The busy life of being selected into Film Festivals

I wanted to write a little about what happens when you are selected into film festivals. You will receive your congratulations letter and then you have only days to reply with a whole bunch of information... It's like those days become crunch time. You need to fill in forms and send them back with production stills and trailers and CFC Worldwide Short Film festival wanted a Podcast as well. (By the way you can hear it at this link). Now if the submitting into film festivals is not time consuming and expensive enough, then wait until you get your "hey you've been selected" emails... Not only do you need more time you also need more money and you are being pressurised by the festival to be so organised that you need to act immediately and post them all the marketing materials! Well let me tell you, if you are the independent filmmaker that is so organised, congratulations and good on you. Sometimes things take time to brew and if you are doing everything yourself then these pressures from film festivals can come in handy to shoot into action and get your marketing materials happening. Leigh and i have just got our postcards and poster designed and printed. 500 Postcards and 20 A2 Posters that where respectively $200 each. Then 150 postcards get labeled with the session times of your screenings and send over to Canada for a small fee of $22.95. As i was standing in the postoffice i thought "well it's still cheaper then flying there and back and taking them myself". There is no way out "IT IS EXPENSIVE TO MARKET YOUR FILM INTERNATIONALLY". And for a self funded independent filmmaker this can be challenging! It took me all week last week to enter 7 film festivals and send emails and forms and tapes to selected film festivals. So even if you try and do things on the cheap there is still a lot of your time involved to get your film out there in the world and for the world to see your work in a professional context. After all that is why you made your film in the first place "for folks around the world to see it". Well yes there is the internet and putting your film on you tube, and for sure we will one day, but not quite yet! in two years time after the film had it's good festival run! It's all strategy... in the mean time we have received our first interest by a distribution company in Canada! Up and away we go, lets see what happens next?...