ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

9 years, 4 months ago - John Lubran

Nice article Stephen. I love 'bully take down' stories.

9 years, 4 months ago - Alève Mine

Patents are supposed to be nonobvious. Just how nonobvious is arranging for film submissions over the internet?

9 years, 4 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Great article! I've not met one filmmaker that has used WAB without substantial complaints. I've talked with one of the co-creators of the Los Angeles Film Festival a few times, and he absolutely loathes WAB and encouraged people not to use them when he was festival director.

9 years, 3 months ago - Al Carretta

This is a fantastic article. The follow up on Raindance is equally impressive. The controversy of this story will in due course (eg.2018 when the patent expires) make a great film. From 2004 when I was just starting to get my head around the administration of filmmaking I thought Withoutabox was a complete rip with highly inflated fees. We have a snapshot kicking around of how much we spent ($600) using Withoutabox for submissions and getting nowhere.

From WAB, however, I also got quite infuriated with the attitudes of some film festivals considering the entry fees at stake. Even in 2010, Raindance (who have since reduced their feature submission fee) happily took a £100 late entry fee for my debut feature (1/6 the films's budget) and gave me no acknowledgement that the piece even existed until many complaints and an 'unaccepted letter' was bundled out months down the line.

These experiences led me to start Nightpiece Film Festival in the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2014, we were open access, first come,first served and received 69 submissions, all screened. The disappointing aspect of this ethos was press criticism of film selection, which with a screen all policy was enormous ignorance.

In 2015, we were still free to enter but curated the content and received 2101 submissions from 99 countries across the world. We screened 52 films as time slots would allow and gave a platform to some amazing UK and International work.

How did we make the jump? FilmFreeway. Quite simply there is no other service like it.

Establishing Nightpiece Film Festival has cost time and money. It's sponsor is me and my family; I've never had the resources to run this but somehow I still have and we've platformed and premiered some great films.

In 2016 we have introduced a token $10 entry fee. Having been open since April 1st we have only received 11 submissions; last year we already had more than 350 but welcome to indieland.

https://filmfreeway.com/festival/NightpieceFilmFestival

9 years, 3 months ago - John Lubran

I've previously described film festivals as in-house parlour games. If they are done nicely they have entertainment value. Occasionally actual attendance might provide some good contacts. Of course it's nice to win prizes, we've had a few, but quite frankly, unless ones film is also linked to a major distributor the odds of gaining much real benefit are slight. It's notable that a great many winners still fail commercially. Counter intuitively perhaps, placing laurel leaf motif's awarded by some festivals on ones marketing material can even be counter productive.

There's also some concern about nepotism and other forms of corruption with some outfits, and not restricted to the lessor ones either. As with many other entities in commerce and public life, proven transparency is the only context worth any degree of credibility. I imagine that we might see some evolution with the way festivals operate in the next decade.

9 years, 3 months ago - A D Cooper

Great article and an insightful debate. One thing seems to have been missed.Is entering a 'recognised' festival via WAB the only way that a short can get an IMDB page? Since there is no other way to get an IMDB page for a short film, this also seems like another cheeky monopoly by WAB (which of course is commercially and intrinsically connected to IMDB). Getting any kind of IMDB recognition appears to be a vital part of an emerging film maker's profile.

9 years, 3 months ago - Lucas Jedrzejak

Very interesting debate people. I just experienced first hand, some of the arogance of the so called, festival executive decision maker. I also found it very stressful and demanding doing the festival circuit myself. But, unfortunately without the festival platform nobody will see our films so here I am again. I had been advised by fellow filmmakers to work with distributor/agent that has some credentials and can do the festivals for you (well for half of the profits from broadcast I guess) or would you do it yourself, more indie style but be more selective where you submit for international, US or European premieres? Either way its a pain and full time job whichever we choose.

9 years, 3 months ago - Karel Bata

The article makes justifiable criticisms of WAB, but none of Film Freeway (that I noticed). Methinks you have a bias...

As a film-maker I use both - why limit my options? The IMDB listing with WAB is a boon.

I think the next big player is likely to be YouTube. It really is the ideal platform for film-makers, and a great way for YT to grab content for their own exploitation. Once they step in (as I'm sure they will by 2018) that could well be it for everyone else...

