AJ Schack gives sound advice to filmmakers navigating the festival circuit over on All These Wonderful Things. His key advice is to be strategic, respectful and not to burn any bridges:

If you get in to a festival, make yourself available to them for press. Make a contact that you can rely on (and who can rely on you). Meet your deadlines. Have a healthy dialogue about screening times and potential audiences. And treat everyone with respect.

If you don’t get in, how about sending a letter of thanks for their consideration (you’re going to make another film, right?) and how you look forward to meeting them down the road. And then move on.

Festivals, whether they pay you or give you face time with Debra Zimmerman or put you in a fancy B&B, can be your friend. More importantly, they can be your partner in reaching an audience for your film that you might otherwise miss. And yes, they can be part of an “ersatz distribution system”, particularly at a time when fewer films are being distributed.

But like all parts of your filmmaking journey, it’s up to the filmmaker to be educated and to make smart choices.

AJ links to some top doc festivals in the post which is a useful resource if you’re trying to figure out how fests differ and where you should consider submitting your film.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under Festivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.