Latest / Indie Film Podcast / Film Festivals Are Terrifying: How to Craft a Strategy That Actually Works

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Film Festivals Are Terrifying: How to Craft a Strategy That Actually Works · Indie Film Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
• 0:02
  And I am check for the month of October.
• 0:04
  We're talking about the horrors of filmmaking, and let's talk
• 0:07
  this week about the horrors of Film Festival submission, which
• 0:10
  is usually pretty terrifying. But Victoria, you have a success
• 0:15
  story that you want to share this week, which is how did you
• 0:18
  get your $250 short film into an Academy Award qualifying
• 0:21
  festival? Oh yeah, Ron Howard's my uncle,
• 0:24
  so I just figured that's how everyone does it.
• 0:26
  Oh, I guess I can see the resemblance there.
• 0:28
  Thank you. That's very kind.
• 0:29
  Obviously for our regular viewers, they know that's
• 0:32
  completely not true. If I had anyone in my family
• 0:35
  that well connected, I probably wouldn't be on this podcast.
• 0:38
  And I would have a different podcast where I'm just
• 0:40
  dispensing health and Wellness advice, medical advice too.
• 0:44
  Maybe starting down that political stream.
• 0:46
  Could be, could be, but instead I talk about filmmaking that.
• 0:49
  Seems better and much like politics, nepotism is a big deal
• 0:54
  in filmmaking. However, it's not the only way
• 0:57
  to get your film into a festival.
• 0:58
  So we have a couple of different things you can try, things that
• 1:02
  are within your access, and then different connections that you
• 1:05
  can leverage to get your film into more film festivals.
• 1:08
  Or at least based on the N one example that I've got.
• 1:12
  Yeah, which is it's a good example because you went into
• 1:16
  the Film Festival submissions with a strategy a lot of us have
• 1:20
  heard, submit to the big ones 1st and give them the first
• 1:23
  right of refusal, which is what I've tried with the films that
• 1:27
  I've been a part of and have not screened at Sundance, have not
• 1:30
  screened at Slamdance, unfortunately.
• 1:33
  Otherwise maybe some people might have heard of me out
• 1:34
  there, but it would didn't go well.
• 1:36
  And then on our films, we ended up having to wait an extended
• 1:40
  period of time to go to that next tier of Film Festival
• 1:43
  submissions. But can you tell everybody out
• 1:46
  there what you did with Dive, which is the name of the short
• 1:49
  film, what your acceptance rate has been so far and where it's
• 1:53
  going to be screening as far as Academy of Qualifying festivals?
• 1:58
  And to be fair, screening at an Academy Award qualifying
• 2:01
  festival does not mean that I am nominated for an Academy Award.
• 2:04
  I think we need to clarify that good point real fast.
• 2:07
  Well. It's just a way of demarcating
• 2:09
  that it is a major festival. It is a big festival and I'm
• 2:13
  really excited about it. I would say the first thing that
• 2:17
  I did, and I will run through just the steps really fast and
• 2:21
  then go through and elaborate on them so I don't end up just
• 2:23
  whining around a very curvy path to get to a thought because that
• 2:29
  would be unpleasant for everyone.
• 2:30
  Family Circus esque. We do that a lot on this podcast
• 2:33
  anyway. I'm sure listeners are used to
• 2:35
  it by now, but. Maybe, but I'll try to be a
• 2:37
  little bit more succinct, yeah. Tell us, tell us about your
• 2:39
  strategy. Strategy.
• 2:40
  So the strategy was born from exactly what you said that first
• 2:43
  right of refusal idea. I just think it's a lie.
• 2:47
  OK, I I know that Sundance and slam dance and what rain dance.
• 2:52
  I don't know how many other South by yeah, Tribeca, all the
• 2:56
  big ones. Tiff Tiff, which did say no to
• 2:59
  dive. Oops.
• 3:01
  But that's OK. You gotta, Yeah.
• 3:03
  Anyway, I feel like they all say that they want for that first
• 3:07
  right of refusal, but I don't think that's true.
• 3:11
  I think unless you've made some buzz and some noise about your
• 3:16
  film at other festivals first, I don't think they're going to
• 3:18
  give you the time of day unless there are two other options.
• 3:22
  Unless you know somebody at the festival, which fair, that will
• 3:27
  probably give you a leg up over a lot of other people.
• 3:29
  Absolutely. And two, if you have a really
• 3:32
  big name. Yeah.
• 3:34
  Who just stopped it, Like if Willie Nelson popped into your
• 3:36
  film for a hot SEC or Ron Howard plays your uncle in this film,
• 3:40
  then good plan. I'm just going to keep pitching
• 3:42
  that and hope that somehow, someway, this algorithm shows
• 3:45
  him this and he kind of looks at me and thinks there's a slight
• 3:48
  chance maybe I have a long lost niece out there.
• 3:50
  Maybe I should fund her next film.
• 3:52
  This is a good plan. This is actually what we've been
• 3:55
  working all year. Towards this was it.
• 3:57
  This was the big. Moment Ron Howard's name and
• 3:59
  hoping for the best. Yeah, that'd be nice.
• 4:01
  Cast us in Arrested Development season 7, which nobody's
• 4:05
  watching still. OK.
