Making the Most of Your Film Festival Experience Part One: Preparation
by Basil Tsiokos on January 6, 2011 in Festival Strategy
Dear Filmmakers:
Previous posts have covered submitting to film festivals, offering advice on what (not) to do as you go through the process of navigating submission forms, promotional materials, and handling rejection or acceptance. This post (and the next) moves beyond the submission phase to focus on the next step – premiering your film. Your film has been accepted into a festival – now what? What can you do – what should you do – to maximize the festival experience for your film and for yourself as a filmmaker beyond this specific film? This post will focus on preparation – before you arrive at the festival – while the next one will cover your time there.
Some festivals offer a larger platform for press/media and industry exposure than others – premiering your film at Sundance, Toronto, or Berlin will present specific opportunities and challenges vs. premiering it at a smaller local or regional event. Similarly, the kind of film you have – narrative feature vs. documentary feature vs. experimental short – will likely have some impact on the way you experience your premiere. Keeping these conditions in mind, some of the advice in this post will apply more or less for your project and you at your specific festival, but the general sentiments should still be useful.
As the clock ticks down to your festival premiere, get organized. If your film is not 100% finished, your team might be hustling to finish the post work. Don’t forget that it’s not just about delivering that exhibition tape or print – a lot of other key things need to be ready as well, and someone should be working on them. This includes making sure you have a PR/promotion strategy in place – or at least the beginnings of one. If you are premiering at a larger festival and you feel that you’ll need professional assistance to stand out, or to simply be able to handle the volume of interest you’re likely to generate, consider hiring a publicist. There are many PR professionals specializing in film, with years of experience representing films in festival contexts. You should check with the festival’s press office for recommendations of individuals or firms that they’ve worked with in the past, and also ask around for suggestions from filmmakers who’ve worked with publicists before about their experiences.
At the same time, be realistic about your need for a publicist – it may not make a lot of financial sense to engage one if the festival doesn’t tend to attract much press, or if the press is local and manageable. Make sure to consult with the festival about what they themselves offer in terms of PR assistance – some festivals have a dedicated staff who can facilitate press requests for you. It can be a trade-off though – they might handle all the films in your section, so they might not be able to play favorites and push one film over another one – but in some cases they can get the same amount of press coverage for your film that a hired publicist can, without costing you thousands.
If the festival doesn’t offer much in terms of press assistance, you (or better yet, someone on your team) might be able to handle the PR yourself. If that’s the case – and even if you use an outside publicist or the festival’s press team – you need to have your presskit, stills, website, trailer, and clips ready. While a publicist can revise elements like your synopsis or select the best images to use, you need to provide the raw material with which to work. If you’ve never put a presskit together before, seek out examples from other filmmakers, ask for samples from your publicist, or see what you can find online. Make the electronic version (EPK) available on your website and check with the festival if it makes sense to have physical copies available at their press office or at your screenings – often just having an EPK available is the more practical (and environmental) course to take.
On a related note, make sure you have a website up and running by your festival’s premiere (and ideally well in advance) – beyond having your EPK available on your site, include other background information about the film and your team; contact information so that potential buyers, other festivals, and interested audience members can get in touch; and other ways for people to keep invested in the film – a trailer, potentially clips or behind the scenes teasers, a mailing list sign-up, and social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. If you haven’t already been using social media to build an audience for your project during its production (or pre-production!), it’s a good idea to get that going as soon as possible – this can help get people excited before the premiere and keep them engaged and informed about when they’ll have a chance to see the film at other events or through a theatrical or ancillary release.
Another important decision you will have to make is whether you will seek a sales rep for your film or not. Generally, if you’re premiering your film in a festival that doesn’t attract much industry attention, you probably won’t need one – at least not on the ground at the festival. You may still want to have a rep who shops the film around, using his/her relationships to get different buyers to consider the film, but this would likely be done via screener in this case. If you are premiering your film at an industry friendly place, a sales agent’s presence can be very much a good idea, and s/he can navigate potential deals much more easily than you probably can, unless you have had experience selling a film before. As with publicists, ask around for recommendations. Find out what projects a potential sales agent has repped in the past. Make sure s/he is the right fit for your specific project. Some filmmakers swear by using sales agents, while others handle this area themselves. There’s no definitive answer, so it’s important to weigh your options and get opinions from people you trust.
Consider the question of DVD screeners and whether you want to make them available to press or industry before your film premieres at the festival. In some cases, it may make sense to send these out in advance – at smaller or niche festivals, local press, for example, may offer highlights from the festival as recommendations for their readers in the form of capsule reviews, and this can help get people into seats. Of course, you run the risk that press may not like the film, but you can try to mitigate that possibility by insisting that no full reviews are run. At higher profile events, you may likely want to maximize the impact of your first screening by not allowing screeners to go out, essentially forcing interested parties (buyers, programmers, press) to have to be there. After that first screening, you then might make screeners available upon request through the festival’s press office or screening library – this can facilitate access to the film, but strongly weigh whether you are ok with press or buyers experiencing your film in a solitary DVD screening vs. a public audience projection.
In the next post, we’ll move over from the lead-up to the main event – your time at the festival, and what you should be doing to have a more fulfilling experience personally and professionally.