By Chance Shirley
January 13, 2005
Part Nineteen: Festival Dance
September 23, 2004. The day has finally arrived. In a few hours, the world -- well, whoever shows up at historic Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, Alabama -- will witness the first-ever public screening of HIDE AND CREEP. And I'm feeling pretty good about it.
HIDE AND CREEP is kicking off Birmingham's sixth annual Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. Sidewalk weekend is almost treated like a holiday by many area filmmakers and film fans. As such, co-director Chuck Hartsell and I have taken the day off from the nine-to-five jobs. HIDE AND CREEP crewmembers Robb Rugan and Jim Roberson aren't working today either, and they've invited several folks over to their office building for a rooftop cookout.
I'm about halfway through a burger and a beer when my cell phone rings. It's Catherine, who works at Sidewalk. She doesn't want to alarm me, but there's something wrong with the tape.
Something wrong with the tape?!
Robb and Jim spent a lot of time trying to get HIDE AND CREEP off their computer and onto a DigiBeta videotape. It wasn't easy, due to several video format issues that I don't completely understand. The movie's scheduled to start in like four hours, and the tape isn't working? So, we all drive over to Sloss to see what the problem is.
We shortly find out the problem with the tape is very minor. One frame (one 30th of a second) of video is garbled early in the movie -- it's hard to notice if you aren't looking for it. Everything else is fine. And there's still time to drop by the cookout for another beer or two. Things are looking up.
Submitting
As I've mentioned in earlier columns, the Sidewalk premiere of HIDE AND CREEP couldn't have gone much better. It played to a standing-room-only crowd (estimates vary, but I'd guess 700 people) and went over well.
After such a great premiere, I was very hopeful we'd get into Sundance or Slamdance, the two big Park City festivals that kick off each new year, but that didn't happen. I also hoped to discover a "magic bullet" at some point, a sure-fire way to get a movie into festivals, but that hasn't happened yet, either.
One frustrating thing about festivals is that their submission deadlines are usually much earlier than the actual fest. And the lineup for a particular fest is usually announced as late as possible. Which means that you have to wait a few months after submitting to find out how your movie fared.
We submitted HIDE AND CREEP to the two 'Dances right around the time HIDE AND CREEP premiered and only recently found out that both fests turned us down.
After tweaking the picture a bit more, we've submitted to a few more festivals, including South by Southwest, the Nashville Film Festival and the Arlene's Grocery Picture Show. We also got an invite to submit to Dead by Dawn, a horror-themed festival in Scotland. It'll probably be February before we hear from any of this second wave of fests.
Ingredients
It would be great if all the film festivals of the world wanted the same thing. Well, they all want movies. But do they want them on DVD or VHS? I'd rather send a DVD, but some specifically ask for VHS.
Most festivals want a written synopsis of your movie. Some want three synopses: one in 25 words or less, one in 100 words or less and one in 250 words or less. A few ask for a "Director's Statement." Which, as my movie has two directors, I'm vague on. Do we have to co-write a statement, or can we include two separate statements about the same movie? Most festivals want promotional photos, but there's always the issue of whether a particular fest prefers prints or digital files.
Regardless of the specifics, I have a basic promotional package I put together for fests and also use when submitting to a distributor or the press. I start with a plain black two-pocket folder, carefully gluing a HIDE AND CREEP postcard to the front. This is an alternative to having some custom-made HIDE AND CREEP folders printed up, which would look super-classy but cost a ton. In the folder goes the press kit I mentioned in Part Seventeen, which contains cast and crew bio information, along with a collection of press clippings about HIDE AND CREEP. The press clippings are just printed on regular 8.5" x 11" paper, punched on the side, and bound with two brass fasteners. I also put the DVD and case in the folder -- it's a tight fit, but it keeps all the materials together.
I also put a cover letter in the folder. I've looked all over for a good example of cover letters for film festivals but have yet to find one. So I just try to keep it simple -- like this cover letter I sent to Sundance, for example.
After adding any items specially requested by the particular festival, I pack it all up in a 10.5" x 15" padded envelope, and it's off to the post office from there.
Labels
I picked up some Avery 2" x 4" mailing labels, and they've made shipping a lot easier. Instead of having to hand-write addresses on everything, I just copy and paste then print address labels from my computer. I believe templates are available for popular word processor programs (like Microsoft Word), but Avery has a cool web site that lets you set up labels online and generate an Adobe PDF file. After which you simply open the PDF and print it.
Very handy, and much better than worrying if the mailman will be able to read my often-sloppy handwriting.
Numbers
Robb and Jim, who I mentioned earlier, were in post-production on ALICE'S MISADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND at the same time we were working on HIDE AND CREEP. When they were figuring out the budget for ALICE, they set some money aside for promotional costs. I wasn't so smart.
Putting those packages together for film festivals can get expensive. I figure the basic package I described, the folder with the press clippings, press booklet, DVD and DVD case, is running around 15 dollars. The press booklet alone, all 16 pages of it, costs around eight dollars to get printed at Kinko's. On top of that, there are shipping costs. And don't forget the film festival entry fees, which vary but seem to average around 30 bucks per festival.
I'm not complaining -- I know the people who work at festivals have to eat, as do the folks who work at Kinko's. I just wish I had realized earlier that I would end up spending hundreds of dollars on HIDE AND CREEP after the movie was "done."
Boxless
Being behind the times, as I sometimes am, I just discovered Withoutabox, a very useful online tool for submitting to film festivals.
You can register as a user at Withoutabox for free. After that, you can register your film(s) there, and much of the information that festivals look for (cast and crew list, synopsis, technical specs, etc.) gets stored on the Withoutabox database.
This system, in theory, saves you time because you don't have to fill out a new entry form everytime you enter a festival. It also cuts down on the physical paperwork for the festivals. Instead of going through hard copies of everything, they have access to film entry information through their private accounts with Withoutabox.
The Withoutabox site also contains a very comprehensive list of film festivals from all over the world. Withoutabox will even e-mail you to let you know which festivals' submission deadlines are coming up soon. And if you want to pay for one of the site's premium memberships, you can get discounts and special extended entry deadlines from some festivals.