• 4:09
  So the strategy in short, again, I will get through this in more
• 4:12
  detail because a lot of this is going to be sketchy, but also if
• 4:15
  you don't want to hang around for the ride and you just want
• 4:17
  to hear this and then you want to be like, wow, she's an idiot.
• 4:19
  I don't believe a word she says. That's fine too.
• 4:21
  It started with goals. You have to have goals for your
• 4:24
  Film Festival strategy. Then I submitted to online only
• 4:28
  festivals first and then I went to really small first year,
• 4:35
  especially festivals that were just getting started and other
• 4:39
  smaller niche festivals, especially ones that I could get
• 4:43
  too easily. And then I went with genre fests
• 4:47
  and bigger festivals. And then of course, the
• 4:50
  obligatory you got to submit to at least a few the the big boys
• 4:53
  just because I don't know, you got a.
• 4:56
  OK, So you basically started off dive then and within you
• 5:00
  released it in April. Excuse me, it's first screen in
• 5:04
  April. It's not released yet.
• 5:05
  It's not released. Yet, but it first screened as
• 5:08
  part of a competition in April. And then how many festivals had
• 5:12
  you heard back from within a couple of months?
• 5:15
  Because I went with those online only festivals and they usually
• 5:19
  do a monthly turn around. By June, I had already heard
• 5:24
  from four of them OK, so and that I'd been accepted and won
• 5:29
  nice and at least one award at every single one of.
• 5:32
  Them so you're building up laurels on your short film
• 5:35
  before you even hear back from any of the in person festivals.
• 5:39
  Yeah, absolutely. Because that turn around time is
• 5:41
  so fast and yes, they are a money grab.
• 5:44
  Everyone is going to call them that and they're right, of
• 5:47
  course they are. They are short little online
• 5:50
  festivals that screen nowhere and which is great because it
• 5:53
  protects protects your premier status.
• 5:55
  But they also have the option for reviews on them, which means
• 6:00
  that for an extra 7585 bucks, whatever, I can now get somebody
• 6:05
  else talking about my film a back link somewhere to my film
• 6:10
  that's from a OK, maybe not all of them are the most trustworthy
• 6:16
  websites, but some of them are, yeah.
• 6:18
  So do your research. And a lot of us out there have
• 6:21
  paid for reviews and there's no shame in that.
• 6:24
  It's just something that you need to do to get.
• 6:28
  Nice. Phrases to put on to your poster
• 6:31
  so that you can market it. Exactly.
• 6:32
  If you want any sort of critical acclaim on your film, you've got
• 6:37
  to start somewhere. And yeah, starting with those
• 6:39
  short little monthly festivals where you just tack it on as an
• 6:42
  additional fee. It's so easy because then within
• 6:45
  a month you have it back and you know exactly what's going on
• 6:48
  with it. Because some of the other places
• 6:50
  online that'll offer you a review for your film, sometimes
• 6:53
  they say you can submit it for free.
• 6:56
  You may or may not hear back in a few years.
• 6:58
  But like the the other ones where if you pay for them,
• 7:02
  usually in, you know, 6 to 8 weeks or so, you'll hear back.
• 7:05
  The monthly festivals, it just speeds that up a little bit.
• 7:08
  No, they're not the best reviews in the world.
• 7:11
  Yeah, they're probably most definitely written by AI.
• 7:15
  Did one of them specifically come back and say that my film
• 7:19
  proved that there are no safe spaces for women and that women
• 7:25
  can trust no one but themselves? Which I think it's a little dark
• 7:31
  and maybe not what my film is really about that.
• 7:35
  Was so that was definitely a hot take on your movie.
• 7:38
  That was a little bit of a hot take on Dive, I think,
• 7:40
  considering she's building a friendship with a complete
• 7:42
  stranger and the bartenders like being kind of kind and nice and
• 7:46
  protective, but whatever, It's totally fine.
• 7:48
  Yeah, it's totally fine you. Don't know.
• 7:49
  You don't know who wrote the review or if it.
• 7:51
  Was I know who wrote the review? Or you don't know if it was.
• 7:53
  Now I know it was a definitely a computer that was not a human
• 7:56
  writing that I know that, which I guess is a good point to say
• 7:59
  shameless plug here. That is one of the reasons we
• 8:02
  set up reviews on any film podcast and we're still
• 8:05
  launching it. It's still very new.
• 8:07
  But if you are at all interested in having actual humans write a
• 8:10
  review from your for your film, please just use the get featured
• 8:15
  submit your film options on our website and it won't be written
• 8:19
  by AI and we won't say things like congratulations, you proved
• 8:23
  that there are no safe spaces for women.
• 8:25
  Yes. We do our we are beginning to
• 8:28
  offer that service. I also just kind of want to
• 8:30
  tangentially point out, thank you everybody who's been
• 8:32
  watching, commenting, emailing and asking us to appear on the
• 8:38
  podcast, but we only do in person interviews.
• 8:41
  We're not going to Zoom. We're not going to whatever that
• 8:44
  other software is, Riverside. It's just not the vibe that we
• 8:48
  want to go with. It's audio, video quality
• 8:50
  issues. But thank you all for reaching
• 8:52
  out about coming onto the podcast.
• 8:54
  It is really cool and we do want to see your films, so absolutely
• 8:57
  keep telling us about them because that's amazing.
