In Part 1, we looked at submitting your film to festivals, in Part 2 we looked at sites that host your films, and in part 3, we are going to look at other ways you may be able to get screened.

You might be able to access various local opportunities to screen - for example, local art and cultural events sometimes open up the doors to film screening, especially films that are in some way connected to the event.

There are film clubs and societies. These groups may be strictly online or they may have local chapters where you can go and meet others of the same ilk, and submit your movie for screening.  A good place to search for this type of group is a site called  www.meetups.com.

You can join meetups.com for free and indicate the type of group you are searching for, or you can start your own group - that however, costs money. They have a monthly, three monthly, six monthly or yearly fee.  

Starting your own group on Meetups.com has the advantage of allowing you to pick the location and set out the parameters. Once you set up a meet-up group, this automatically gets circulated to any members interested in that particular topic.

If you prefer to organize a "bricks and mortar" meeting group, you can start your own group by networking with like minded people and agreeing to meet at a local pub, coffee shop or library. Once the group is established and you have enough members to make it worth renting a screening space, you can then go about finding places suitable for screening.  Schools, some libraries, and art centres often have suitable spaces and will rent them out. You may be able to find  a small theatre that will be happy to rent you it's space for a couple of hours, but they will no doubt want you to use their own projectionist.  A local theatre in our area rents itself out for $300.00 for an afternoon screening.  At the other end of the scale, we have a local Historical group who rent out space for an evening for a total of  $35.00 and they have a large drop down screen in a room that can hold up to 50 people.

This method can work, but requires a lot of networking on your part and you need to have a wide circle of contacts interested in the same things, who are willing to come to your location, and who can be motivated to actually come out!  
An example of this type of group actually happened in our area. A couple of years ago a bright young film maker got the idea of forming a film cooperative in our city. She had come from a place where there were many opportunities for the independent filmmaker and she wanted to establish the same sort of thing in our own area, which was film-resources-barren .

She wanted something that would bring together talent in all areas of film making - screenwriters, producers, directors, cinematographers …the whole nine yards.  She felt that we could meet monthly and we would form a pool of collaborative talent, and eventually a pool of resources - a small library, an equipment pool, and hold regular screenings of members short movies.

This idea generated a lot of interest and enthusiasm. People from many areas in the Media Arts came by to see what we were doing and to network with each other. Each meeting, she would either get a speaker to talk to us about some area of interest (such as film editing software, or equipment) or we would get some time to screen our short movies. We met a local art gallery which allowed us to meet there free of charge, and had a large, drop-down screen.

So what this did was to provide us with a networking opportunity, great information and a place to show our work and get feedback from a real, live audience.

Although these screenings were done in a fairly relaxed way, using a laptop, a projector and the available drop down screen - it was amazing to see one's work up on that screen. Interesting to note other people's reactions to one's work, and see what they had to say.  Future plans included the groups'  involvement in being on a film festival selection jury, as well as to have a final "major" screening event at the end of that year, where we would actually be in a "real" theatre and have a professional projectionist at the helm.

Personally, I like the idea of forming one's own group, to meet in a location of one's choice. However, I also think that using an online group, such as a combination of Facebook, Google+, Linked in and Meetups.com to help promote the meetings is extremely important.

Bottom line: In order to get screened, hard work and perseverance is needed, regardless of what method you choose to follow.