Film Festivals are pointless.
Don’t believe the hype and save your money.
Sundance is on. People are selling their genius works of art for many millions of dollars. Hoorah. For the rest of us, there’s the realities of film festival submissions. Shelling out $20 here and $45 there, in the hopes of getting into maybe 5% of the festivals we’ve applied to.
A few years ago, I produced Drained, a short film based on my own short story. We knew we had a fun little film at the end of it, and began the festival submission process. On a film with about a $2000 budget, we were looking at spending more than 10% of that on submission fees with no promise of getting into any festival at all. Caley, the director, joked that we should start a festival and get rich off of the submission fees. After months of waiting to hear back from the festivals that we did apply to, we found ourselves a few hundred dollars poorer and with our film still sitting unseen on my hard drive. Programmers didn’t want to give this 5 minute film a chance. So we put it on Youtube.
Now, 5 years later, it’s hit 200,000 views with not one cent paid for promotion. That’s far more viewers than the average short film could hope to get through festivals. We seem to have lucked out on a combination of a lead actor with a loyal following and the right subject matter and keywords to find an audience. Vampires and BDSM are an eternal hit.
The results of that experience made me doubt the value of film festivals. For the modern filmmaker, there are so many options other than film festivals. Youtube, Vimeo, Vessel; all provide a broader audience than you could ever hope to get at any festival. There’s also the issue of cost. To submit to any of the thousands of film festivals listed on FilmFreeway or Withoutabox, you are likely to pay a submission fee of $10 to $90, just to have a programmer or their staff view your film. And unless you know the tastes of the programmers, you’re at a very high risk that you’re throwing that money away. Fewer than 2% of films get accepted into Sundance. You will have a better chance at a smaller festival, but there are thousands out there, most attracting small audiences. The chances of anyone seeing your film and it leading to new opportunities is limited.
Living in Toronto, September becomes dominated by TIFF whether I attend it or not. In 2014, there were a few programming decisions that seemed to me an insult to all the independent filmmakers vying for their break into the big leagues. The crime drama The Drop made it into the festival just days before it would open across North America. Adam Sandler’s critically panned The Cobbler took up precious screen space. The big festivals would rather flatter the ego of a celebrity than give an upcoming artist their big break.
Not every short film you put up on Youtube or Vimeo is going to get as many views as Drained did. I’ve had other films that I’m prouder of get 100 views. Still, those 100 views are probably more eyeballs than you’d get at a small fim festival. So for the price (nothing!), you are guaranteeing that your film is out in the world, and you’ll be able to see how much of an audience you have through analytics.
If you are going to a film festival of any size, do it for the networking opportunities. You might meet a future collaborator at a bar after a screening, or finding your leading actor in someone else’s film. That is what film festivals are good for.
For everything else, there’s the internet.