• 8:59
  There's so many indie film, there's so many indie film
• 9:01
  makers out there with a lot of really quality work.
• 9:03
  So it's been cool to see. That's kind of one of the things
• 9:06
  that I didn't think about until you mentioned your strategy as
• 9:10
  far as like the quality of the films.
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  Because early on when I was making films with my brother, we
• 9:18
  had some very low quality films that we turned out and we did
• 9:23
  the same thing where we just assumed that, well, we can get
• 9:26
  into Sundance with this. It's unique.
• 9:28
  It's different, it's special. Exactly.
• 9:31
  And ended up spending a year and a whole bunch of money and then
• 9:33
  ended up only getting featured in some of our local slash
• 9:37
  regional film festivals, which was completely fine.
• 9:41
  But if you go in with that mindset of, well, I'm going to
• 9:44
  screen at Sundance and then you don't get in, that's a
• 9:47
  disappointment for you as the film maker all the way through.
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  Whereas if you're submitting to an online Film Festival or a
• 9:54
  series of online film festivals and you're seeing hit and miss
• 9:58
  success with that rather than a whole bunch of success, maybe
• 10:01
  you need to think, is this film worth spending the money on
• 10:06
  submitting to the bigger ones or do I need to look at this film
• 10:09
  again, Maybe make some cuts, maybe fix the audio issues that
• 10:13
  you're having. Of course the sound guy would
• 10:16
  say that. Maybe you need to hire somebody
• 10:20
  to gaff it or hire a cinematographer the next time
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  that you go out to shoot something so that you can get
• 10:25
  something that looks and sounds good.
• 10:26
  Because even with what you said with first year film festivals,
• 10:30
  you had the opportunity to do some judge work for a first year
• 10:34
  Film Festival here in Boise and the quality on those films that
• 10:40
  were getting sent into this first year festival were really
• 10:43
  high. Yeah, Yeah.
• 10:45
  There are really, really good film makers out there.
• 10:47
  Just so you know, the competition is strong.
• 10:50
  There was one feature that even had actors that you would
• 10:53
  recognize. Yeah, they were.
• 10:55
  I would. I don't even know if I would
• 10:57
  call these C list actors like they were very identifiable.
• 11:00
  They've been working for generations.
• 11:02
  They have a very well established following.
• 11:04
  And currently active, yes. They're not people that had a
• 11:08
  following 20 years ago that have since fallen off.
• 11:11
  They're definitely still doing a lot of work and doing a lot of
• 11:13
  big budget work. So again, kudos to that.
• 11:15
  Film, but this was one of those things where which was
• 11:18
  interesting to me to see. But I would imagine that maybe
• 11:21
  this person as a performer wanted to get involved in
• 11:24
  something and help somebody that's trying to create
• 11:26
  something. Because the budget was clearly
• 11:28
  not what you would expect for somebody that was of a high
• 11:32
  caliber. But maybe they just knew
• 11:34
  somebody, or maybe they wanted to cut their teeth in the
• 11:36
  directing realm of. Things.
• 11:37
  I think they were doing a favor for Ron Howard's niece.
• 11:40
  Oh, that could be another way to do it too.
• 11:43
  Good point. I don't.
• 11:44
  Even I don't know if he has a niece.
• 11:45
  I shouldn't be talking out of my ass like this.
• 11:48
  But to that point, I did learn a couple of things.
• 11:51
  He does have a promiscuous brother.
• 11:52
  Sorry that was late. I'm just kidding, I don't.
• 11:55
  Know actor Ron? Does Ron Howard have a brother?
• 11:58
  Ron Howard's brother That would make you his niece.
• 12:00
  Oh, that would. Oh, thank you.
• 12:02
  OK, All right, we got there. It took me.
• 12:04
  It took me a hot minute, but it took.
• 12:05
  Me a while to come up with that joke so it's fine.
• 12:07
  I waited till you're a mid sentence on the next thing you
• 12:10
  were saying but. My.
• 12:11
  Ears are still turning too. OK, the.
• 12:13
  Next thing I was going to say was that in addition to those
• 12:19
  online only festivals giving you a quick sort of litmus test on
• 12:23
  how well is this film going to do?
• 12:26
  Is it going to totally sweep all these online awards?
• 12:28
  Is it going to be a guaranteed shoe in for at least getting
• 12:30
  featured? Or is it going to be, like you
• 12:33
  said, very hit and miss? It can also be a good time for
• 12:36
  you to look back. If you don't think that there's
• 12:38
  something technically wrong with your film and you think that the
• 12:41
  story is very solid, your actors are good, everything looks very
• 12:45
  clean, it's all well lit, you can hear all the dialogue, but
• 12:48
  they're still diegetic sound and everything's great.
• 12:51
  Then I would challenge you to take a look at the runtime of
• 12:53
  your film because the runtime I think as a judge can make or
• 12:58
  break it. If you have a 15 minute or
• 13:01
  longer short film, I don't think it's going to get watched by
• 13:05
  most of the judges. These judges are humans with
• 13:09
  full lives and a lot of stuff to do and probably pretty tight
• 13:12
  deadlines for when they need to have all of these films watched
• 13:14
  by and there are just only so many hours in a day.
