about the 2021 Thin Line Fest,
March 24 to March 28.
Get ready to be entertained, educated, and enlightened.
Thanks for listening. (music playing)
[Speaker 1] If you enjoyed this episode,
please go back and listen to our previous interviews,
which you can find on our website,
olli.unt.edu/podcast or by searching
for the Olli at UNT Podcast in your favorite podcast app.
While you're in the app,
don't forget to subscribe and give us a rating.
We also encourage you to share
our podcast with your family and friends.
Join us again next week
for another episode. (music playing)