The Filmmaker’s Guide to Responding to Rejection

What’s the right way to take no for an answer? Jason Tostevin, our #BetterFesting correspondent, says how you react to rejection can either accelerate your successes or wreck your fest run.

Congratulations: you’ve been rejected!

I know. The score for a fest rejection is usually sad trombone. But, listen — and I really mean this — rejections are an opportunity you can turn to your benefit.

I come by this conclusion honestly: by getting rejected a bunch. I mean, we’ve played a lot, too. But with that came plenty of nos. And through them I’ve learned a bigger truth: our reaction to being passed over is actually a pretty important moment, one that can either make us happier and more successful, or can directly undermine our goals.

Plus there are a lot of those moments. Average film festival selection rates can be under 10%. So in the total course of our careers as filmmakers, rejections represent the majority of our game time for learning and getting better, exceeding audience screenings by twenty to one.

So we better get good at it. Specifically, we need to manage our reaction and our response. Here are some tried-and-proven ways to get better at hearing “no.”

FIRST, TAKE A BREATH

Let’s get in the mindset. You’ve made something. It was hard — maybe the hardest thing you’ve ever done. It was important to you. You feel a great deal of vulnerability about it, and about what people might think. In fact, you’ve packed this thing with more emotional importance than can really fit into it. Lots of stuff about your ego, your identity and your future.

Whether it’s accepted feels in a very real way like you being accepted.

And then someone says, “No thanks. Not interested.” And emotions flare.

STOP. This is the moment! Right now, you will either do real damage, or help yourself toward your goals. Here are the three steps to making sure you take a constructive approach.

1. Step Away. Step one is step back. Physically. Close your laptop. Put your phone back in your pocket. Regain perspective and composure. A rejection is not the most important thing in your life, no matter the festival.
2. Go Back to Purpose. Next, remind yourself of the big picture. When I talk about #BetterFesting, I emphasize knowing your goal. For me, the three whys have helped: why filmmaking, why this film, and why festivals. Knowing the answer to those three questions clarifies where you want to go and puts the challenges in a broader context. When you’re at a crossroads (like a rejection), remind yourself why you are doing this, and what this one festival means to that bigger plan.
3. Take Long-Term Action. Now that you’ve regrounded yourself in what it is you’re trying to accomplish, you can take action that will help you accomplish it, instead of responding to the feeling of being hurt — and hurting your goal in the process.

WHATEVER YOU DO — DON’T DO THIS

What happens when you don’t step back before pulling the trigger on a response? There’s a good chance you end up shooting off one of these five career-killing beauts. These are the ones that can blow a hole in your fest run. And worse, though you think they’ll make you feel better, they’ll make actually you more bitter. (These are real categories of responses we have received at Nightmares Film Festival, and that have been shared with me by dozens of other festival directors.)

1. Don’t you know who I am? This is the email that incredulously trots out a film’s other selections and awards, in an effort to litigate the decision and prove how bone-headed the festival is. The thinking is, if a film played X, it must assuredly be good enough for this fest. Which manages to both miss the way festivals work entirely and be insulting! Bravo!
2. I demand to speak to a supervisor! This person thinks they’re at the Target customer service counter, and if they can just go over your head, they’ll be able to get the decision overturned. Which has never happened. In history. They want to talk to the panel, the festival director — heck, even the sponsors, maybe … despite it being likely that’s all the same person, and they’re already talking with them.
3. Show your work. This math teacher hiding in a filmmaker or screenwriter’s body insists that you prove they “lost” with numbers. They want the judging scorecard and the judges’ comments for their film as well as for all the ones that got selected, to prove through algebra that the other projects deserved to get in over theirs. None of this would ever convince this person, of course. But they want it anyway.
4. Sour grapes. This person isn’t upset they didn’t get in, because they really didn’t want to play your dumb festival anyway — and it’s important that you know that. Besides, they just got into another festival/won an award/decided to publish it online anyway, which is way better than being in your program. As to why they submitted to such a crummy fest in the first place? That’s where the email goes strangely silent.
5. Rage. The catchall for name-calling, incoherent keyboard-mashing, mom insults and threats of violence. Yeah, these all happen.

MOVE FORWARD THE RIGHT WAY

OK: you’re in the right headspace to make productive decisions. You’re not going to tell someone off. You’re aiming for long-term success. Remember: festivals are creating an experience for the audience, and part of that experience includes the filmmakers themselves. No one wants a great film to wow people, only to have the self-centered jerk attached to it ruin the moment. Your goal is to show up as a #BetterFester — someone a festival would love to have around.

With that in mind, here are the only four options I recommend, in order of investment by you:

1. Do nothing. This is your only risk-free option: don’t write back. Don’t talk to other people about how dumb a decision it was by the fest. Don’t vague post. Just move on … to the next step in your fest plan, or just to your next step in life. Notification that you didn’t get in does not require a response. Also, remember that on notification day, the fest is already engaged in a massive undertaking of sending, checking deliveries and responding to inquiries. This is probably the worst time to write them.
2. Be general and kind. This is the option if you’ve had previous interaction with the fest team, and looks like, “Thanks for letting me know. Have a terrific fest!” That’s it. It’s not likely to move mountains, but may make you feel better in the moment, and is low-risk.
3. Be specific and deferential. With this response, you demonstrate that your respect for the festival is bigger than your ego. Again, be brief, but here, you’ll be more emotionally involved: “I know the quality of the program and how hard it is to get make the final schedule. Thank you so much for considering us. I’ll submit our next project!” If genuine, this has a chance to be remembered later, when you submit again.
4. Attend the fest anyway. It may shock you to learn: you don’t have to have a project in a fest to attend! If you researched the festival, chose it as part of your plan and believe it was valuable enough to submit, chances are you’ll conclude it’s valuable enough to attend. And this is far and away the best option for your fest goals and your own happiness. You’ll see films that inspire you, meet other filmmakers who’ll support you, see the program you’re trying to get into up-close … and you better believe that festival director will remember you next year.

Filmmaking and screenwriting is personal. But submissions and rejections aren’t. As an overall approach, assume your project was number 34 in a 33-slot program, and behave like one of the spots may open up. Because that really happens, too — and with the right reaction, you may find yourself in the lineup yet.

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Jason Tostevin is “a kind of indie prophet” according to Cinema Runner, which in 2017 named him independent horror’s most influential short-film maker. In addition to his hall of fame career as a genre director, he’s also the co-founder and programmer of one of FilmFreeway’s top-ranked genre festivals, Nightmares Film Festival — called “the Cannes of horror,” by iHorror. Find him @jasontostevin.