• 13:18
  So if your film is hitting that 35 minute mark and especially if
• 13:23
  you don't just knock their socks off in the 1st 30 to 60 seconds.
• 13:28
  Yeah. They might not bother watching
• 13:30
  to the end and and they're allowed to do that as the judge
• 13:34
  if you're not holding their attention, they're allowed to
• 13:37
  have that as sort of their judging mentality and their
• 13:39
  paradigm to use to critique your film.
• 13:42
  So if you've got a 15 minute short film and it's not doing
• 13:46
  well, try cutting it to an 8 minute short film.
• 13:50
  See what happens. Just see if your acceptance rate
• 13:51
  changes because you can use this feedback to recut your film.
• 13:54
  And as a matter of fact, I would say that's a really good goal to
• 13:57
  have for your Film Festival strategy.
• 13:59
  Yeah, If you already have a short, see if you can make it
• 14:02
  shorter. I want to talk about a couple
• 14:03
  things there. I do.
• 14:05
  I have heard anecdotal evidence from somebody that was a
• 14:08
  programmer at a major Film Festival and she told me that
• 14:13
  the volunteer judges would always fight to review the
• 14:17
  shortest films first so that the longer short films.
• 14:21
  There was a lot of fatigue by the time they got to the
• 14:24
  15/20/25 minute films to where if it's not complete perfect
• 14:29
  gold, your judges are going to be exhausted watching them and
• 14:33
  they're probably just going to click next.
• 14:35
  And The thing is, is you know, those volunteer judges, they
• 14:37
  might get like passes or you get some benefits for helping out
• 14:40
  with the Film Festival. And at the same time, they just
• 14:43
  had to judge a certain number of films and they're going to want
• 14:45
  to do the short ones first. They definitely will.
• 14:47
  And to that point, the only reason that I was brought on as
• 14:52
  a judge to one Film Festival was because none of the judges would
• 14:57
  review the features. Oh yeah, I was the only one that
• 15:00
  was willing to do that. And that takes some.
• 15:03
  Time. It definitely takes a lot of
• 15:04
  time, but I mean, that means that between that programmer and
• 15:10
  at least one other programmer, which I understand is not a
• 15:13
  large sample size. But there's also a lot of
• 15:16
  anecdotes on Reddit that would agree with that wholeheartedly.
• 15:19
  Unfortunately, you got to have a really killer film for people to
• 15:23
  want to watch a full 75 to 90 minutes of it, which again,
• 15:29
  don't wait until 35 minutes into your movie to get to something
• 15:34
  really good and show stopping and get me to a plot point that
• 15:38
  I'm excited about. Give me something.
• 15:41
  It doesn't have to be everything.
• 15:43
  You don't have to give it all the way up front.
• 15:45
  But man, in that first 5 minutes I need something to connect.
• 15:50
  With start with a strong scene if if at all possible, start
• 15:53
  with some something strong even if it's nebulous and I think I
• 15:56
  told the audience before with the most recent feature film I
• 16:01
  worked on with lower Gentry studio Stockton to Table Rock.
• 16:04
  We re edited the entire thing after we screened it and the
• 16:08
  beginning was totally different and even though nobody noticed
• 16:13
  it, when we showed it again to some friends of ours a year
• 16:15
  later, they just noticed that the film felt better.
• 16:18
  Which is the best type of result you can get right like.
• 16:22
  These are not, you know, these are not cinema files and they're
• 16:25
  not necessary. They're not film makers, for
• 16:26
  sure. They didn't understand what what
• 16:29
  changed, but editing can make or break your film for sure.
• 16:33
  And the other point I wanted to bring up too that I always find
• 16:36
  very funny when you go to film festivals that are also
• 16:39
  competitions and they have a time limit and the time limit is
• 16:44
  let's say it's 10 minutes or let's say it's 6 minutes.
• 16:47
  Why is it that every single film is right at that minute marker?
• 16:53
  You'd not all the stories are told in that amount of time.
• 16:57
  No, no, and some of them maybe shouldn't be.
• 17:01
  You don't need that extra long shot just because you liked it
• 17:04
  and thought it was pretty. Do do the Kill Your Darlings
• 17:08
  thing. And it sucks to do it because
• 17:10
  you loved that shot or you loved that moment.
• 17:12
  But sometimes you've just got to cut it.
• 17:14
  You've got to just go for the sake of the entire flow of the
• 17:18
  story. I will also say that if you for
• 17:23
  those little local festival competitions, if you want to
• 17:26
  have a longer credit sequence to make sure you give the
• 17:29
  appropriate praise and acknowledgement to everyone who
• 17:31
  helped out. Totally cool.
• 17:33
  Please recut those credits before you submit it out to
• 17:36
  another festival. Because if you submit an 8
• 17:38
  minute film and three minutes of that film is a cutesy little BTS
• 17:43
  footage credit sequence. No, I'm sorry that that each of
• 17:48
  those actors does not need their own title screen.
• 17:50
  You do not have to have it on there that long.
• 17:52
  You need 30 to 60 seconds tops and 60 would be for like your
• 17:57
  feature. Yeah.
• 17:59
  The dive credits I think are 8 seconds.
• 18:02
  Yeah, that was that was good. It's a short film.
