Submitting to other film festivals...

nouou

nouou

Well-known member
I am wondering if anyone that participated in this festival is going to submit their work and attend a rl film fest.

btw gj everyone on this fest.
 
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i might take the feedback i received in my film's thread, make some adjustments, and submit Take to a local festival. i'll have to wait a year though, because i believe the festival is going on either this week or next week.

yeah, it's next week, but too late to enter: http://www.sunscreenfilmfestival.com/
 
We've got a couple lined up that the newer cut of Tiny Dancer will be submitted to. The atmosphere of them is very different from dvxfest so it will be interesting to compare the feedback/results of each fest.
 
i've made a lot of festival contacts in the last year thanks to IFHY and From Here To Awesome. I plan on using those.
 
hey guys, the festival i mentioned above is a great new addition to the film community here in the tampa bay area. i think it's the 3rd or 4th year now, and it is packed full of workshops and community events (+lots of films).

i'm pretty sure they accept films from just about anywhere, so if you're interested - check out their site: http://www.sunscreenfilmfestival.com/

-preston
 
Once the sound is fixed, we're taking "Keeper of the Lost" to the Toronto Film Festival, so wish us luck. Considering taking "Falling Up" as well, but I dunno how it will play...
 
There are a couple of larger fests I'd love to take Tiny Dancer to, but I doubt we'd make the selection, and if we did, that it would do well.
 
Zak, have you blogged/written a 'Zak's Guide to Festival Submissions'? I royally suck at film festival entrance. Aetas got rejected by both festivals I sent it to, and they weren't even big ones.
 
shawneous said:
Zak, have you blogged/written a 'Zak's Guide to Festival Submissions'? I royally suck at film festival entrance. Aetas got rejected by both festivals I sent it to, and they weren't even big ones.
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Just keep sending to fest after fest. If the film is actually good (I don't think I saw it...and if I did, I don't quite remember) then somebody will pick it up. You've just got to find the right bunch of people that will give it a home, just like any poet or author trying to find a home for their work. Just be persistent and do LOTS of research on the festival circuits. You'll get there.
 
anyone who does better than fifty percent acceptance is either lying or extraordinarily lucky. even the indies that make headlines were rejected by more than half the fests they submit to. it's very crowded out there.
 
Have you guys heard of Withoutabox.com ?

It's a great tool to submit to many different festivals around the globe, and you can find ones that might fit your film.
 
Like Zak said, very crowded, and it's (IMO) VERY random/luck of the draw. Depends on what the fest may be looking for that year, the kind of person that's reviewing films (i.e. what their personal tastes are), and maybe even the mood they're in at the moment.

I submitted to 13, I believe, and only made it into 5 or 6 that I can recall off the top of my head, so not even quite 50%.
 
It's even more crowded than you'd think. Unfortunately there are a lot more films up for submission, good bad and mediocre, so it's not always top notch stuff and the reviewers have to view a lot of bad stuff. Imagine the moods they must be in by the end of their day, espcially after an especially bad run of films that in their mind signal the death knells of cinema and creativity...
 
A friend of mine just won this year's Sundance Jury Prize for Best U.S. Short and he's still getting denied by other film festivals, so you just have to keep submitting and don't take rejection too hard.

Also, his film didn't even win the best Local San Diego Short at the San Diego Film Festival, but went on to win Sundance, so it's a reminder that certain film festivals have certain tastes so you just have to keep sending your stuff out there until it sticks to the right group.
 
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I previewed 17 films (both shorts & features) for a festival here in SoCal and basically, recommended 2. One of them was screened. One of the ones I didn't recommend was accepted. It had won a couple of awards at another festival but I still didn't think it was very good. I was just one of many people pre-screening for the festival and I know that all the films were seen by more than one judge. But still, when you look at how may view slots compared to how many entries are received you can see right away that most of the entries aren't going to make it.

It's really important to know what the festival specializes in, too, or you'll just be wasting your entry fee.
 
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