Navigating the Film Festival Circuit Part One

Dear Filmmakers:

My most recent posts have focused on your film’s festival premiere. This time around, let’s move past your first festival and consider how to deal with the festival circuit beyond.

As mentioned previously, often by being included in that first festival, your film will be noticed by other festivals, leading …

Making the Most of Your Festival Experience Part Three: Your Premiere & “What’s Next?”

Director Cameron Yates and documentary subject Jeanette Maier during the Q&A for The Canal Street Madame at its SXSW Premiere, 2010

Dear Filmmakers:

This post wraps up my thoughts on how you can maximize your film’s festival premiere for the good of your film, and for your career. Part one addressed …

Making the Most of Your Festival Experience Part Two: Attending the Fest

Robert Redford and Bill Gates at the Sundance Director's Brunch, 2010 Sundance Film Festival

Dear Filmmakers:

This is the second of three posts addressing what you can and should do to make the most of your film festival premiere for your film and for your career. My last post covered essential …

Making the Most of Your Film Festival Experience Part One: Preparation

Dear Filmmakers:

Previous posts have covered submitting to film festivals, offering advice on what (not) to do as you go through the process of navigating submission forms, promotional materials, and handling rejection or acceptance. This post (and the next) moves beyond the submission phase to focus on the next step – …

Festival Deadlines as Production Deadlines

Dear Filmmakers:

In my first blog post for IFP, I briefly addressed the issue of using a specific festival’s deadline as your own film’s production deadline. In this post, I’m going to expand a bit on this topic.

You have to plan out your production schedule anyway, so what’s the problem with …

More Festival Submission Dos & Don’ts

Dear Filmmakers:

In my last blog post, I took a page out of my own blog and discussed a few things filmmakers should and shouldn’t do when dealing with film festivals. This post continues that general topic, focusing on the submission screener, press kits and promotional materials, and the best (and …

What NOT to do for Film Festivals

Dear Filmmakers:

I recently launched a documentary focused blog entitled what (not) to doc where, among other topics, I discuss things filmmakers should (and shouldn’t) do in their documentaries, from my subjective viewpoint of course. For this month’s IFP blog post, I thought I’d take a similar approach, and address some …