Film Festival Secrets

I would say that only three of the ten "insights" are ideas that haven't been flogged to death in the indie film press over the last couple of years, but there are a couple of interesting quotes in there if you can wade through the redundant muck...

A dramatic mass exodus is underway at the Denver Film Society, organizer of the three decade old Denver International Film Festival...

Last Day Dream [HD] from Chris Milk on Vimeo.Produced for the 42 Second Dream Film Festival.

Getting your film "out there" –whether that means out to the festival circuit or to a distributor or directly to your audience –is a sales job. A crucial part of any sales job is to figure out exactly what it is you're selling and thereby determining who might want to buy it...

Lucas Martell's podcast is a companion to the launch of his short animated film, Pigeon Impossible. Each episode is entertaining in its own way (check out episode 2, "Writing is Rewriting") and most of them focus on the animation process, but episode 12 speaks directly to the festival circuit...

From the blog of Felicia Day. Apart from being adorable and talented, Felicia is pretty smart. She's been around the block a few times with the whole "original web series" thing which, at the end of the day, is the same as independent filmmaking...

From Toronto After Dark's press release.A quick announcement for any horror, sci-fi, action, animation or cult filmmakers out there. This is the final week to submit your short or feature film to the 2009 Toronto After Dark Film Festival...

In a smart move for the filmmakers and possibly for Samsung as well, Variety reports that documentary film Rock Prophecies has received funding from the electronics firm in return for some exposure to the audiences who show up. The film features rock photographer Robert M...

Lately I've had the privilege of sitting on a couple of panels with Heidi van Lier, filmmaker and author of The Indie Film Rule Book. Heidi's advice is no-nonsense, funny, and wastes no time. If you're not reading her blog at the Film Independent web site, you should be...

I'm headed to Little Rock on Thursday and will be sitting in on a panel at the Little Rock Film Festival on Saturday...

Hot Docs uploads a series of videos about its programming to YouTube. Here's one of my faves, starring Ben Steinbauer of Winnebago Man.(Via Agnes Varnum.)

Trevor Groth is taking over the reins as Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival effective immediately...

Brian Chirls was kind enough to record our panel at the Independent Film Festival of Boston entitled Followers: How Filmmakers are Building Their Audiences Online in the 21st Century...

A coincidence, I'm sure, but an amusing one:The 1983 Atlanta Film Festival poster.The 2009 Independent Film Festival Boston art.Is there a common image source for both...

I got this excellent email "out of office" autoresponder from a festival contact recently:Absence Alert! I'm out of the office and returning Monday, April 13. I'll be warm and dry playing outside dressed in my Patagonia Cold Track jacket, Polartec fleece, OR hat and gloves and New Balance Shoes...

MovieMaker has released their annual list again, and the results are... interesting. I'm very pleased to see my old home, the Austin Film Festival, listed –arguably the most prominent festival on the list. No time to comment more now as I'm packing for IFF Boston (see you there...

Festival directors reading this can steal the idea outright, but filmmakers may need a little more creativity to make it work for them...

Seven excellent minutes from filmmaker Zak Forsman on why you want to show up at festivals and what you should work to get out of them. This video starts a "virtual panel session" from filmmakers in the Workbook Project.

Normally it's difficult to get me to shut up about myself, but occasionally I get busy enough that I forget to do even that. As a result you may have missed your golden opportunity to see me speak at the Georgia Big Picture Conference this morning. Never fear...

While doing some research I came across this entry on the Environmental Defense Fund blog:At the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the jury of film experts chose Forty Shades of Blue as the best dramatic film. The Audience Award went to Hustle & Flow...

IFP (formerly known as the Independent Feature Project) is on the hunt for a new Community Manager, someone with a strong background in marketing and web savvy.Full-time position available immediately for high energy, organized individual with managerial, marketing and web experience...

indieWIRE posted this article about the Cinereach awards, about which I hadn't heard before...

indieWIRE announced last week that it will be maintaining a guide to film festivals on its site. Presumably this will be a more formal effort to present information on particular festivals than its usual practice of simply covering festivals as they occur...

Today's sponsor for the blog is Shriekfest, the Los Angeles Horror/Sci-Fi Film Festival.Shriekfest is an international festival and screenplay competition dedicated to getting horror/thriller/sci-fi/fantasy filmmakers and screenwriters the recognition they deserve...

A little something for the festival staffers out there; indie film consultant Mark Wynns pointed me towards this article on one of the trickier aspects of running a film festival –maintaining a board of directors...

This is a great example of what I call "next-level" humor in short films. So many comedies make jokes that only play on the obvious and go in the expected directions...

Scott Kirsner, creator of the Cinematech blog, answers questions about the (much-speculated-upon) forthcoming revolution in DIY film distribution...

With each week's report on the world economy looking grimmer than the last, there are a lot of reasons to be depressed...

Boston.com (the online arm of the Boston Globe) presents us with the tale of two film festivals who just couldn't get along...

A clever bit of marketing from the Atlanta Film Festival -- interviews with indie film insiders (including yours truly) on the streets of Austin during SXSW, singing the praises of both Atlanta and Atlanta Film Fest. Fest director Gabe Wardell and his peeps shot the video using tiny Flip cameras...

The Dirty Garage - watch more funny videosFor those of you on the outside of this particular in-joke, here's the Wikipedia entry on the mumblecore "movement."

The LA Times examines the recent shakeup in staff at several major film festivals and tries to put it all in context...