Are film festivals the best place to find your audience?

+ Announcing our next premiere: Nashville, TN on September 6th at Belmont University

Aug 21, 2024

One thing that has been tough with "Shredded" is finding our place in the film festival circuit. On one end, we didn't have enough surfing/it is not about the characters being good at surfing to find our place in the surf festival-niche, but we have also realized from the feedback of programmers and screeners, that some resonate with our film, and others simply don't get it.

The feedback that we have received consistently, we have implemented into tweaking the film, like sound, pacing, places where the dialogue might feel a bit repetitive and could be trimmed.

What we have learned, is that not everyone is going to understand or resonate with our film, but that does not mean that the audience we wrote it for, and who is meant to see it, is going to feel the same way. With film festivals, we never know who is going to screen our films, and that can be disheartening if we are writing our festivals with specific audiences in mind and the screener and advertisers doesn't fall into that audience demographic. When a screener watches your film and doesn't get it, you may not move past that "gatekeeper", which doesn't necessarily speak to the quality or message of your film, but that the screener was not a part of your target audience.

I’ve seen quite a few people talk about the state of film festivals right now, their place in cinema, and whether or not films are slipping through the cracks simply because they don’t have an A-list celebrity attached that gets advertisers excited.

“It Ends With Us” has stirred a lot of controversy with pushing hair product lines, how the material of the film was approached by some, the split of the press tour, etc, but one through-line I keep hearing from those that have seen the film: “It is hard to see past the actress Blake Lively” into the character. I understand the value of having A-list stars attached for marketing and to get butts in seats, but sometimes it is hard to lose yourself in the story when you see the A-list actor “acting”. With an unknown cast, while it may be more challenging to get people to the theatre without that marquee name, they are more likely to lose themselves in the story and characters themselves.

A kind review from a film festival we did not get into:

“A moving meditation on trauma and grief, featuring warm performances from the entire cast. While the story of breast cancer has been told before, the film approaches it from a new angle– challenging audiences to reconsider their perceptions and sparking important conversations about gender and health. Kudos to the filmmakers for their boldness and empathy in tackling such a vital subject matter.”

Film festivals are absolutely important to the ecosystem of discovering new films and having a dedicated place where creatives can come to network and discover films, both within the film industry, and patrons outside of the industry. However, once you get past the top tier festivals and top regional festivals with dedicated audiences, are you better off applying to festivals, or using that money towards your marketing budget to attract your dedicated audience?

We decided on the latter. I still believe in the necessity and place of film festivals, but I don’t think they hold the weight and regard they once did in this new era. The rise of micro-culture replacing macro-culture means each filmmaker holds the ability to craft and find their own audience rather than rely on the gatekeeping film festivals to open them up to an audience, distributor, etc.

Last year, I took a film festival course to learn how to best select film festivals for my films and how to take advantage of acceptances. As I went through the course and discovered how essential it is to sell-out your film screenings to be eligible for awards and look attractive to distributor deals, it occurred to me that without a star and a massive budget, why not put that same work into my own screenings where we could at least put a portion of the proceeds back into expenses and next steps? Why would I put this insane amount of effort into running Facebook ads, giveaways for tickets, buying up tickets for a theatre, reaching out to all the PR and press outlets, etc unless we were benefitting in some way? While yes, there is benefit with press no matter what, and film festivals wanting you to sell out your screening and building an audience, the biggest benefit is to the festival and the festival building its audience. (On a side note, I HIGHLY recommend checking out Tepper’s latest post on marketing here.)

If distributors still offered massive MGs to purchase a film, and at a higher percentage, this may not be the case, but with the disappearance of MGs and predatory distribution deals, many filmmakers are skipping the festival circuit altogether and going directly to their audience. One filmmaker attended multiple of the top-tier film festivals, interviewed as many filmmakers as possible to find the answer to the question “Did you pay to submit?” or “Did you receive a waiver?” to find that some top tier and even regional festivals did not take a single submission from the paid group. Many regional festivals pay to go to TIFF, Sundance, SXSW, to find and offer waivers or screening fees to films premiere there. Where does that leave the small filmmaker? As another filmmaker put it to me from talking to programmers at a top-tier festival, “If you aren’t making a trauma porn, or don’t have an A-list celebrity, don’t bother wasting your money on the submission fee.”

Film, and art as a whole, is very subjective. You can take the same song, film, art piece, etc to multiple people and receive an array of critiques, responses, ratings, etc because everyone will have an opinion. Art is not like swimming where the person who hits the touchpad first, wins. While there may be some “technical rules” and “storytelling rules”, art is much more about taste and the personal experience someone comes with.

Don’t put too much weight on not getting into a film festival. Don’t put too much weight on getting into a film festival.

A director that I respect asked me a few months ago: Did you finish the film? Did you tell a story? Are you proud of the story you told?

I said yes to all three and she said, “Focus on that, and sharing the story with who needs to hear it. Don’t get caught up in everything else.”

With that, we are so thrilled to share that Shredded will be premiering at my alma mater, Belmont University in Nashville, TN on Friday, September 6th at 5:30 PM. Full details will be share in the “PS” :)

What are your thoughts on approaching film festivals? Are they the best place to find an audience or where do you prefer to find your audience? Share in the comments!

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