The dos and don'ts of gaining a (great) reputation on the festival circuit MovieMaker Magazine

So this article's a few years old but it made me smile and still contains a ton of great, relevant ideas. Sneaky, low-down, dirty ideas, but still: ideas.

Before Bikini Bandits was even accepted to premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival, [director] Grasse and [producer]Alan took out full-page ads in The City Paper, the local alternative weekly, promoting their participation in the festival. This naturally pissed off festival brass, creating more press in the ensuing uproar. When the film officially became part of the festival, the Bikini Bandits team purchased every available seat at the premiere, creating a sold-out screening and generating more frenzied buzz. They then threw a big ol’ party, let 3,000 in to celebrate and left 2,000 cooling their heels on the sidewalk. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Read Festival Beat / The dos and don'ts of gaining a (great) reputation on the festival circuit at MovieMaker Magazine.

Film Festival Screenings 101

Film Festival Screenings: "Congratulations! Your movie finally got accepted into a film festival. But wait, there's plenty of fun (and work) still ahead of you."

It's pretty basic information on the things you should be thinking about before attending your film's screening at a festival, but if you're starting at square one it should get the creative and logistical juices flowing. Use this as your launch pad for the basics and then get creative.

CinemaTech: Talking with Brian Chirls about Online Audience-Building

Scott Kirsner of CinemaTech just posted this video of his interview with Brian Chirls. If you're familiar with Four-Eyed Monsters, you've encountered some of Brian's work; while Arin Crumley and Susan Buice are the filmmakers and public face of the 4EM project, Chirls masterminded much of the internet and marketing strategy around the film. His work apparently attracted the interest of John Sayles, for whose Honeydripper flick Chirls has been working recently. Check out the video below, and take notes.

Festival buzz doesn't always mean box office results

A somber reminder in the Variety story Distribs reel over mixed results:

For the lucky few filmmakers who get into Sundance, dreams of career-making success can get as inflated as last year's sales figures.

But two of 2007's high-profile sales -- the John Cusack-starrer "Grace Is Gone" and the docu "Crazy Love" -- prove that buzz and heavy buyers' interest don't always translate into box office success. In contrast, the musical drama "Once" left Sundance without having landed a distrib. But it has become one of the biggest success stories from the 2007 fest, earning $9.5 million -- roughly 50 times its production budget.

The three films serve as a reminder that the chasm between what a distrib buys and what the public will pay to see has never been greater. For filmmakers anxious to sell their films, it's a stressful rollercoaster that runs well beyond the Park City dance.

Things you don't want to be known for

Palm Springs FF director Darryl Macdonald in indieWIRE's dispatch from Palm Springs:

"We have an adage at film festivals--I probably shouldn't be saying this for your outlet--but the smaller the film, the bigger a pain in the ass the filmmaker's going to be. It's not a generality, and it seems to bear itself out. Anybody who works at a film festival, either in hospitality or programming, will tell you this, "It's the people who haven't yet tasted success who are the most demanding people to deal with. In general the bigger the star, the easier they are to deal with. It's not always the case, but often enough it is."

"With a certain amount of success comes a certain amount of self assurance. Directors you particularly see this in. Actors less so. They have no demands and if something goes wrong at the screening-- heavens forbid it's the screen in the wrong aspect ratio or the print is scratched or whatever--they tend to be mellower.

"But a first-time filmmaker, who it's his baby up there on the screen in front of an audience for the first time, will just freak out, go ballistic, and think the world has ended.

You don't want to be a festival staffer's war story in years to come -- keep your cool, acknowledge the hard work that festival staff and volunteers do even when mistakes get made, and always express gratitude at just being included in the festival.

Don't miss your niche: special interest marketing

Planet Out recently published their Queer Park City preview for the Sundance and Slamdance film festivals this year. It's a terrific reference for those interested in gay & lesbian programming at both festivals, but why should the LGBT crowd have all the fun? Why not a cheat sheet for animal lovers? Where's the environmentalist's guide to Park City? Seems to me there's a filter for just about any special interest group out there, if only you're willing to dig through the program guides to find the relevant films.

You should know the marketing niches for your particular film backwards and forwards. Prepare a number of different press releases highlighting the special interest appeal and make sure you can plug in the name of your festival contact to give it local relevance. When you're accepted to a new festival, you'll be ready to contact the local organizations with news of specific interest to them. When you learn about the festival's full lineup, you can create another press release highlighting the other films in the lineup that match up to those interests (being sure to focus on your own film, of course).

Example: When attending the Austin Film Festival in 2006, the makers of Prison Pups contacted the local Humane Society about the screening. Not only did the HS contact their members about the screening, but they also brought animals to the theater (with prior permission, of course) to add to the screening's appeal.

