What are film festivals?
What are they; I think everyone knows that a film festival is place to see films. This might be new ones, or classic ones. I think there is a lot of confusion among filmmakers about what they are? And what they are there for. I also think there is a lot of confusion among film festivals about what they think they are too.
Confused!?Yeah that’s where I was too.
When I left film school back in the late last century, I started entering my films into film festivals and also getting involved in film festivals. My point of view was to show my films to an audience, and when I got involved in making film screenings happen, it was again to get films in front of an audience.
Maybe I was naive, but over my years I have learnt that film festivals are about sales and networking to a lot people. Maybe I am not businessman maybe I don't see the festivals as lucrative as that.
For me the joy of being selected is a buzz, the joy of screening my work at a festival is a great excitement. And that is fundamentally what it should be about.
What else can you do with a film festival? Well a film festival can be a launch pad for your film, it can be the starting point for your career, and it could lead to money, and more success for you and your film.
Lets break it down into several areas of interest.
Audience engagement.
Money.
Career.
Audience engagement, this is what will happen regardless, and for me is the main reason to show your film. Having a captive audience in a cinema watching your film is the best way of people getting to know you and your work and they retain that interest for your next film,
Which is where you have to decide if you want more than this from it. Personally I am happy for my film to be shown at a film festival first and for most, and I if I can I will attend and also do promotion of the work. This is a personal view though. Most serious film professionals will only enter a film festival if they know that can attend and promote their work at the festival. They wont enter unless they can do this. I agree with this to some level. But I also think it can be good to just get your work out there, and when you are starting off it is good to just get it out there, to get an idea of who would want to show it.
I believe that someone somewhere will screen your film. But it may take a while to find them. With the film festival scene and circuit. Its good to set yourself goals and a plan for that film.
I always set my films up to have a year at film festivals, I also set my self a limit or a goal depending how you see it of entering 100 submissions within that year. I also have an online Internet premiere at the end of that year.
When you set off on that film festival journey have a think about what festivals you want to get into and then enter them first.
If you want to win a BAFTA or an Oscar, you need to make sure you enter your film into the festivals that qualify for those awards. You also need to watch films that have been nominated before hand to see if your film is the type that win those awards. Though you never can call it. I don’t think a more abstract or experimental film is going to win an Oscar. Though you never know.
Also you need to make decisions about where you want the premiere to be, and also the film festivals you are entering, if they need a premiere or not.
Some will also want the film not to be available online. Some don’t mind.
Lots of decisions to be made before you send the film off to a festival.
Money.
If you are new to the film festival circuit and you have just started entering your films to festivals, don't pay anything towards it. Don't enter festivals that cost. You don’t have any money for this so don’t do it.
When your film gets selected at a festival or screening event you will start then to have a reputation on the scene, you have been selected! That is great, hopefully other film festivals will see that and select your film on this basis. Your film should snowball and get selected for more as you go. Once you are in the position of the film being selected by many festivals. Then you could consider paying to enter a festival, based on the fact that you have a history of being selected for other festivals.
Of course the festivals you have to pay to enter, also have bigger prizes that you could win. This means that your short film could actually make you a profit! and make money, and there are films that do this, short films that do this.
Then there is short film distribution, which will be another blog post in the future. But is one to look out for at the film festival.
My final point is about career. Film festivals are really good for your career. They show first and foremost that you care about the work you create, enough to give it a platform at a festival, or to have ago.
It also looks great on your CV that you have been selected and has a certain wow factor to an employer. But most importantly it’s about getting yourself out there. As a filmmaker of any length long feature length or short. You need people to see your work to get an audience and to get people interested in you. If you don’t have an audience see your work you don't exist. This can also be very important for your next film, getting screened at a festival can mean that you have talent in the eye of a investor, or public funder enough that you can be trusted with there money to make your next film.
My career in all this is slightly different, being a full time university lecturer as well as a filmmaker makes it harder for me to promote or enter into film festivals as much. But I get round to it as much as I can and always endeavor to hit my 100 festivals target. What I am targeting now is to be selected for more festivals and to hopefully win an award. That my ambition.
I want to be able to then push myself to develop a feature film on the back of this success, I don’t intend to make the feature until I have reached this goal.