• 18:04
  It's a short film. It's an 8 minute film.
• 18:06
  It's just one block of names. It goes up.
• 18:09
  Yeah, that's the end. Move it along, folks.
• 18:11
  So you did the online film festivals with Dive, Yes.
• 18:14
  Then you went into the regional. I did.
• 18:19
  And film festivals, and let's go over the film festivals where
• 18:21
  it's played, where it will play and.
• 18:23
  Before we do that, I do want to go over the goals first because
• 18:27
  goals is the first step. Because you do need a strategy
• 18:29
  behind your Film Festival strategy.
• 18:32
  Yes, you do. A little more repetitive than I
• 18:34
  wanted it to be. I should have had a strategy for
• 18:36
  that sentence. So if you are creating a feature
• 18:40
  film and you have a proof of concept as you're short.
• 18:44
  Which is your situation? Situation with dive?
• 18:46
  Yes. Then you need to know what you
• 18:52
  want out of the festivals. So you either want the
• 18:55
  networking for the money, you want the audience reactions to
• 18:58
  see how it plays out to your target demographic.
• 19:01
  You just want to see if some of your hooks or your story ideas
• 19:05
  or your storytelling methods work.
• 19:06
  Do people like the cinematography style?
• 19:09
  What's the general response? Yeah, it can be feedback, it can
• 19:11
  be networking, it can be I made a movie and now I just want to
• 19:14
  be famous. I would maybe not recommend
• 19:16
  that. I don't know if that'll be a
• 19:17
  successful one. With the I'm going to be famous
• 19:20
  one, Yeah. Oh, that's true.
• 19:22
  Famous is so nebulous. Famous is super nebulous.
• 19:24
  So you had very specific goals with your short film?
• 19:27
  I did, yeah. I wanted to see how horror
• 19:30
  audiences responded to it because it's a it's a
• 19:33
  psychological thriller, which means that that type of film can
• 19:38
  be rejected by a lot of big horror fans.
• 19:42
  Yeah, because it's not a slasher and it's not a serial killer and
• 19:45
  it's not super gory and there's no monster.
• 19:47
  So a lot of times the horror community can be a little off
• 19:50
  put by thriller films because they don't feel like it fits
• 19:54
  into their niche and their genre quite well enough.
• 19:56
  Yeah, I say, trying to win some of them back by wearing my Evil
• 19:59
  Dead T-shirt. Oh nice.
• 20:01
  Not that you can really talk because I'm behind a table and.
• 20:03
  A My God, my costume which was I am an ox shirt or pretend I am
• 20:07
  an ox shirt. It's a lovely Halloween.
• 20:09
  Very lazy Halloween costumes for me all the time.
• 20:12
  So you had you had your goals set up?
• 20:14
  Yes, you submitted to the online only festivals first.
• 20:17
  You got positive reception from those?
• 20:19
  Yeah, it won best film. In the X.
• 20:25
  All but one that I submitted to. OK, so, so you're feeling good
• 20:29
  after that and then? And my actress won some awards.
• 20:32
  My cinematographer was nominated.
• 20:33
  You were nominated for Sound like There There were.
• 20:35
  It was good. It was very so.
• 20:36
  You're getting very, yeah, very positive reception from that,
• 20:39
  which that's another sign that you did have good performances.
• 20:43
  Yeah, solid story. And the technical aspects like
• 20:46
  the lighting and the sound were in place.
• 20:47
  If you're getting nominations for all of the above, not maybe
• 20:50
  necessarily winning all of them, but it was in consideration.
• 20:52
  Yeah. And I would imagine that these
• 20:54
  online film festivals being so frequent, therefore they're
• 20:58
  going to have like, they're going to be a little bit more
• 21:00
  open to competition. So maybe competition isn't quite
• 21:02
  as tight. It's not.
• 21:04
  Because you're not trying to get into a limited theatrical
• 21:08
  screening. Exactly.
• 21:10
  So they know month over month there's going to be another one.
• 21:13
  And with those month over month ones, nothing says that.
• 21:17
  If you do decide to pay for the extra feedback, the review or
• 21:19
  the critique or whatever, they kind of grade you on all the
• 21:21
  different things. When you get that feedback, you
• 21:24
  use it. Recut your film.
• 21:25
  If you need to do pickups or reshoots and you have the
• 21:27
  ability to do so, do it. Submit again and see if it goes
• 21:30
  better the second time. Like these festivals can be
• 21:32
  tools. They can be a money grab, but
• 21:34
  they can be valuable tools. Yeah, so.
• 21:37
  So don't throw all those options out there.
• 21:40
  Yes, we, we actually went to a few festivals.
• 21:42
  Do you want to talk about the festivals that we actually
• 21:44
  attended? And we plan on reviewing these
• 21:47
  as visitors slash film makers in the future.
• 21:50
  Just so you know, because I think it's valuable information
• 21:53
  for film makers to have whether or not they should submit to
• 21:57
  festivals they've never been to. Yeah, It would just be nice if
• 21:59
  everyone talked about it a little bit more openly and like,
• 22:01
  what did you really get out of it?
• 22:03
  Do you feel like it was worth it?
• 22:04
  Did you enjoy yourself? I feel like did you enjoy
• 22:07
  yourself as the most important part?
