The cast and crew of our micro-horror short, Grease Ghoul, attended our first film festival. It was a small, local event in DeKalb Illinois; however, close enough to Chicago to warrant our interest. I have heard countless horror stories on attending fests, but entered with an open mind. Along the way, I learned that there are a few things YOU can do to maximize your experience:
Get a hotel room as early as possible! I mean as soon as you know you're selected. There was a religious conference being held at the same time; thus, no rooms in any decent radius from the festival. This resulted in two five-hour road trips at 5 am and returning after 5 pm. Note: Drive times aside, this is really only necessary if you plan on either watching all the films or (and more importantly) attend any networking sessions.
Contact the event organizer, validate they have all the required materials and confirm your attendance. Be aware that some festivals will provide their selectees with complimentary passes. Desired materials may include a DVD/Blu Ray copy of the film, digital poster and any promotional materials you have. My recommendation is to bring a copy of the film on DVD and a USB drive in preparation for any technical issues.
Know when and where your film will be played. Once the schedule is posted, set up a Facebook event and start marketing once the festival date arrives. I have listed below three low impact film marketing techniques we leveraged and their individual results.
Lower your overly high expectations. You are more than likely not attending Sundance, so don’t rush to conclusions. Attendance may be just one or two people per screen. The organizers may even forget to press play between screening blocks prompting early lunches. Screens are small, under lit, and usually, just a small projector stand connected to a laptop. Sound ranges from barely audible to ear piercing. Oh yeah, chairs are small and uncomfortable for long sitting. Bring a cush’ for your tush’. Excited now? Well, everything else is just gravy!
I personally counted 15 attendees throughout the entire day. Our short started off another block of programming at 5 pm. I was happy to see that this group of films had the most attendees (~9) of the blocks previously attended. With the exception of a Facebook event and a week old Twitter post, the film organizers had unfortunately not marketed that well. No new posts during the fest or retweets of attendees during the event. I think we can learn someone from this and that includes other filmmakers trying to network. There were only two posters who used the festival’s designated hashtag, since 2016. We definitely did the organizer a favor (not to mention ourselves) by driving some folks to their page. Here are the results from Twitter, Facebook, and personal engagements:
We launched three Twitter posts with specific hashtags targeting the event at zero cost. These were executed on the day prior (behind the scenes video), the morning of (film poster), and arrival (directors photo). Leveraging Twitter’s analytics we arrive at the following statistics:
182 impressions
24 engagements (including 12 hashtag clicks and 7 profile clicks)
Prior to the five-hour road trip, I set up a targeted Facebook Ad consisting of our poster and viewing schedule at a cost of $25. The scope was limited to those living 25 miles in/around DeKalb and to those who have similar interests to the festival: Film festival, horror movies, independent film, film-making. This 24-hour limited ad resulted in targeting 2,811 people! Leveraging Facebook’s Ad Center metrics, we saw the following impressions:
82 engagements (including 39 photo clicks, 8 shares, and 3 Festival link clicks)
I had some business cards made online that included the standard name, Google Voice number, domain, email, etc. To help fellow filmmakers, we have post on “Building A Brand to Secure Talent” that will dive into this in greater detail. I handed a few copies to each in our group and introduced myself to the president of the festival. Unfortunately, this was not a collaborative festival. I had no clue who were filmmakers and only learned of one other’s attendance indirectly (after our departure). To their credit, the festival started retweeting others; however, this was a day or two afterwards and not as impactful.
1 engagement
Overall, the road trip with cast and crew was an absolute blast! I chalked it up to a good experience and potentially, a right of passage for newbie filmmakers. Hopefully, this experience will help you prepare for an upcoming event and educate local festivals on the importance of social media engagement. If you are preparing to submit your film to festivals, I invite you to read our post on “Ten Things You Should Know About Film Festivals Before Spending Your Money.”