But then, Vimeo has a solid reputation among film-makers, so if they chose to give it a go...

9 years, 3 months ago - Stephen Follows

I'd be more than happy to add any issues people have had with FilmFreeway but all the ones I have received so far are in the article.

At the end of the article to point out my neutrality and that's why I went to great lengths to provide all the feedback in the table towards the end.

Even I don't like how one-sided the article is, but as far as I can tell, it's the truth.

Although I would add that I think things are going to get much harder for FilmFreeway in the near future. Increased competition is on it's way and people's gratitude that they're not WAB will wear off pretty soon. It's not that they're perfect, but more than they've had a very favourable comparison for a while.

9 years, 3 months ago - Ian Allardyce

I've always wondered why Vimeo aren't in the festival submissions business? We all load our film up there anyhows and password protect, so surely it'd only be a short hop for them to add submissions?

9 years, 3 months ago - Al Carretta

A Filmmaker and Film Festival Organiser's View...

To add clarity to this engaging debate let me relay some WAB perspective on why there is such negativity towards the site. Between 2004 & 2012 we spent (USD) $1003.60 on WAB fees for entry to various film festivals. Go to my Twitter feed if you want to see the screengrab.

Feature submission disproportionately increased cost in 2010 - 2012 but through WAB with it's 'submission protection' ($2.25) and online screeners of old ($2.95), we were entering via an ether.

Most of the time we eventually got a 'Dear John' rejection letter months later but never any feedback. Initially, in about 2004, there was excitement that you got an IMDb credit but as any good producer knows IMDB may be precarious but if you're an actual film production it's not difficult to get a credit.

Now, the key is we never had a film accepted anywhere using WAB. It just sucked money and there was a deadwall of miscommunication. Remember, you can barely get through to contact anyone in WAB and if their 2001 web data form says no, you can't explain anything...

Now, seeing this from the other side - as an active film festival organiser - with FilmFreeway I can communicate with them and filmmakers, and most importantly filmmakers and their respective agents/clients can communicate with me.

Last year with 2101 submissions we still found the time to give people feedback if they wanted it (and we were free) and the key to achieving this was ease of communication.

On the flip, this year we are charging a $10 entry fee for Nightpiece. When we did it 'open access, first come, first served' for slots in 2014 we had press criticise our choice of film selection. Obviously there wasn't one; films were accepted as submitted but the the admin side
of the event isn't acknowledged.

Realistically, I've personally spent about £2k in production costs getting the festival established in 2014/2015 but a philanthropic attitude - investing in other people's films - isn't business when you don't make any money in the first place.

For 2016 submissions are significantly down but the proportionate standard is up - we've got amazing films in already, however, if you think a film agent is going to push your film consider this fresh example.

In the past 24 hours we've had a film agency in touch who wanted a fee waiver / free entry to submit 80 films. That's days of review; for free. From one territory this is futile; we only have room for between 50 and 80 films. We gave them guidance and implied they should budget $50 and enter 2 - 5 of the absolute strongest films. Their budget was capped at $6 a film but they wouldn't break down 80 films into a top 5. Now, this company has completely missed an opportunity for their clients; we've already engaged with their content but they're doing a disservice to their clients for the sake of an extra $4.

Now let's look at legacy WAB pricing. 'Submission protection' and an 'online screener' alone were $5 worth of nothing but monopolisation of the market meant filmmakers paid them as no alternative was available.

Late last year, WAB emailed me requesting I become a partner site; I duly ignored it having been in shock at the money demanded to register a FREE TO ENTER festival.
Obviously they had to change but there is no incentive to participate with them; you just cannot argue against an admin platform that can seamlessly cope with 2101 films at no cost to end user/administrator.

In the past month we've aligned Nightpiece exclusively with FilmFreeway for the simple reason; the competition is yet to catch up. Arguably, they will but so far, we can have no complaints.

FilmFreeway has introduced Nightpiece to an audience it couldn't have accessed in the monopoly days of Withoutabox.

9 years, 3 months ago - Jane Sanger

Excellent article and very informative, thank you

9 years, 3 months ago - Tony Franks

Between Stephen's well-written article, and all the responses, I feel I've had a real education in current film fesival submission advice. Thank you all.