• 22:08
  Yeah, but. Did you make?
• 22:10
  Yeah, the connections and making sure that you're you feel valued
• 22:14
  by the festival? That's all very important.
• 22:16
  So the first screening that we went to.
• 22:20
  Was the she her fest in Seattle? Which was Dive is a very female
• 22:28
  centric film that centers around domestic violence so.
• 22:31
  So that was one of your niche Film Festival that that was
• 22:34
  actually that was first year as well, I believe.
• 22:37
  This was the first year for She Her but was also a female
• 22:40
  centric Film Festival, so it was the perfect target, right?
• 22:44
  Yeah. And so that one, it's, it's
• 22:46
  screen there. It did, which was actually
• 22:49
  really cool because it was only one block.
• 22:51
  Yeah, there are only 6 films. So it was very limited.
• 22:53
  Yeah, the selections that they made.
• 22:55
  And then it also happened to be at the Seattle International
• 22:58
  Film Festival Theatre. Yeah, which was really cool.
• 23:01
  Excuse me, you know, but it was kind of neat.
• 23:04
  That was just fun. That's a that's kind of a little
• 23:06
  bucket list item. Plus I love Seattle.
• 23:08
  Yeah. So we got to go there, but that
• 23:10
  was another one where it was that was outside of the monthly
• 23:12
  Film Festival into the regional slash niche, yes.
• 23:16
  Then off to Portland. Yes, for the Portland Under the
• 23:19
  Stars festival, which was a fun new festival in a sense because
• 23:24
  there's already Austin Under the Stars and LA Under the Stars, so
• 23:29
  they were just opening up another version of that called
• 23:32
  Portland Under the Stars. So it was technically the first
• 23:34
  year for Portland Under the Stars Festival, even though that
• 23:38
  larger festival chain does already exist and does have a
• 23:41
  pretty big following and pretty large attendance.
• 23:43
  Yeah, and that one was also pretty.
• 23:46
  It was one day. Yeah, but it was four blocks.
• 23:50
  Four blocks, I believe. Four blocks and very well
• 23:53
  attended. Yes, that theater was packed all
• 23:56
  day. Portland Shout out to Portland
• 23:58
  for keeping it weird there and keeping in touch with your local
• 24:01
  artists because it was a lot of people and we'll review it in
• 24:04
  detail. But Portland, the community
• 24:07
  shows up, which was neat. The final screening was standing
• 24:11
  room only and people. Were on both levels of that
• 24:14
  theatre and. People were having drinks,
• 24:16
  people were having a good time at.
• 24:18
  The screening, the audience reactions to all the films of
• 24:21
  that one. But it was really nice because
• 24:23
  that again was one of the goals. I wanted to gauge audience
• 24:25
  reactions, right? So I wanted to see how do people
• 24:28
  respond to this and. At A at a Film Festival like
• 24:32
  that where people were very vocal.
• 24:33
  And excited about it and invested in the movie, even
• 24:36
  though I'm not a local and nobody knows anybody that's in
• 24:39
  my film. Yeah, it was still really nice
• 24:41
  to get an such an animated response from really excited
• 24:45
  artists. Yeah.
• 24:46
  So that was a really cool. And attendees, Yeah, yeah.
• 24:50
  Because this this wasn't a Film Festival where only the artists
• 24:52
  show up so. I guess that's true.
• 24:53
  I guess I just assume everyone in Portland is an artist of
• 24:56
  some. Form Oh, good point, yes.
• 24:57
  I don't know for sure. Yeah, that's that's fair.
• 24:59
  But they they weren't film makers.
• 25:01
  So let's talk about Chicago Horror Film Fest then.
• 25:04
  Because that was. The next one which is the.
• 25:07
  One of the bigger tiers, still genre, but definitely one of the
• 25:10
  bigger festivals. I mean, there were what, 200 and
• 25:12
  5300 films playing at this festival?
• 25:15
  For a huge number. Three days, yeah.
• 25:17
  Like that was a that was a big one.
• 25:19
  Big turn out from people all over the country and.
• 25:23
  Technically all over the continent.
• 25:24
  All over the continent for that one as well as we medical film
• 25:27
  maker from Toronto. But that one was very well
• 25:30
  attended by both the the community and the film makers.
• 25:35
  Yeah, that was really, really nice to get that many people
• 25:37
  flying in from from all over, but then still having people in
• 25:42
  Chicago being excited about being at the festival.
• 25:45
  So that was really awesome. I think they have officially one
• 25:48
  now. Chicago is officially the OR the
• 25:50
  Chicago Horror Film Festival is officially the most top rated
• 25:54
  horror Film Festival on film freeway now.
• 25:57
  But it was a really good chance for that niche horror genre
• 26:01
  audience to see how are they going to respond in a weekend
• 26:04
  full of bloody massacres, creepy monsters and terrifying
• 26:09
  psychopaths? Are they going to like my little
• 26:12
  thriller film? Yeah, and it went well.
• 26:15
  It did go well. It was definitely a quieter
• 26:17
  response than I'd seen at some of the other festivals because
• 26:19
  it, especially at the beginning, it's such a slow burn, which is
• 26:24
  maybe another reason I need to, when I'm working on the feature,
• 26:26
  cut to some other stuff. And maybe I need a little bit
• 26:29
  more action-packed at the get go kind of situation to really lay
• 26:33
  the fabric if I want to please that horror audience, too.
