Film Festivals
Today I compiled a list of the film festivals where Marathon has been sent - 32 total festivals. I’ve ranked them by Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Tier 1 festivals are very difficult to get into - if we get into 1 or 2 of them I would be ecstatic. Tier 2 festivals are well known but not major - I’m hoping for a 50% acceptance rate from them. Tier 3 is new film festivals that are just emerging. I’m hoping for a 90% success rate to those festivals.
We haven’t heard back from any of them yet…
Tier 1 (8 submissions - 25% of entries)
CineVegas (Las Vegas)
USA Film Festival (Houston)
New Orleans Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival (France)
CFC Worldwide Shorts Fest (Toronto)
Palm Springs International Shorts Fest
Los Angeles Film Festival
Austin Film Festival
Tier 2 (12 submissions - 38% of entries)
Dance With Films (Hollywood)
Malibu International Film Festival
Santa Cruz Film Festival (CA)
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival (Alabama)
Santa Monica International Film Festival (CA)
Over the Fence Comedy Film Festival (Australia)
St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase
San Diego Film Festival
LA New Filmmakers at Sunset Gower
Hollyshorts (Hollywood)
Big Bear Lake International Film Festival (CA)
Route 66 Film Festival (Illinois)
Tier 3 (12 submissions - 38% of entries)
Red Rock Film Festival of Zion Canyon (Utah)
The Iron Mule Short Comedy Screening Series (NY)
DC Shorts Film Fest
The Other Venice Film Festival (CA)
What the Hell Did I Just Watch Comedy Festival (Seattle)
NYC Downtown Film Festival
London Independent Film Festival
Hollywood Ultra Fest
Central Florida Film Festival
15 Minutes of Fame (Florida)
Indie Fest USA (CA)
SoCal Independent Film Festival
We would be happy to be accepted into any of these festivals - the reason they were chosen is because they are all well run and have a history of putting on great festivals (especially the Tier 3 festivals). It’s easy to decide to send your film to Palm Springs but deciding between Indie Fest USA and Woodstock FF is where it gets tough.
Another consideration was region. 15 of the 32 submissions are within 3 hours driving distance of Los Angeles and we can attend without buying a plane ticket or hotel.
Breakdown by Region
Local (LA) - 15 (47% of entries)
South - 6 (19%)
International - 4 (13%)
East - 3 (9%)
Midwest - 2 (6%)
West - 2 (6%) - not including LA
So hopefully we can achieve our goals, but if not we can always try again. I’m afraid there’s a few things holding our film back for festivals. One being that it’s 15 minutes (we’d like to keep the next one under 10 for sure) and the other being that there are a lot of characters and locations for such a short film. But we’ve learned from our mistakes. It’s still a good movie regardless.
Tags: Film Festivals, Marathon
March 24th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Excellent planning and analysis! Hopefully, you’ll be busy attending several of these …
June 26th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I’m not really sure where you get some of this, no offense. I know opinion plays a role, but DC Shorts is an upper B-list festival, it’s almost an elite festival in fact, and you have it listed as Tier 3? You have to be confused. DC Shorts gets 750 entries per year, and accepts only 100. That’s extremely selective, and should be at the top of anyone’s Tier 2 list. Dances With Films is a major festival, Tier 1, with the 2nd highest attendance of any festival in Los Angeles. It’s a “Major” — whereas I’ve never even heard of New Orleans or USA Film Festival. I also don’t think I’d put SoCal Independent in Tier 3, that’s more like a Tier 2 festival, and The Iron Mule (I’m 3/5 so far with my newest short, this was one of my rejections) is tricky because while you could say it’s Tier 3 by degree of prestige, and I would not disagree with you, they actually only accept 10% of entries. In other words, it’s very selective. Whereas the typical Tier 3 festival is going to accept 30% or more of its entries, sometimes as high as 45-50%, which is a slam dunk for any decently made film. But your notion of getting into 90% of festivals like that is probably a bit high even if your film is amazing, because there is still too much competition and too many weird opinions. You just never know when you’ll get into a major festival and get rejected from a tiny one!