Paul Gray gave an interesting talk on how to get distribution for your film. Most of this focused on film festivals, so he had lots of good advice for how to go about tackling the festival circuit.
Film festivals are a platform for your films to be seen. They are a way to start a dialogue with the industry.
Using the Edinburgh Film Festival as an example, he showed us that not only does the festival obviously screen films, but it also actually runs talent labs as well. These talent labs actually take on the production of short films, nurturing you along through the process. They sound like a really interesting opportunity.
Paul describes film festivals as marketplaces for films to be bought by distributors. I'm not sure this is quite to the same degree for short films, but in the long term, it's definitely a route I'd like to go down when it eventually comes to making feature films. However, Paul sis say that Clermont-Ferrand is one of the biggest markets for short films. It's quite exciting that there actually is a market for this kind of content.
Paul then looked at the Cannes Short film Competition. It's actually free to submit, which is amazing considering it's one of the biggest festivals in the world. Because of this, it'll be fiercely contested, however it's work submitting to anyway. Who knows, maybe I'll submit The Hollow Men if it's good enough.
We looked at the what makes your film eligible to submit to Cannes. It has to be produced during 12 months preceding the festival and Cannes has to be your film's premier. The film's must have a maximum runtime of 15 minutes including credits as well. Paul warned us to never put film online for people to see before it's had a festival run, because this could very well mean that festivals will not accept it.
Paul says that you need to know your audience. Some festivals cost a lot money to submit to, so it's worth looking at previous films which have been shortlisted and comparing your film to them to see if they are stylistically similar and if your films are on a level playing field in terms of budget.
He recommended using Film Freeway to apply to festivals. You simply register your film, upload it and add all the information required. Once you’ve added your film, you can browse the festivals and decide which ones are most suitable for you. It's a really handy tool, because it means you don't need to search round hundreds of individual festivals.
He recommended looking at short films similar to your own and see what festivals they were hits at. They would be a good starting place for applying with your own film.
Comentarios