Any drawbacks in submitting 8 short films to the same festival?

manfredlopez

manfredlopez

Member
I was wondering if anyone knows of any potential drawbacks in submitting 8 short films at the same time to the same festival. Would it be viewed as spam and therefore hurt all individual titles or would it 'better' the chances of one actually being accepted.
 
Ya. If they don't like you, you're screwed. But, the Action on film festival has 6 shorts by the same director in it this year. I think the real answer would be that a Film Festival might be concerned that you'd exhaust your audience and they'd be showing 6 or 5 empty theaters. Their job and goal after all is to cater to as many filmmakers and audiences as possible to garner attention and prestige. You'd be betting against those odds by submitting so many.

I'd only do it if you're submitting to one of the big ten and in that case your lucky if even 1 or 2 get in.
 
Drawsback: The amount of money you'll be spending on sending 8 films to a single festival.

A nice thing to do would be to see what kind of films the festival has shown in the past and target them with a similar kind of film from your pool.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Zblock said:
... But, the Action on film festival has 6 shorts by the same director in it this year...
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This gives me hope. I guess the worst that could happen is that none get in, but the best scenario is that they accept more than one.

Regarding the fees, yes, they do add up. But I guess festival fees are part of the distribution cycle for shorts. So it's always good to budget for that. I tread it like if it were the required P&A budget for a feature. I have been reading from several places now that you have to submit to ten festivals on average for every one or two acceptances. So that's about $350 to $400 just to partake in the festival experience (plus travel and accommodations).
 
Wouldn't your films just be competing against each other? At best, only a few of your shorts would be selected. Hard to believe all of them would be accepted to the same festival. So you know that some are automatically "lost money" as soon as you send it. Not trying to criticize the plan, just trying to help save a few bucks because it would be hard to imagine all your shorts are going to be selected, so some of your shorts that get in (hopefully) are going to beat your shorts that don't get selected. (I sort of repeated myself - emphasis lol)

It seems spending those fees over several festivals might be a better use of funds. Like Kylevant mentioned, maybe target festivals that line up well with the types of shorts you have?

At the end of the day, a variety of factors go into getting a short selected.

But, with ALL RESPECT, I imagine your shorts are not of equal quality and some may be better than others? So maybe just go with the better ones?

Best of luck and let us know what happens!
 
jghenderson said:
Do you really have that many short films and are unable to narrow down which ones you think are best?
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Um, yes, it is strange to say, but we do have that many. This was the result of three months of intense work. The problem with narrowing them down is that all the actors involved want their film to be the one that gets sent. So what we ended up doing is that all actors pitched in to cover festival fees. As far as quality of the shorts, they do vary. But it seems that all are different enough that it is really hard to narrow down. Also, we just heard back from the first festival where we sent four of the films (i was still editing the other ones at the time of the deadline). They ended up accepting one of them, but it was literally the one that I expected the least to be picked. That's when I realized that I can't trust my own judgement with this whole festival thing.
 
Geez I would discredit any film festival that featured 6 shorts by the same director but I guess not if they were submitted by different parties and he just happened to be the hired director for each project, maybe he's just that good. lol

As for submitting 8 shorts to one festival, that is a lot of cash so ask for a discount first, not because you might be a cheap bastard like me, but because believe it or not some dialogue with a festival, its staff, or even festival directors can be an "in" to the festival itself. This is a cheap and dirty trick that I have used myself, it works and is presents smart networking opportunities.

In your case however, I would probably just submit your best 3 films. I still don't think any festival wants to play several shorts by one person. To me it looks bad, but again that is just my opinion.
 
"This was the result of three months of intense work."

Wow, my turnaround on ONE short film is usually about 6 months from the time I start writing until post is done.

I'd vote pick the "best" one and submit it to 8 festivals rather than submit 8 films to one festival.
 
starcentral said:
.. ^ yeah I too was embarrassed to admit that I could never pull off a single short in 3 months let alone 8 :(
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I'm in post on a 22 minute Web Series pilot right now. The timeline for audio post is 6 to 8 weeks. 22 minute pilot, 5 to 10 man hours MINIMUM per running minute is (if we say average 7.5 hours) is 165 hours, that's four 40 hours weeks for one guy. Plus he's composing and recording the score.
 
starcentral said:
This is a cheap and dirty trick that I have used myself, it works and is presents smart networking opportunities.
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This is really great advise. I will do just this.




gonzo_entertainment said:
Wow, my turnaround on ONE short film is usually about 6 months from the time I start writing until post is done.
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That's because yours are probably very good. We are in Mexico and don't have the luxury of that much time. In fact, we wrote them all in a few days and shot them all consecutively over 17 days. Here is an example of one which has a simple story line. This one was shot with a crew of 4 (the actors themselves served as crew). Others are more complex and original than this one but this is a good starting point since it doesn't have that much dialogue. I'll leave the video and password active for a few days and then make it private again, so as to not run afoul with festival rules :)

As always, any feedback is appreciated.

PASSWORD: centrodecine

LINK:
https://vimeo.com/44255568
 
manfredlopez said:
Um, yes, it is strange to say, but we do have that many. This was the result of three months of intense work. The problem with narrowing them down is that all the actors involved want their film to be the one that gets sent. So what we ended up doing is that all actors pitched in to cover festival fees. As far as quality of the shorts, they do vary. But it seems that all are different enough that it is really hard to narrow down. Also, we just heard back from the first festival where we sent four of the films (i was still editing the other ones at the time of the deadline). They ended up accepting one of them, but it was literally the one that I expected the least to be picked. That's when I realized that I can't trust my own judgement with this whole festival thing.
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Oh, well if actors are driving this question and they are willing to pay, then sure go ahead! Good luck!
 
Just some feedback.

First the good.

I wasn't expecting the ending. I was expecting something else, so the pay off for me was good.

I thought most of the acting was pretty good.

Some good shots with some nice movement in them.

The bad

When the people are asking questions, I see that you have an upside ? at the start of the question and a normal ? at the end. Maybe that's the way it is done where you are, but where I am from it's not the norm. As when I first saw it I was thinking what's that there for? I was more worried about the upside ? than the film.

When one of the guys says 'let's go' is it possible to have that as a seperate subtitle rather than being included with the previous sentence. I think it flows better for the viewer.

Maybe the film could be a little shorter, a little bit tighter with the edit


The things below are things I know you can't really go back and reshoot, but if there is another take for example it might help the film be better.

The guy who says 'let's go' seemed to be overacting a little bit, is there any other takes where he is a little more nautral?

In the scene with the kids, one of the girls looks at the camera. It pulled me out from the movie. Is there another take where she isn't looking at the camera, or can you cut around this?

Also when you see the guy in the car at the end. Stop there, no need to go back to the main character. We all know what's going to happen now. (keep the sound effect, just cut the vision there)

Cheers
 
ASD said:
Just some feedback.
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Thank you very much for your feedback. You were completely right about the "?" issue. It has been fixed. Your other observations are also very good and I appreciate them. I might incorporate some of them in a futute re-edit.
 
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