It's a new year and that means its time for another round of film festivals. According to the New York Times, we are in "January, the month of Sundance" and every newspaper and film
site is doing their spin on this behemoth film festival. The San Francisco Chronicle says Sundance "Puts Risk-Takers at Forefront" while Indiewire has devoted all of its headline content to "Park City.”A more instructional article for filmmakers was recently published in the New York Times, an article featuring Withoutabox.com, a six year old company that connects filmmakers to festivals around the globe. The thrust of the article, besides detailing how this online company works, was that there are now more filmmakers vying for slots in film festivals then ever before, partially because of companies like Withoutabox. To meet this demand, there are more and more film festivals popping up around the country.
What's a filmmaker to do with all these festivals and with the increase in competition?
The answer is Festival Strategy, as recommended by Slamdance, the alternative to Sundance. This smaller alternative festival says “it is important to have a festival strategy. It's better to premiere your film at a more high profile festival, and then play the smaller fests later in the year.”Check out this great guide to Festival Strategy from Disc Makers which answers all the questions on how to deal with the film festival circuit...
Also, just in case you missed it, here's a link to the most recent Down and Dirty DV Podcast, an article entitled "7 Ways to Work a Film Festival" (.pdf - Adobe Acrobat file.)
And good luck in the New Year!
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