Doug Block's Ten Rules of Personal Documentary Filmmaking

Who doesn't love a good list of rules for success? Doug Block, the director of one of the most fascinating personal documentaries I've seen in years, 51 Birch Street, provides his personal Ten Rules of Personal Documentary Filmmaking as a series of entries on his blog. Doug knows of whence he speaks; 51 Birch Street is both compelling and (at times) uncomfortably personal. You could do a lot worse than to take his rules to heart.

2007 Insomnia Film Festival

This year Apple is again running a film festival for high school and college filmmakers -- the idea is to make a film basically from scratch in 24 hours.

Thinking of participating? Check out John August's top ten tips for making a short film in a limited amount of time. My favorite: "Protein, not carbs. Because you’ll likely be working all night, sugar will send you into a crash."

Of course, the most practical is to "Go funny." This applies to documentaries as well as narrative films; if you can display a sense of humor towards your subject -- however dire -- your film is much more likely to be remembered and rewarded.

Best of luck to the participants.

Reasons not to use MySpace as your film's web site

A few months ago while wandering the internet in search of indie-film related advice (let's call it pre-pre-research for FFS), I came across a blog entry that suggested filmmakers eschew building their own web sites and use MySpace as their primary internet presence. (Many apologies to the author of the piece, whose blog escapes me at the moment -- I'll be sure to link if I stumble upon it again.) I can't help but respectfully disagree. A well-built web site is one of the most powerful marketing tools an indie filmmaker can possess. A mere MySpace page is no substitute. Here's why:

- MySpace wasn't designed for the promotion of movies. The original purpose of MySpace was to provide online connections for real-life social networks. Along the way it has mutated a bit as professionals and organizations (most notably musicians and entertainment companies) have been drawn to the massive viewership and multimedia hosting capabilities. MySpace has capitalized on these unintended uses by introducing new sections of the site (including a special account type for filmmakers), but at the end of the day the site works best for those who use it for its intended purpose. For example: when you register your film as a "user," what age do you give for the film? Is your film single, or married with kids? Little inconsistencies like this make promoting a film slightly awkward on MySpace.

- MySpace is ugly, and those plug-in MySpace templates just make it uglier. The MySpace interface is a usability nightmare and the layout is either too simplistic or difficult to customize. There's a lot of effort required to make it look good. Not that it can't be done, but if you have that kind of HTML skill, why not make a web site that looks exactly the way you want?

- MySpace is inflexible in the kinds of things you can put on your page. This goes back to the first point: MySpace was designed for something other that promoting films, so a filmmaker ends up either crowding everything onto the first page, using fields for purposes other than which they were intended, and cramming third-party widgets onto the page to make up for MySpace's shortcomings. Then you just have to pray that MySpace doesn't intentionally break that widget's functionality. A web site is almost infinitely flexible in layout, and you can reproduce most (if not all) of MySpace's functionality with other free online tools.

- MySpace is a spam magnet. Take a look at the comments on any independent film's MySpace page. Odds are you'll find a smattering of compliments from people who have already seen the film and an overwhelming number of messages that say "Thanks for the add," followed by a garish banner advertising someone else's film, band, web site, or toothpaste. That doesn't even count the menagerie of ads that MySpace itself imposes upon your page. If someone plastered stickers all over your movie's poster at a film festival you'd be irritated to say the least -- why would you tolerate it online?

- Is your potential audience really on MySpace? It seems to me there are two kinds of people on the service: those who keep up with their real-life friends there, and those who have something to promote. So your message is going out to people who already have something better to do on MySpace, and people who have their own ulterior motives for visiting your page. I'm not saying you can't find new viewership on MySpace, but you can probably find more viewers with less work in other departments.

- It's amateurish. When a MySpace page is the only online presence a film has, it looks like the filmmaker didn't care enough -- or wasn't smart enough -- to support his film with a real web site. Web sites aren't exactly expensive to build, and you almost certainly know someone who can help you design and maintain a professional-looking site. When a Hollywood studio makes MySpace the online home for their film, it looks like they're reaching out to the youth audience or jumping on a bandwagon. When an indie filmmaker does it, it just looks sloppy.

This is not to say that a MySpace page for your film can't be a valuable adjunct to your film's official web site. For the sake of fairness here are a few points in favor of keeping a MySpace profile for your film and keeping it current.

- People do actually use the service -- in massive numbers. Even if you're only marketing to other MySpace users who have films of their own to promote, having a MySpace presence can at least expose you to other people who are hip deep in independent film. I suspect that those people are a significant fraction of the market for indie films. Even if they don't buy your movie, they might be good contacts for future projects.

