Tips to Know Before Submitting To Film Festivals

You’ve finished your film and you’re excited to start submitting to film festivals, but slow down there speed racer because there’s some important steps you should do first. So, let’s go over some tips to know before submitting to film festivals.

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First up, before submitting to any film festival ask trusted friends, family, or peers to watch your film and give you feedback. While receiving feedback might not always be fun, it’s a key part of the filmmaker process. Getting some fresh perspective from people who have not been involved in the film will help you fix issues before submitting to film festivals.

Also while you’re still potentially in the editing room consider the 5 and dime festival rule. You see, most festival programmers will only watch the first 5 minutes and last 10 minutes of feature films as well as the first and last 2 minutes of short films. This is because they have so many films to go through. So make sure the beginning and end of your film is the best it can possibly be.

And before we move out of the editing room, make sure you have a stellar sound mix. Your film might sound great on your computer’s built-in speakers, but in an actual theater every bad scrap of sound will be exposed.

One more final step before we exit the editing room, make sure you cut a trailer for your film. Trailers are your film’s first impression to festival directors, so make sure it’s eye-catching and attention grabbing. Plus, having a trailer helps promote your film and oftentimes film festivals will use it on their website or in their social media posts.

And pro tip, make a trailer even for short films. Trailers are important because they are a key piece of marketing both for you and film festivals. Even if your film is a micro short, make at least a short teaser trailer that film festival attendees can see and get excited about.

Ok, you’re probably thinking you’re ready to submit, but hold your horses there partner, because first you have to make an Electronic Press Kit. An Electronic Press Kit, or EPK for short is a pamphlet or PDF that has all the information about your film. It should include your film’s poster, a synopsis and logline for your film, key cast and crew bios, contact details, a full list of credits, technical specs, and finally promotional stills from the film. This is also an opportunity to be eye catching and match the overall vibe of your film, so make sure the graphic design is good.

Ok your film is finished, your EPK looks fabulous, and you’ve got a sizzling trailer. You’re finally ready to submit to film festivals. But hold the phone there, because first you’ve gotta make a FilmFreeway account.

FilmFreeway.com has become the main way to submit to film festivals ever since without a box out went out of business in 2019. RIP little buddy! Once you’ve set up a FilmFreeway account, make sure you make a new project for your film. This will be the main source of information for festivals you submit too, so you want to fill out as much information as you can.

And pro tip, make sure all your film’s spec, like it’s total run time, are accurate as film festivals will depend on this information when making a decision. Trust me, if your film ends up actually being even a few minutes longer, they are not going to be happy about it.

And speaking of total run time, as an artist you might not like to hear this but there’s actually optimal programmable run times. As a storyteller myself I totally get that you might want to make your film whatever length best fits the story, but this can really hurt you when submitting to film festivals.

Next, keep your ending credits as short as possible. If you need to, create a Film Festival only version of your credits that are short and sweet. Then use the longer version for the final release of your film. And remember, only credit yourself for the main roles you fulfilled. After all, no one cares if you did the crafty.

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