Getting your Film Noticed at Festivals

Your film is done and it’s great. Everyone is going to love it.

You know you’re supposed to submit to all of the Oscar Qualifiers but the competition is stiff. Sundance had over 15,000 submissions in 2020! You were sure you’d be a festival legend when Barry Jenkins himself called to tell you your project was the best movie he’d ever seen. How come the rejection letters just won’t stop? What went wrong? 

We’ve had some practice on the festival circuit. Here are some tips and strategies to help you make a splash!

Submitting

Who are You Marketing To?

What many filmmakers fail to acknowledge is that festival submission is not a lottery pool. No, your chances at Sundance are not 1 in 15,000. Programmers don’t draw from a hat. They’re looking for the right choice for their event. Is your film a match alongside the films they already love this year? Your competition is the selection of films that are a perfect fit for the program they already had in mind. An American road trip comedy will likely not play Berlinale. Not because it’s bad, but because historically, it’s not what their audience shows up for. Imagine if you were a gardener selling top notch produce, you would still have a lot of difficulty finding shelf space at an electronics store. Know your audience.

Before you spend a lot of hard earned money, consider whether this particular programmer and your perfect audience member are the same type of movie goer. There are 8,000 film festivals, and right now, a great event is already looking for you.

Do Your Research

There is an easy way to discover who might be looking for your film before dropping a festival fee. Read through a program from a previous year on their website. Do they show mostly foreign films? What themes? Do they promote locals? 

Think about what niche your film might fit into, and seek out the festivals within that niche. Does your film align to a social cause? Does it feature characters within a marginalized group or are you the filmmaker from an underrepresented group? Does it fit a distinct genre? 

Vanishing Angle’s short film IMMORTAL is centered around a lesbian couple. One of the filmmakers, Natalie Metzger, is part of the LGBTQ community and focused submissions on those specific festivals with great success! 

Let the programmer know in your cover letter why you think your film would be a great fit for their program. Now you’ve made it easy for them to see you’re a match. Locating them on social media can give you insight on what kind of films they enjoy.

Why You?

Programmers have a tough job sifting through thousands of films. Let them know in one or two sentences what makes your film truly original in your cover letter. Is it based on a true story? What was the inspiration? Have you won any notable awards? Keep it short and sweet. No long bio. Make their job easy.

Gearing Up

Congrats! Your film scored a slot at a cool event. Now it’s time to build some buzz.

Join the Community

The best thing about film festivals is the opportunity to build a community. It’s a massive network of people who love what you love! Making movies! Do your best to connect with other filmmakers before your boots are on the ground. Join filmmaker groups locally or online. Network and connect with other filmmakers within your genre. Find filmmakers you respect and follow them on social media. And definitely follow the festivals you are interested in!

Social Media

Hands down the most powerful tool in the indie filmmaker’s marketing toolkit. For feature films, we recommend creating Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter profiles, and sharing consistently throughout the filmmaking process. The investment of time and energy will pay off ten fold when you’re rallying an audience for your premiere. For short films, on the other hand, focus on building exposure as a filmmaker by promoting your film through your existing social accounts. 

Assets

Have social media assets, and lots of them! We find it’s helpful to have multiple assets on hand. That way you aren’t repeatedly sharing the same content over and over, and you reach a bigger audience. Create marketing assets that the fans you gain can instantly share about your film with their friends.They should be cleaned up and professional, and have consistent branding. Use the same fonts and colors on all your materials.  

We’ve had great success with GIF’s, animated posters, and micro-trailers that play especially well on Instagram. 

Engagement

When posting, broaden your reach by tagging and mentioning members of your cast and crew. Pick a memorable hashtag and use it on every single post. Encourage your team to do the same.

Targeting

One of our most successful social media ad campaigns we ran was for the film THUNDER ROAD. We had a very limited budget for Facebook ads. When posting our first ad, we chose a focused target demographic that we thought would be most responsive in our film. Then we carefully monitored engagement results. Each time we posted a new ad, we’d make adjustments to the target demographic based on engagement with the previous ad. As we continued to refine our target group, the percentage of engagement with our ads increased. That’s how you get the most bang for your buck!

At the Festival

Now for the fun part! Do whatever you can to show up to the festival. Attend any screenings of your film, but also be supportive and attend other’s screenings. On that note, even if your film didn’t get into the festival (Ouch! Sorry about that.) you should still do your best to attend so you can support other filmmakers and potentially meet other filmmakers and festival programers. We meet a lot of our future collaborators at film festivals. Attend any other events the festival may be holding, such as dinners or happy hours for the filmmakers, and network! If you help promote other filmmakers, they often return the favor, and it can be a great way to return home having made new friends. 

What Should You Bring

Arrive with your marketing materials ready to go. Bring business cards for yourself.  Bring posters if the festival allows.

When it comes to marketing at festivals, creativity is rewarded! Is there something from your film you can give away? For example, one of our clients was an American road trip film entitled, AMERICAN FOLK. At the festivals it played, we handed out hundreds of the same fun, goofy sunglasses the characters wore in the film, only we included the film’s title and the website on the sides of the glasses. Huge hit! It got people talking and seeking the film out. Look for those types of creative marketing opportunities that thematically fit your film. 

You can also choose festival wardrobe that fits you, your brand, and the film! Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe of GREENER GRASS knocked this one out of the park.

Wrapping Up

Well done! You’ve made new friends and allies. When the festival is over, respectfully ask the programmer if they would recommend you to like minded events. Often, programmers run more than one event, or have programmer friends with similar taste. A good programmer wants to help filmmakers succeed. 

At FireShip, we can help your film make the most out of its festival screening, and we’d love to hear from you.

Contact FireShip today at FireShip@vanishingangle.com