Would you consider starting an online film festival for funding?

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shabit87

Active member
I was thinking about possible fundraising ideas for indie filmmakers. I wanted to know has anyone ever considered putting a film festival together?

I know it'll take work, but if you could get a couple of sponsors to give you items for prizes and charge a small submission fee to filmmakers, maybe it could work. Would do you guys think?
 
Even 'prizes' aren't strictly necessary. Nice looking award certificates, even if printed from your PC, can be enough. It's often the prestige of being able to say "Won Audience Award at XYZ Film Festival" that's enough.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Even 'prizes' aren't strictly necessary. Nice looking award certificates, even if printed from your PC, can be enough. It's often the prestige of being able to say "Won Audience Award at XYZ Film Festival" that's enough.
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That is so true, but I would like the winners to have some other reason to enter other than a title. Thanks for your thoughts!
 
Festivals started with "funding for the festival promoter" as the main purpose/genesis are generally junk. These type of festivals tend to accept everything that comes in with a check, cash, or money order. The result is all kinds of crap that should never have been let loose.

That's my opinion.
 
Actually, that's not quite accurate.

Having been director of a film festival once myself, my experience is that yes -- festivals do receive lots of 'junk'. And the entry fee is paid by all submitted films. But the key isn't what's received -- it's what's accepted and screened.

Now, if a festival is screening films that are 'junk', there's generally only one of two reasons. Either the people reviewing the films are incompetent, or the fact is the festival just didn't receive enough quality entries to fill out its schedule, and had no choice but to screen the best of what was submitted. The latter happens a lot with smaller festivals that don't properly promote themselves.

The festival I once was director of was the Real To Reel Film and Video Festival, which was held (at that time) in the small town of Shelby, NC. (http://www.ccartscouncil.org/realtoreel) The second year of the festival saw FAR more entries than the first, and it's grown by leaps and bounds each year since. The year I was director we received over 100 films submitted. The festival ran a week, and we filled the schedule with some really good stuff from all over the world. But we received a lot of 'junk' as well.

Shabit87, if you get out there online and promote the heck out of your festival among filmmakers the world over, and keep your entry fee reasonable, you should get plenty of good stuff to show.

Good luck!
 
BTW, we did two other things with the festival that year that proved fairly popular. First was a 'kick-off' party, done like a Hollywood premiere party. People dressed up. There was food and drink. And clips from the films that would be showing at the festival were constantly run. It really ginned up interest. We also invited a local celebrity -- Nina Repeta, from "Dawson's Creek", who was the life of the party. And there was a band. Lots of fun!

The other thing was on Saturday we held workshops on various aspects of filmmaking. The most popular was the one for actors.

Be creative. Think of ways to attract the local public to your festival. Have fun with it!
 
Great info. It was just a thought. I don't think I'm nearly as expierenced as I need to be to pull this off yet.
 
Its funny you posted this because This is something I was just recently considering doing, a completely online film festival that has all (or most of) the features of a normal film festival.

We wouldnt accept just any film like some other online and live festivals do, we would have a selection process and review board to make sure we had a certain quality film. We would have live Q&As with directors over webcam, Awards and Prizes among many other cool ideas i had. And we would also accept shorts AND features.

This is all just in the planning stages but it is something im seriously considering going forward with if i get a feeling it would be well supported by the community.
 
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