Now that you have purchased tickets, it's time to make use of them by attending festival events online and in-person. In particular, there are three different ways of using the tickets you have purchased:
- Attending in-person
- Attending online through a browser
- Attending online through an app like the Apple TV and Roku apps
Apple TV and Roku Are “Beta” Apps
Our support for our Apple TV and Roku apps are still on a “beta” basis. In other words, we are working towards an initial stable release and working through bugs that you may encounter during your use of those applications. We welcome bug reports when you encounter such bugs as they will help us reach an initial release state quicker, but we do not provide support for those apps.
In-person Events
Depending on the way in which your festival is running in-person events, you may need to present your name to check-in or you may need to print out your tickets. To be safe, we recommend printing out your tickets and presenting them during festival check-in.
We plan to have iOS and Android apps in the near future that will eliminate the need to mess with lists and printed tickets.
Attending via a Browser
The SparqFest system manages your tickets and they entitlements they grant. Once you purchase your ticket, any events and selections that ticket grants you become available when you visit the page in question.
If the ticket you purchased has restrictions, however, you may be confused seeing that event is available to you one instant, but not the next. We'll run through some common examples.
You Watch Your One Screening
The most common scenario to cause confusion is one where you buy a ticket to “any one screening”. As you browse screenings, they all show that you can watch them with your ticket. Once you watch an online screening, however, none of them except the one you watched shows that you can watch them. As you might expect, this condition arises because you've picked the screening to which you wish to apply your ticket. The ticket can no longer be applied to any other screening and any restrictions on replays/on-demand access are now in force for the block you have watched.
Your Viewing Is Interrupted
The most challenging situation is one in which you have purchases a ticket that allows you to watch a screening block exactly 1 time. No replays, no on-demand access.
Most festivals don't do this because of the problems inherent with streaming on the internet. Namely, connections can fail, streams degrade, computers crash, etc. Any of those events can result in your viewing being interrupted.
Unfortunately, if your viewing is interrupted for any reason, you will return to the screening to find you can no longer watch it. If this happens, reach out to your festival director to clear your ticket.
Why Limit Replays?
For the reasons described above, SparqFest recommends to festival directors not to disallow replays. Nevertheless, some distributors contractually require their films not to allow replays. If your festival has disallowed replays, it is very likely due to a contractual requirement and not a desire to limit your viewing.
Attending via an App
Attending the festival online via an app like our iOS and Apple TV apps is similar to browser access, except you must take an extra step and register your device with your account.
To register your device, login to the festival site through your browser and then select “Register Device” in the profile menu. A 6-digit code will appear. You will enter this code in the app.
In the app, go to the “Account” section and select the “Register” button. It will prompt you to enter the 6-digit code from the web site. Once you do so, your device will be linked to your account and you will have the same access rights in the app that you have in the browser.