Indee Blog

Marketing your festival to filmmakers can be an expensive and relentless affair. There are turnkey options with an expensive buy-in, like Withoutabox’s mailing list, or Google’s adwords. But there’s a slew of other options that you might not be using. Read on to learn about all your options.

Call for Entries Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are the most popular form of Call For Entries. They are very effective and the response is almost immediate. However, it isn’t always cheap.

Withoutabox – The behemoth when it comes to call for entries. They have an extensive mailing list and festivals see an immediate jump in submissions as soon as they are mentioned in one of  Withoutaboxs’ mailers. However, it doesn’t come cheap. It is approximately $700 to be mentioned in their mailer along with several other festivals and it ranges up to over $2000 for an exclusive mailer.

Indee - (disclaimer: we are Indee) Indee’s mailing list is smaller than Withoutabox, however it is doesn’t cost anything. Every festival that uses Indee’s system has one exclusive Call for Entires email included for free. An example of this is included here. Several festivals sign up for Indee and Withoutabox simultaneously. Additionally, Indee runs Google Ad campaigns for festivals, see below for info on this.

Self-promote – Never underestimate the strength of your own mailing list. If obtained the right way, this is a list of filmmakers who already recognize your festival, who’s films you are already familiar with and they might have had a great experience in the past. While it may not be as large as the other two mailing list options, it is likely to be much better targeted.

Cost-per-click adverts

Facebook, Twitter & Google ads: Costing you between $0.50 – $1 per click, these aren’t cheap. However, it gets you to the right source: Filmmakers searching online for film-festival call for entries or identifying themselves as filmmakers. Targeting your keywords and demographics is paramount here. Focus should be on conversions rather generating traffic. It is less expensive and far more effective.

Festival aggregators

There are a slew of festival aggregators out there. Many have lousy interfaces, so its hard for a filmmaker to find what they’re looking for, but most are free, so it doesn’t hurt to list on these. ($) indicates that you pay to list on these sites.

• http://topfilmfestivals.com ($)
• http://openfilm.com
• http://filmfestivals.com / http://fest21.com
• http://www.festivalfocus.org/
• http://www.filmcommunity.com/
• http://www.filmfold.com/
• http://www.filmfestivalsource.com/
• http://www.shortfilmcentral.com/events/
• http://www.insidefilm.com
• http://festivals.documentaryfilms.net

Festival or film centric blogs & magazines

It might help getting ,an article mentioning your call for submissions on these. Don’t expend too much energy or resources on these though. Most properties with significant traffic will not dedicate a post for a single festivals Call for Entries and many of the smaller ones don’t get enough traffic to make a dent in your submissions. But it’s always worth just shooting a note to see if they will mention your festival.

• http://www.contestwatchers.com/
• http://www.filmmaking.net/
• http://moviemaker.com ($)
• http://filmmakermagazine.com/ ($)

PR Firm

Of course, there is always the really expensive option of hiring a PR firm to get all of the above done for you.

Have I missed any? Please post them in the comments.

MIFFF is the premier genre film festival in the states of Washington and Oregon. The event was created to offer exposure to films that traditionally are overlooked by the festival circuit from genres including action, fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

Deadlines are on:

• April 30th 2012
• May 21st 2012
• June 11th 2012

Submission fees range from $15 for the early deadline to $40 for the final deadline. Submit your film today!

Indee would like to welcome the two new festivals that have signed on so far in January.

The Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival – MIFFF

The premier genre film festival in the Pacific Northwest. It runs in October over the weekend of the 5th to the 7th in 2012.

Westport Youth Film Festival – WYFF

WYFF is organized by the Westport Arts Center in Westport, CT. It focuses on youth films from across the world.

We’re really excited to have them both on board!

Self-distribution is a loaded word these days. It covers far too wide an operation from pre-production to securing a studio marketing deal, which in my opinion, is ridiculous.

In its essence, all it means is that the filmmaker is taking on the work of sales-agents & distributors and keeping all the proceeds that would normally go to them. One of the most important tools you need for self-promotion is a screener.

People always want to see some footage of whatever you’re pitching to them. Professional sales agents know this and they spend thousands of dollars on their screeners and shipping.

However, there are three huge concerns with DVD screeners:

1. High costs
2. Zero reporting about viewing and engagement
3. Easy piracy

Costs

Running the numbers, we see this is a huge expense for almost anyone. A screener DVD costs between $1-$4 to produce and between $3-$20 to ship. This ignores all those lost in the mail or misplaced and broken DVDs that usually adds between 10-20% to your screener budget.

Reporting

After sending out the DVD screener, there is zero reporting to know if the film has been viewed or even reached the recipient in the mail. Dont even bother obtaining more important metrics like your most popular scenes and which scene loses most of your viewers. Thats the kind of empowerment online screeners can offer.

Piracy

Imagine if you made Paranormal Activity in 2007 and have had to send thousands of screeners over the course of two years. Now it’s 2009, you’re just getting ready for a wide release. Dozens of the DVDs you’ve shipped over the last couple of years are bound to make it right into the hands of pirates the world over, ruining a great film with an early prerelease cut and terrible post production. Not to mention the lost revenue from piracy.

With online screeners you can choose to have your film expire in a day, a month or anywhere in between and get in-depth analytics while you’re at it.

Learn more about Indee’s screeners here.

Photo credit: SuperPipo2010