Online Festival Entries

A forum for sharing views on the art of film, video and AV sequence making as well as on competitions, judging and festivals.
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Dave Watterson
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Online Festival Entries

Post by Dave Watterson »

There are several services which aim to make it easier for film makers to enter festivals. In turn that is good for festivals. Most of them allow you to fill in details of your film once and not have to repeat it all for every festival. They usually allow you to send the film either on DVD, memory stick or other solid media ... or to upload it to their site, where it can be seen only by the festivals in which it is entered,

The famous name is Without-a-Box https://www.withoutabox.com but it has not been liked by smaller non-commercial events because of the fees it charges to film makers and, especially, to festivals.

Ned Cordery pointed out to me that there is now a Canadian challenger: Filmfreeway https://filmfreeway.com/. It costs the film maker nothing. If the festival has no entry fee it costs the festival nothing, otherwise it takes 8.5% of the entry fee.

There are various other similar systems operating on modest scales and usually with modest fee:
https://festhome.com/
http://www.reelport.com/
http://www.shortfilmcentral.com/
http://www.shortfilmdepot.com/
http://www.uptofest.com/en/quienes_somos
http://www.clickforfestivals.com/
http://www.filmfestivallife.com/
http://www.festivalfocus.org/
http://festival.movibeta.com/web/contro ... roller.php

There may be more that I have not discovered. Of course for most of them their target is the indie film makers, people on the edge of the commercial world and hoping to make their careers there. But since most film makers say their real aim is to get their work seen ... these offer ways that are less hassle than researching festival, burning discs, packaging them up and sending off international money transfers.

Dave
edin
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Re: Online Festival Entries

Post by edin »

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Dave Watterson
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Re: Online Festival Entries

Post by Dave Watterson »

Edin ... I guess something went wrong!

Did you want to suggest other online festival entry systems?
Michael Slowe
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Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 4:24 pm

Re: Online Festival Entries

Post by Michael Slowe »

Thanks Dave, a very interesting list. Withoutabox (all one word I believe) have become totally discredited following a quite unpleasant on line campaign by people who consider them to be money grabbers. Filmfreeway seems to be the current favourite.

I'm rather against uploading files of a film, one never knows quite how much compression is required and also how it will be viewed. I have always submitted either a BD (if acceptable) or a DVD. It's no trouble burning a few extra copies and posting is easy enough. Also, you refer to 'money orders', rather quaint that, a phrase from the past, they all accept payment by credit card nowadays I find.

I always have the suspicion that many of the festivals listed do have money making at the heart of their aims, but perhaps I'm just being cynical. It is interesting entering a film if it has had success in an amateur festival, just to see how it rates among semi professional productions. Not all that well is the answer to be honest, apart from the odd one or two.
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