- It can provide a touchpoint for who your actual fans are. There's something about MySpace that encourages people to "friend" one another (when did "friend" become a verb?) and leave a comment where they wouldn't ordinarily send e-mail. Maybe it's the added layer of anonymity? Whatever the reason, someone who becomes your MySpace friend and doesn't use your comments box to promote their own work is probably an actual fan of your film. Cultivate these fans as potential evangelists for your movie.

- People seem to be impressed with profiles that have high numbers of friends. If you can rack up the friends then it might be a good way to sell your film to a distributor and/or prove your worth as a marketer. There are some semi-automated ways to do this; seek them out and then feel free to trumpet your success at grassroots Internet marketing to those who are easily dazzled by such things. Just don't fool yourself that your 500 new friends signify anything other than that you've become adept at acquiring new MySpace friends.

Convinced? In a future post we'll go over the whys and hows of creating a "real" web site for your movie, even if you don't know the first thing about it.

Disagree? Let me know in the comments.

Try to show some graciousness

It's a tough biz, this indepdendent filmmaking. The film festival circuit may not be the hardest part, but it has its peaks and valleys just like anything else. You slave over a film, massage it to the best piece of work you can manage, and then send it off with a check to a film festival. And another. And another. And another. The thanks you get is usually along the lines of "thanks for submitting, but there were too many other films we liked better." For every festival that accepts your film there are a dozen who turn it down.

In the face of such rejection, it's natural to feel a little whiny. We can all be really good at complaining when we feel unappreciated, and misery loves company. Over coffee, at a party, or (most especially) on an internet message board in the company of comrades, the urge to grumble takes control and the snarky comments fly.

However: as legitimately indignant (and amusing) as the Bitter Man might be, here's why you might want to restrain yourself.

1. You don't know the whole story. Yes, the Bumbledyfloop Film Festival rejected your mind-blowing documentary short about that Olympic pole vaulter. And while it may be the very best doc short ever about pole vaulting, you submitted it the year after Bumbledyfloop did their big "Olympic Heroes" program. Their local audience has seen all the Olympic docs they can handle for a while, so Bumbledyfloop decided to pass. This is kind of a silly example, but the reasons for turning a film down are as countless as the stars -- and they don't always have something to do with the quality of your film.

I've heard filmmakers grouse about this, too: that festivals dare ever take anything into consideration but the quality of the films they program. My answer: welcome to the real world, kid. It ain't fair, but sometimes that unfairness works in your direction, so be grateful when it happens. Personally, I like seeing festivals that program imperfect films because they took a shine to them, or because they fit a theme. Oftentimes that's where the really interesting stuff happens in cinema.

2. You never know who's listening. People will form opinions of you based on what you say, whether you intended it to be for their ears or not. So whether you're at a festival party trashing that pretentious piece of junk you just saw or relating the story of a particularly disastrous screening experience you had at the Southwest Poughkeepsietown Cinema Celebration on a message board, consider how your words will sound to someone who doesn't know you. It's a small world; festival directors talk to one another, and they troll the same web sites you do. Your reputation will precede you, so don't hurt your film's chances by being known as a "difficult" filmmaker.

3. Nothing grows on scorched earth. Here's one I've seen a few times: a filmmaker receives a personal invitation to submit new work to a festival that has previously passed his movies over. Suspicious that the festival just wants his submission fee, the filmmaker refuses to submit -- or worse, actually voices his suspicions and/or hurt feelings. In the vast majority of cases, festival programmers are far too busy to solicit submissions from individual filmmakers unless they genuinely have an interest in that filmmaker's work. An invitation to submit is not a guaranteed acceptance, but it's a far better shot than not being invited. (I'm not counting the mass invitation e-mails that go out to previous submitters.) You've done something to merit the programmer's attention; don't squander it by holding a grudge.

(As a side note, while submission fees are a significant source of revenue for many film festivals, let me reassure you that the film festival that exists merely to collect such fees is an exceedingly rare animal, if it exists at all. Festivals cost far more to run than submission fees alone could ever support.)

4. You're better than that. Seriously. Unless you really are a creep (in which case I can't help you), you probably don't want to be perceived as one. This is particularly true when your career is on the line. Personality is a large part of the hiring process in any industry. If you want to build a career in filmmaking, you have to sell yourself along with your work. It's a lot easier to do that if you're known as the easygoing sort with a kind word for everyone. So the next time you're tempted to blow off some steam or give an incompetent festival worker a well-deserved thrashing in the filmmakers' forums, think hard about whether that's really the way you want to be remembered.

