The Rise Of Successful Virtual Mini-Film Festivals

Film festivals could vary in length. While some go on for weeks and showcase 100’s of films, others last only a few hours and could happen within an evening.

During the increase in virtual screenings, we have been noting the rise of mini film festivals that draw in 100’s of attendees with only a few films, have amazing high attendee engagement, and are drastically easier to manage than large festivals.

In this article, we are to review a data-driven approach on how and why mini-festivals are successful and why the trend is occurring.

To view other articles on film festivals, visit our Film Festivals Blog. To test the festival platform, please visit https://distribution.bingewave.com/l/festival.

What is a Mini Film Festival?

There can be a variety of definitions for what a mini-festival is. For simplicity sake, we will be defining a mini-festival as follows:

1. Lasts between 1 to 4 hours;
2. Showcases between 5 to 15 films; they usually are comprised of short films, but occasionally have features;
3. Typically have deeper and more intimate audience engagement.

Two outstanding festivals representing the mini-festival are the Delco Film Festival and the Noe Valley Girls Film Festival. The Delco Film Festival was a highly engaging Christian film festival of 11 films totaling 2 hours and 35 minutes. The Noe Valley Film Festival was an awesome festival put together by a group of exceptional high school students, highlighting other youth filmmakers. They totaled 10 films, 1 pre-recored Q&A Panel and an awards show for a total of 52 minutes.

We will be referring to these two throughout this article.

High Ticket Sales

We have surveyed festivals across the internet, which have gone virtual on their ticket sales, and also taken data from our festivals that have used BingeWave to compile the chart below.

The commonality for the festivals that did less than 50 tickets was poorer execution on their marketing campaign, and those that did over 1000 were very well-established festivals with deep pockets. What’s interesting about this chart is that the mini-film festivals actually got between 50 to 250 RSVPs.

In our examples, The Delco Film Festival and the Noe Valley Film Festival had between 80 and 250 RSVPs despite the brevity of their festivals and were able to outmatch some larger festivals.

50% Conversion Rate For Attendees

Experienced event organizers know that when you have an event, just because someone RSVPs doesn’t mean they will show up. As indicated from a festival enthusiast on Facebook that started an engaging thread:

We’ve found that mini-festivals have a conversion rate of people who actually show up at the virtual event of about 40% to 50%, which is impressive considering that normal events are around 30% in their conversion rates.

The Delco Film Festival conversion rate into attendees was 48.78%, and that of the Noe Valley Film Festival was 42%. Both of them were way ahead of the curve for people following through and attending.

90% Sustained Engagement

Another interesting fact we found is sustained engagement. At BingeWave, we focused on live events at festivals where everything happens in real-time. When we talk about sustained engagement, we mean people are there from the start of the festival to the end of the festival. See below on what engagement looks like.

For mini-festivals, we’ve found that 90% of participants stay there from start to finish of the festival, which is amazing! The reason why attendees stay so long is likely because of two reasons:

1. Ending In Sight: When people know the time on something, they can mentally set themselves for the end. It’s similar to UX/UI in development; if you are giving a user a lot forms to complete, tell them how close they are too finishing .
2. Community Engagement: The engagement in the above video makes it feel like a community everyone is a part of. People feel inclined to stay when they are actively a part of something and don’t want to miss out.

Referencing our example festivals, the Delco Film Festival sustained an 89% engagement rate throughout the festival while the Noe Valley Film Festival 96% engagement rate. Remember that the Delco Film Festival was almost 3 hours, and the Noe Valley was just under an hour.

The Benefit & Future For Mini Festivals For Organizers

The last points to discuss are the benefits of putting on a mini-festival that only lasts a few hours.

1. Easier To Manage: Festival management is hard, and even when it’s online, it is laborious. Curating the submissions, downloading/uploading films, metadata, scheduling, etc. A smaller amount of films is easier to manage.
2. Easier To Market: The smaller the festival, the more targeted the films and audience typically are. Having a narrow niche increases focus, which makes marketing more more targeted, improving execution and conversions.
3. More Engagement: Festivals with smaller audiences have high engagement rates. People enjoy smaller interactive experiences with each other, especially when their moderator ensures interactions are productive.

In this new era of virtual festivals, mini-festivals might become a sticking point for organizers that want to create more intimate experiences for their attendees.

A New Market For Short Films & Web Series

The success of these festivals also might usher in a new market for short films and web series. The film business has always questioned how to value shorter forms of content as they are often hard to find audiences for and monetize them. The way these festivals were set up and run might mean something very different for the shorts market in going forward. So, filmmakers must be prepared!

BingeWave is live streaming, community building and revenue generation platform for filmmakers. We serve everyone from web series, documentaries to features, and champion diverse narratives.

For information on hosting your own festival visit https://distribution.bingewave.com/l/festival or obtaining live/cinematic distribution, please visit: https://distribution.bingewave.com/