Festivals...but...why?

[_joe]

I was going to begin writing and producing a short film I've had on my mind for a while but was wondering if it would be wise to plan now for festivals if I was pleased with the results.

I was planning on keeping it rather short, something along the lines of 15 minutes, but I didn't know if there were any benefits to putting short films out there apart from making some new friends and getting some publicity.

so in short: What's the deal with festivals for shorts? Would you rather push harder to make something feature length rather than submit shorts (for greater exposure, etc)?

 

[Casalen]

You probably won't get into any festivals. There's less room out there to showcase shorts, and even the best have a hard time of it. A few videos that I consider the best shorts I've seen online, some seemingly groundbreaking, have been rejected by festivals.

There are benefits. The first is networking, since you're not going to be the only one there. Name recognition is a big deal. Expect potential clients to search your name on Google. Publicity is most of it, and if you place you get to put 'award winning filmmaker' before your name, no matter how small of an award.

Those things said, you should never plan on festivals when making your short. I have no idea what you would do differently, but your goal should be to make the best 15 minute short you can. Running it through festivals would be incidental to that.