Find Your Audience Part II: 5 Keys to Playing Festivals
By Jon Fitzgerald, co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival
Okay, you have your branding in motion and are ready to dive into your film festival strategy. It’s important to start with the end in mind. What are you looking to achieve with your festival run? How will the circuit support your goals for the film, and your personal goals as a filmmaker?
Start with the Goal
Many filmmakers are clearly looking to festivals to secure a distribution deal. Others will be satisfied with positive feedback from enthusiastic audiences. Good press and awards can really help with distribution and establish credibility with future audiences. Festivals also provide opportunities to travel the world, explore other cultures, and to forge relations with talent for future collaborations. While some filmmakers can afford to play the festival circuit for a year or more, others simply want the opportunity to play a targeted selection of credible fests, gauge their audience, and move on. If you don’t score a sale to A24 or Netflix, are you prepared to develop a time consuming alternative distribution plan, or would you be fine to upload to Amazon and a few other streaming platforms and move onto your next project? Whatever your goals are, develop a strategy before you start the submission process, and remember the endgame. You want to find your audience, so create a plan that will help you check the boxes that support this idea along the way
Develop a Clear Strategy
With thousands of film festivals to consider, it’s important to let your goals guide your strategy. We all know about the industry driven fests, where many deals are made (Sundance, Telluride, Toronto). There are many others (Seattle, Tribeca, AFI) that also have some industry presence and have strong credibility with the distribution community. It’s important to consider top community fests, with strong audience support, especially regions that make sense for your movie. Knowing there are entry fees, do a budget and create a spreadsheet to track your submission status. And don’t wait for the final deadlines. Regardless of what anyone says, many festivals program along the way, so the bulk of entries coming in at the end are competing for less slots. AND it cost you more to submit late.
Public Relations
Once you’ve been invited to a festival, do the research into the PR options there. Consider the local newspapers, radio stations, community websites and school systems. You will want to create postcards and use the materials from your branding package to help seed the audience there. Oftentimes, festivals will provide incoming filmmakers with this information, since they usually welcome hungry filmmakers who are eager to drive cheeks to seats. Beyond the actual festival screenings, keep in mind, this PR can help you create an identity and awareness that will help when your film is released, whether in theaters or online. Getting to know the local media during your fest participation will help when you’re ready to officially release the film. Add this to your spreadsheet and track accordingly. In fact, some local critics will not run reviews until the film is publicly released, so you can circle back when the time is right.
Maximize Screenings
Be ready to get the most out of your festival screenings. Be sure you’ve invited all the filmmakers you’ve met at the fest, as well as the local folks you’ve met at bars and restaurants. Think about your audience. If it’s a movie about yoga, do outreach to local yoga studios. Find out who is on the jury and what industry reps are there. Make sure your screening times are on their radar. Have your materials ready. Whether you have merchandise to hand out or a call to action during your Q&A, you have to have a plan to generate buzz. Even if some local folks can’t see the film, for whatever reason, you want them to remember your title. Some festivals will allow you to have sign up sheets, to collect email addresses, as folks are lining up outside, or waiting for the movie to begin. Either way, be sure to have the basics ready to share in your Q&A. You will want to mention your social media channels, and your website url. If you are doing any giveaways or contests, use this opportunity to promote. And remind audiences to vote for your movie, if there are Audience Awards. Whether you’re a fan of the awards thing or not, they do matter when it comes to future sales. Winning Audience awards especially, since that suggests to distributors that people like your movie.
Follow Through
Keep in mind that you will be meeting a lot of people throughout your festival journey. Filmmakers, festival staffers, media, industry reps, and members of the community. At the very least, you should be entering their emails into a database. Use Aweber, Mailchimp or other marketing systems to store emails and do Newsletters, while expanding your social media presence. Follow up with the buyers and distributors you were targeting with your initial strategy. Constantly revisit your goals. After playing a number of festivals, perhaps even winning awards, you can circle back to them. If you have a Producer’s Rep, they can help with this, but you should certainly update your Press Kit and website, and continue to expand your database. When your film is finally ready to be released into the world, you will have an audience to target.
Keep these keys in mind as you develop and execute your festival strategy. You worked so hard to make your movie. You certainly want to give it the best chance to find an audience. We’ll share more tips to consider in the final Distribution phase of your journey, in Find Your Audience Part III. Stay tuned.
The co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival, Fitzgerald has directed a number of festivals (AFI, Santa Barbara, Naples and more). He has consulted to many other festivals, while providing festival strategies to indie filmmakers and will continue with Film Festival Mastery. A published author (Filmmaking for Change: Make Films that Transform the World), Fitzgerald recently launched iGEMS.tv as an internet guide for audiences to discover quality movies and series.