Do all the whining you want in the comments. I won't hold it against you. Promise.

15 Must-Have Freeware Programs for Filmmakers

I have resisted writing too much about filmmaking here, mostly because I'm not a filmmaker (or at least, not much of one). But when something like this comes along it just makes sense to share. FreeGeekery (a youngish blog, six months of age) posted an article today that lists out 15 Must-Have Freeware Programs for Filmmakers with a mini-review of each. There are some great finds listed here and they're even arranged by stage of production -- from screenwriting through storyboarding and budgeting, all the way through editing and post-production. A great resource for cash-strapped filmmakers.

(Thanks to Lynn of The Lady from Sockholm for the tip.)

What to put on your festival screener DVD case

First impressions are important. When it comes to first impressions, the case your festival submission DVD comes in may be the best shot you have at starting off on the right foot with the person who sees your movie first. The person who watches your movie may not be the person who takes it out of the envelope, and film festivals often separate the press kits and other material that come with a submission from the DVD or tape when they put it in the pile of films to be watched. That leaves the case itself to communicate something about your movie to a prospective viewer before they pop it into the player.

I've seen submissions come in all kinds of packaging: simple paper sleeves, CD jewel cases, regular black DVD cases, colored plastic "seashell" cases, and even elaborate metal boxes. For my money, the best of all of these are the "Thin-Pak" cases. They hold the DVD in place, give a nice roomy surface area for cover design without taking up a lot of room on a shelf (skinnier spine), and rarely break in transit. (There are few worse feelings in everyday life than pulling one of the standard black DVD cases out of an envelope and feeling the DVD bouncing around inside because the little spindle broke.) You can buy Thin-Pak cases for about 35 cents each in bulk from internet retailers like Tape and Media.

The next step is to design a cover that will attract a screener's attention. There are lots of different kinds of people who screen for film festivals, but you want the kind who cares enough about independent film to go pawing through stacks of DVDs, looking for "the good stuff." Those are the people who will give your film a fair shake and an honest appraisal. If you can make your film stand out from the other discs in the stacks with a good cover, it might mean the difference between rejection and acceptance. I should note that not every film festival gives its screeners the opportunity to select their own films so this strategy might not work for you. Regardless, you need to make the most of every chance you have to distinguish your film from the rest of the pack.

If you don't have artistic layout skills or software, get some help from someone who does. Failing that, do it yourself and keep the design as uncomplicated as possible. Even with basic page layout tools a novice can create a simple layout that is informative and professional-looking without being cheesy. Just don't try to over-reach your abilities with fancy fonts or Photoshop effects. Pick one or two basic fonts (something other than Helvetica and Times, please) and stick with them. Use stills from your movie but resist the urge to use those fun artistic filters.

I've seen a lot of submissions come in with the film's poster as the DVD cover. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not -- usually the text is way too small to read on the DVD-sized presentation and it doesn't always represent the film best to a festival screener. Make a judgment call on this one but don't do it automatically just because you paid someone to design a poster.

Here's the information you should include on your DVD case:

• The title. This should be the largest text on the case.
• Principal cast and crew listing, especially if you have a recognizable name actor in your film.
• Identify the film by category as a doc, narrative, short, feature -- whatever categories it falls into.
• Include pictures from the film: not too many -- definitely opt for bigger, more intriguing photos over a series of stills you can't really make out. This can be especially bad if you print your covers out on an inkjet printer.
• A logline (25 - 50 words tops) on the front, if you have a really good one. Lame loglines should be simply omitted.
• A short synopsis (100-300 words) on the back. For Pete's sake, don't give too much away. If you have a short with a humorous setup and/or payoff, it's better to be teasing and mysterious on the cover than to give too much away. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to keep the viewer from anticipating the gag. On the other hand, if you have a documentary feature that starts slow and builds to an impressive climax, you might want to make it clear that the film's conclusion is worth sitting through the first twenty minutes of exposition. Again, it's all about capturing the screener's attention before they put the disc in the player.
• Total running time. Festival screeners are busy people. If I only have a little while before my next appointment or whatever, I'll scan through the stack of discs I have to watch. If I find one short enough, I'll watch it and be grateful that the filmmaker was thoughtful enough to include the running time on the disc. It also helps me budget my time to know that the four short films and a feature I have left to watch add up to almost three hours of total viewing. Clearly marked running times are helpful for the final stages of festival programming, too -- the programming director won't have to look your film up in his database to know that your short is the perfect length to round out the comedy shorts program to a full two hours.
• Your contact info: web site, e-mail address, and phone number. If the viewers want to know more about your film or want to get in touch with you, don't make them search anywhere else for that information! Include your mailing address if you have room.
• Leave yourself some room to hand-write in additional information requested by the festival. Don't make it too obvious, but strategically placed blank spots are perfect for information like the Withoutabox submission number, which will be unique for each festival.

