ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXFilm Festivals consultant
3 years, 5 months ago - Uriel Emil
Hi all,
I finally finished post production on my latest short SLAG.. It's been over 10yrs since I directed my previous one..
Now I'm considering how to go about the festival circuit. In the past I've sub'd my films myself to the festivals and had only minor success although the films themselves did get good reviews and appreciation on other platforms (e.g. my short SLAP won the Shooting People Film of the Month back in August 2013 and my short MARINA ON TOP got 2nd place in the SP Film of the Month in July 2013... Both these shorts also got selected for the British Council Short Film selection in 2007&2011, but still they got very little attention in the festivals..).
I saw at times people use film festivals' consultancy companies and I wanted to ask your opinions on the matter: is it worth it and how much would it cost? (my film is just over 3min long).
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts,
Uriel xx
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3 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin
Ultimately you need to target your festivals. If your film is a gritty reality drama then there's no point submitting to a Portuguese horror festival, for instance. Also go local - local festivals have an incentive to show local films as that gets cast, crew and families bums on seats for a shorts programme. That's pretty much all a consultant can do, too.
3 mins is a good length to slot into a programme, most "shorts" are altogether too long.
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW
3 years, 5 months ago - Uriel Emil
Hey Paddy,
I understand your position. As this is the 4th short I've directed, I wanted to consider a different option to the one I've followed before with my previous shorts, which was similar to your suggestion.. and so I've decided to try a film festival consultant in the hope that their perspective and strategy would assist my short achieving better results in the festival circuit than my previous experience.. It will be a while before I'll be able to tell if this route proved itself as more effective, but I will return to this post in a year or so to report back.
Best wishes,
Uriel
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - Uriel Emil SHOW
3 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin
@Uriel Emil
Hiya, genuinely looking forward to your sharing the results - it's the kind of thing that truly helps your fellow shooters ;-)
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW
2 years, 3 months ago - Uriel Emil
Hey Paddy,
Took me a while to get back here..
After a year plus of of my short film SLAG going through the festival circuit using the strategy I received from a film festival strategist (I used the services of Dr. Rebekah Louisa Smith from https://www.thefilmfestivaldoctor.com), I can honestly say it was worth it. I sub'd my short to around 45 festivals and managed to get into 15 of them, winning awards in four of them! Without her strategy I believe my success rate would have been much lower, as I would have probably sub'd the film to a lot of other festvials that would have not been suitable for my micro-short.
So the short answer is YES, investing that extra money in order to get a film strategy plan helped, at least in my case, as I had very little knowledge of the festivals out there.
Best wishes,
Uriel x
Response from 2 years, 3 months ago - Uriel Emil SHOW
3 years, 5 months ago - Caroline Bottomley
I understand Festival Formula are affordable and incredibly knowledgable.
Also 3 minutes is a perfect length for the Shiny Awards. We're all genres under 5 mins, as long as the director has only ever directed on production budgets of under £$50k, excluding feature films. We're quarterly www.shinyawards.com
Good luck.
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - Caroline Bottomley SHOW
3 years, 5 months ago - Uriel Emil
Thank you Caroline!! I will be using a festival consultant and hopefully that will prove effective. And will be sub'ing to your festival too in due course.
Many thanks and best wishes,
Uriel
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - Uriel Emil SHOW
2 years, 3 months ago - Uriel Emil
Hi Caroline,
As you can see in my answer to Paddy, I found using the services of a film festival strategy very useful indeed!
Now, before putting my short film SLAG out there for the public (on youtube or vimeo) , I would like to submit it to one more festival - the Shiny Awards (: I just checked the website and realised I missed the recent competition, and the next one is in June, however there's still no link for it on FilmFreeway... I'd appreciate if you'll let me know when that one goes live and I'll then submit my short.
Many thanks and all the best,
Uriel X
Response from 2 years, 3 months ago - Uriel Emil SHOW