Get Your Film ACCEPTED Into Film Festivals!

everyone I'm Zack Dalton I'm a filmmaker in an honor of my short film Mayfield getting accepted into over 20 film festivals getting 13 awards and being in the festival circuit for a year it is finally available online to watch now for free I'm going to share some my tips on how you can get your film accepted into a Film Festival before we get started just remember that getting accepted into festivals can be really cool and open some doors but film festival judges aren't the ultimate authority on whether or not you have a quality film there are a ton of different reasons on why your film might not be getting accepted into film festivals so the first tip that I have is have something to say fill vessels aren't really a place for mindless entertainment or a showcase of production values they're really looking for filmmakers that have a unique perspective on something so find your voice and have something important to say with it it doesn't matter if it's important to everyone else or not it just has to be important to you and that will come through in your film keep it short now if you're submitting a short film in to film festivals it obviously needs to be short and I know I'm a huge hypocrite in saying this because my film was 20 minutes long everyone kept telling me that I had to cut my film shorter so it would get accepted into festivals and my attitude about the whole thing was no my film was going to be as long as it needs to be but as short as possible the story that I wrote in the story I chose to tell was a much longer story so if you're going to do a short film and you're in the writing stages right now make sure you write something really dense and really short so you don't run into the issue that I have it was 26 minutes long before I cut six minutes out of it so if a festival programs your 20 minute short film they're missing potentially for five minutes short films from four other filmmakers who could be out there promoting their festival or two ten minute short films from two different filmmakers that can be out there promoting their festival instead of just one filmmaker with a 20 minute short film just remember don't cut your film short and important things out of your film making it incomplete just because you think it has a better chance of getting into festivals enter a lot of festivals so when I was submitting Mayfield in to festivals I was trying to get into as many festivals as possible I entered over 50 festivals with an acceptance rate of about 50% I know everyone wants to get into the really big film festivals especially Sundance well guess what you're probably not going to get into Sundance Film Festival that doesn't mean that your short film is bad or your film is bad they get so many submissions it's impossible to program all of the good ones you don't know if your film wasn't accepted because it was too similar to something else if there wasn't enough time for it or if it just doesn't fit the theme or what they're going for that particular year make sure you enter festivals of all sizes we all want to enter the big ones we all want to get into Sundance flame dance South by Southwest - but enter all the mid range and lower festivals you can enter and especially the ones that you can probably make it to because the festivals that you show up to you're going to get the most out of and you're going to connect with the most people and meet the most people and really make that festival experience worth it and no matter how small the festival you get in is be proud that you got into that festival because not everybody is accepted into every Film Festival enter early try to hit as many early bird deadlines as you can for a couple reasons the big reason is early bird deadlines are cheaper I'm going to only inter festivals where I can get the early bird deadline so I can enter more festivals this may or may not be true depending on the festival but I also think you have a better chance of getting accepted if you enter the early bird deadline because it's much easier to add your film to a blank schedule than to fit it into a schedule that's already full enter the right festival so many people get bummed out when they're not accepted into film festivals but a lot of the time they don't realize that their film is not a good fit for that festival it doesn't mean it's a bad film make sure you look at what that festival has programmed in the past and see if your film would be a good fit for that festival based on what you know they already like no matter what your film is about there's probably a festival out there specifically for you share something interesting about your film if you can get a Film Festival judge excited to watch your film or very curious about your film there's probably a better chance that they're going to like it and program it so you made your film with zero budget with just some of your friends will guess what so did everyone else that's not interesting enough to get a judges attention no one has any money when they're making these short films with Mayfield I told the festival judges that we built two of our sets inside of our lead actors garage so if there is something interesting that you can share about your film with the festival judges do it and try to get them engaged and connected to the film before they even start watching it and the last tip that I have for submitting into film festivals is use film Freeway now I know most people are familiar with without a box because 10 years ago it was the only thing that you could use to submit your film online to film festivals well flash-forward to today they still haven't updated their website in 10 years it's really hard to use it's really hard to navigate and you really don't know where anything is film freeway is incredible it made this mission process so much easier and I think I ended up submitting to more festivals just because of how easy it was to add festivals to my cart and check out if you haven't checked out film freeway please do it's incredible it's a lifesaver and it makes the process so much more enjoyable it's just by far the easiest and best way to submit to film festivals thank you guys so much those are some of my tips on how you can get your film accepted into a film festival if you have some of your own tips I would love for you to leave a comment and just let me know what you think and maybe there's some things that I don't know and I can learn from you that would be incredible make sure you like this video and subscribe to my channel I'm Zack dalton make sure you check back next time for some more filmmaking tips

Channel: Zach Daulton

Views: 92,509

Keywords: film festival, accepted, film, festival, filmmaker, zach daulton, zach, daulton, mayfield, short film, mayfield short film, indie filmmaking, indie, sundance, how to, filmmaking tips, canon c100 mkii, red epic, film riot, petermckinnon

Id: FEzj11oHsUI

Length: 6min 24sec (384 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2017