• 26:36
  Yeah. So it was still really valuable
• 26:39
  feedback. And thankfully, by the end of
• 26:40
  the film, they were more animated.
• 26:42
  But yeah, toward the beginning, it was a little bit quiet in
• 26:44
  that theater. I was like oh why am I here?
• 26:46
  And that was, well, yeah, that was.
• 26:48
  And that was a success, though, just to get into that, you know,
• 26:50
  it was a quieter audience, but getting into that Film Festival
• 26:53
  was a success. You had already leveraged some
• 26:55
  laurels and some reviews, though, from previous film
• 26:57
  festivals. So there's a chance that these
• 27:00
  film festivals already saw that this film that they've never
• 27:03
  heard of has had some past success.
• 27:06
  That is the one thing that I would recommend you do is on
• 27:11
  your film Freeway profile, you can go and edit your specific
• 27:15
  project. You can go, I think it's Section
• 27:17
  5, but I don't quote me on that, where you can go in and add
• 27:21
  additional screenings and award wins.
• 27:24
  And I would do that if I, I mean, I guess I did do that.
• 27:31
  So I would suggest doing that because it's not a guarantee.
• 27:34
  The festival itself has a choice on whether or not it allows the
• 27:37
  judges to see that information. But if there is a chance that
• 27:41
  the festival's like, yeah, we just want you to be able to see
• 27:44
  if this is doing well at the places.
• 27:47
  I mean, why wouldn't they watch those first?
• 27:50
  And if at least getting a judge to be excited enough to watch
• 27:54
  your film is the first step, which again, I would say is
• 27:58
  marketing your film. It's a good title, good poster
• 28:01
  art, good like opener. Anyway, not the point.
• 28:03
  I've preached enough about marketing, but in a world where
• 28:06
  you have every possible chance to put your best foot forward in
• 28:11
  front of the person who's going to decide whether or not they
• 28:13
  even bother to program your film, why wouldn't you just lay
• 28:17
  it out there? Let them know you can write a
• 28:19
  cover letter to every festival, so if you want to talk about it,
• 28:22
  you can. And you can explain and go into
• 28:25
  detail on either the meaning of behind the film or any fun
• 28:28
  twists or like anything you want to give them.
• 28:31
  Let him know to entice him to watch your film.
• 28:33
  Yeah, because that's the hardest part, I think, for getting
• 28:35
  programmed is will a judge actually watch your film?
• 28:38
  Yeah. And so you recently got notified
• 28:41
  of a larger, more prominent Film Festival.
• 28:45
  Yes, I submitted to two, well technically 3 because Scream
• 28:48
  Fest I would say is a pretty large horror festival as well.
• 28:51
  And I definitely did not get into that one and I did not get
• 28:54
  into the Toronto International Film Festival, though their,
• 28:57
  their application for submissions was really cool.
• 29:00
  It was very in depth. It went into a lot of different
• 29:02
  trigger warnings and things. I think I mentioned that a
• 29:04
  little bit on our last Film Festival discussion, but it was
• 29:07
  really cool. The process for submitting to
• 29:08
  TIFF was awesome. But the other big festival that
• 29:10
  I submitted to that I did get into was the Sun Valley Film
• 29:14
  Festival, and that'll be in December.
• 29:16
  Which is actually regional here in Idaho, yes.
• 29:18
  However, they do have Hollywood stars that come out and usually
• 29:22
  screen a film or two every single year.
• 29:24
  For example, Demi Moore last year with the substance.
• 29:27
  Yeah. It was one of the earlier
• 29:28
  screenings of that film. And it's like a 5 or 6 day
• 29:31
  festival and it's very packed. It's very busy.
• 29:35
  There's a lot of AB and C listers there all the time, and
• 29:40
  they sort of just take over the ski resort town in northern ish
• 29:43
  central, I guess, Idaho. And yeah, it was really exciting
• 29:48
  because they have moved their schedule around.
• 29:50
  I think just a few years ago they became an Academy Academy
• 29:53
  Awards qualifying festival. So it's definitely a bigger one.
• 29:56
  It's really exciting. Yeah.
• 29:58
  It's a little intimidating. And now I got to figure out how
• 30:01
  to do my math, my like my personal best impression of Matt
• 30:06
  Stone and Trey Parker and see what sort of weird splash
• 30:10
  situation I can do like they did with the Cannibal the Musical at
• 30:14
  Sundance. When Sundance rejected them,
• 30:17
  they said no, we will rent out a conference room at a hotel
• 30:21
  nearby, we will plaster the town with our own marketing, and we
• 30:25
  will screen it ourselves on a rented crappy projector.
• 30:28
  That's right. Yeah, They did do the gorilla
• 30:30
  thing, so we'll have to follow up with that to see how it goes.
• 30:33
  You know how it goes. We'll review all these film
• 30:36
  festivals as well, so you all, as film makers, will know a
• 30:39
  little bit of the inside information from us having
• 30:41
  attended, and we'll be brutally honest with our reviews.
• 30:44
  Yeah, for sure. So can you talk about like real
• 30:49
  quick though, before we're done, what your acceptance rate was?