  Below is an excellent example of a DVD cover for a film festival submission. It's for a documentary called The Pool by Sam Griffin (read more about Sam's film at thepooldocumentary.com). Notice how Sam and her designer Sol Armada used photos and the color scheme from the swimming pool (greys and blues) to give the reader an immediate impression of the film's tone, and also to play on the reader's own memories of swimming pools in the summer. Read the synopsis to see a great example of setting expectations -- if you've read the cover, you're probably curious to see what a pool looks like with 3000 people in it. Click the image below to see a version large enough to read.

  

  (Thanks to Sam Griffin for allowing me to use her as an example. I've blurred out her e-mail and phone number on the cover here but I'm sure you could probably find her if you looked hard enough.)

Long shorts at a disadvantage

Adam T writes on the WAB message boards:

Hello, I have recently completed a documentary short entitled "La Quinceañera" which has a run time of 42 minutes. This felt like the best length for the film but I wanted to get some opinions from festival Programers on how they view a film of this length? It seems to be on the long end for a short and yet short for feature length. Grateful for Any feedback.

Louis P responded:

The unfortunate reality is forty two minute shorts are going to be very difficult for many fests to program. This WILL be taken into consideration when they are making selections. Where do you put a short of that length? It can't stand alone. It can't open for most features. And in a short block it will seem like an eternity next to a group of punchy five minute comedies. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this has been written about extensively on these boards. I don't think you should make changes if you are indeed at the correct length for your film. I'm just preparing you for a slew of rejections that you will no doubt receive, regardless of quality.

I'm going to have to agree with Louis on this one. As a screener for a festival I can definitely say that anything over 20 minutes is regarded with some skepticism. Not because there aren't subjects that don't fit into that running time, but because the overwhelming majority of "short films" that run that long simply could have been edited down to something leaner while delivering the same value.

Another thing you should consider: there's a 90-minute drama of roughly the same name ("Quinceanara") that came out last year. You're bound to come up against some confusion there. That might be to your advantage since anything that catches the attention of a programmer is a good thing ("didn't we play that already? Oh, it's a doc short... interesting."), but it might work against you in the long run. If you weren't aware of this before, consider the implications carefully.

Music clearances - links

A couple of quick links with interesting info regarding clearing music rights.

Royalty Free Music - sells albums of "free" music.

All Clear? - a music clearance primer. A reprinted article originally from International Documentary magazine.

Music clearances for film festivals

A recent question from the Filmmaker magazine message boards:

I want to know what the realistic pros and cons are of just screening the film at festivals without the rights. Will the festival refuse to screen it? Will we be disqualified from any prizes or competitions? What exactly is the danger?

This is the Sundance answer to that question, and I suspect most film festivals would tell you much the same thing: you need clearances, but the festival can't take the time to investigate that you've done the legal and proper thing.

From a legal standpoint, you must clear all copyrighted material included in your
film before you can publicly screen it. However, Sundance does not check to
make sure that you have cleared these materials at any point during the process,
nor will we be held responsible for any legal issues that might arise from the
inclusion of uncleared materials in your film. It is the sole responsibility of the
entity submitting the film to secure permission from the copyright holder of the
material in question, whether it is music, stock footage, or any other elements
that could violate someone else's copyright. Quite often, rights-holders offer
reduced rates for festival films, so you should contact them directly to avoid any
possible rights infringements.

(Taken from the Sundance submission FAQ at c4e.sundance.org.)

Slamdance has a similar disclaimer:

Technically speaking, all we're interested in is if you TELL us you have all the rights to show the film.

The festival directors/programmers I've met would probably never admit publicly that they don't care if you clear the rights or not. (Some would be risking professional relationships or even their jobs to do so.) However, I have learned from observation when screening submissions in their presence that they notice when high-profile music is used. Often they will scan the credits for some indication of clearance in those cases, but it's usually out of curiosity ("How much money did these filmmakers have in their budget?") than out of a sense of duty to make sure that the rights have been cleared.

On a related note, I will say that the idea of just getting "festival clearance" for music can make getting distribution a lot harder down the road. An interested distributor will take into account whether they have to lay out a lot of cash for music rights -- and you can be sure the price for those rights will go up when a distributor is actually interested in your film. Go ahead and either pay for worldwide rights in perpetuity for all formats while your film is still unknown or opt for another, cheaper piece of music.