• 30:53
  Yeah. 'Cause you think that's really
• 30:54
  important, because in comparison, what's the worst
• 30:58
  that could happen that? Was your short film that you
• 31:01
  that you filmed in 2014? Yeah, or 2024?
• 31:04
  Sorry, I'm a decade off. I was like, wait, no, I was
• 31:08
  doing other projects in 2014. So this is this is like a year,
• 31:11
  a little over a year ago, a year and a half ago.
• 31:13
  I was for the same created for the same original festival
• 31:18
  though and it had an 8% acceptance rate on film freeway.
• 31:26
  Anecdotally, Reddit says that anywhere from 30 to 30.
• 31:31
  Jesus. 13 to 17% acceptance rate is pretty typical and if you're
• 31:37
  above 20 you should feel good. And then I think you've had
• 31:40
  similar acceptance rates with Stockton?
• 31:42
  Yes, which is the first thing that I ever helped produce that
• 31:45
  was a very high quality. Yeah, Stockton solid.
• 31:49
  Aside from Dive, but I would imagine that the the stuff that
• 31:53
  we produced before that had a very low acceptance rate because
• 31:56
  the audio and the video quality quality was bad.
• 31:59
  Well. Or it wasn't.
• 32:00
  It wasn't perfect. We don't have, I don't have very
• 32:02
  great things to say about the video quality for what's the
• 32:05
  worst that could happen? And I was the cinematographer,
• 32:07
  so I have nobody to blame but myself, but that's OK.
• 32:10
  The audio is great though. So I think that's the that's the
• 32:14
  8% acceptance rate that we saw for.
• 32:16
  Well, it was, it was, it was technically it was, it was
• 32:19
  decent. What's the worst that could
• 32:20
  happen? It wasn't.
• 32:21
  It wasn't as eloquently shot and lit as Dive because you had a
• 32:26
  cinematographer and a gaffer. Yes, and helped both.
• 32:29
  Brilliant. Yeah.
• 32:30
  So that's. Huge.
• 32:31
  That helps a lot. But anyway, you're 8%
• 32:33
  previously. Yeah, and.
• 32:35
  This this one a year later. A year later with 28 festival
• 32:39
  submissions as opposed to the 27 that I had for the last 1.
• 32:42
  So very similar amounts of festivals, though very different
• 32:45
  strategies. Dive is sitting at 55%
• 32:49
  acceptance rate though for full transparency here, because I was
• 32:54
  paying for some bigger festivals and I was paying for the reviews
• 32:58
  and the add-ons. While Dive is a $250 film, the
• 33:03
  Film Festival budget was $739. So you're spending basically 2/3
• 33:09
  of your budget or three? Quarters, quarters of my budget
• 33:11
  is marketing. Just on the Film Festival
• 33:13
  submissions. Yeah.
• 33:15
  And not even attending the festival.
• 33:16
  So that's all always something that you want to consider.
• 33:18
  Even if you can get your friends together to help you shoot
• 33:20
  something, it's going to be a decent chunk of cash to submit
• 33:24
  to film festivals. But in my defense, I set a cap
• 33:27
  at 1000. I said I'm not allowed to spend
• 33:29
  more than $1000 and I did keep it under budget on that front,
• 33:32
  so at least I did that. And I want to point out to
• 33:34
  everybody too, that even if you remove the online only Film
• 33:39
  Festival acceptances from your rate and you get rejected from
• 33:43
  the remaining film festivals, you're still going to be over
• 33:47
  20%, I believe. As far as?
• 33:49
  Acceptance rate. That would have been 26 or 27.
• 33:52
  Yeah. So you're still in a very high
• 33:54
  acceptance rate and. I don't think the acceptance
• 33:56
  rate would be that high if I didn't have that upper edge of
• 34:01
  taking the shorter review time festivals, those little monthly
• 34:06
  ones where the stakes are a little bit lower, maybe they're
• 34:08
  a little bit more expensive. But getting those laurels and
• 34:15
  putting it on the project, I don't know if my acceptance rate
• 34:17
  to the other festivals would have been as high.
• 34:19
  Yeah, so there you go, just kind of a different paradigm as far
• 34:23
  as Film Festival submission. But with this one example, it
• 34:26
  seems to be working well. So if anyone out there wants to
• 34:29
  try it and or if anyone out there who has tried it has
• 34:32
  different result, please comment.
• 34:35
  Please let us know because we'd love to share that and comment.
• 34:39
  Tell us about your film festivals that you've loved in
• 34:42
  the in the description and. And let us know your acceptance
• 34:46
  rates because right now the film festivals all keep that pretty
• 34:49
  hush hush. But if we all share that
• 34:51
  information, we all then hold the power.
• 34:53
  So I think that that's a conversation worth having.
• 34:56
  It's like you got to you got to talk about how much money you're
• 34:58
  making at your job. Otherwise your managers are
• 35:00
  going to be doing some shady stuff out there.
• 35:03
  So let's hold these film festivals accountable,
• 35:05
  everybody. Anything else that you want to
• 35:07
  add before we say farewell? I think that's, I think that's
• 35:13
  everything I've got. Excellent.
• 35:14
  Well, we will succinctly say goodbye then.
• 35:17
  Bye.