Festival directors reading this can steal the idea outright, but filmmakers may need a little more creativity to make it work for them. Either way, it’s a clever and subversive way to boost your Twitter followers – the Atlanta Film Festival withheld the details about one of their parties, releasing the details only on Twitter. (You can find them at twitter.com/atlantafilmfest.)
Below is a quick snap of the party page of the Atlanta Film Festival’s program guide.
While doing some research I came across this entry on the Environmental Defense Fund blog:
At the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the jury of film experts chose Forty Shades of Blue as the best dramatic film. The Audience Award went to Hustle & Flow. I don’t know which was a better film, but I do know Hustle & Flow went on to earn $20 million in wide release in the U.S., while Forty Shades of Blue topped out at $75,000. I’m sure it doesn’t always happen that way, but it goes to show that the experts don’t always know what will succeed in the marketplace of ideas.
We at Environmental Defense Fund just finished something a bit like a film festival — a competition that challenged participants to make a 30 second ad that explains how capping greenhouse gas pollution will help cure our national addition to oil. This week we announced two winners, one selected by our staff and another chosen by thousands of voters online. Like at Sundance, the voters and the judges chose different winners…in fact, the video chosen by us “experts” came in dead last in the online voting.
This in essence, is the guiding philosophy behind distributor (and my employer) B-Side Entertainment: the audience is never wrong. When putting together your own festival and distribution plan, polling a wide audience (who doesn’t know you) through test screenings is essential. Even when you can’t trust yourself or your friends to evaluate whether your film is good or bad likely to appeal to festival audiences, your test audiences will tell you.
(Edited after Alex Orr rightly pointed out that sometimes “audience-pleasing” doesn’t always equal “good.”)
This is a great example of what I call “next-level” humor in short films. So many comedies make jokes that only play on the obvious and go in the expected directions. Trevor’s in Heaven lulls you into thinking you know what’s going to happen next and then slaps you around for a bit, always escalating the humor to the next level. Just watch.
Though most of you have likely torn through all four of these, I feel like parcelling them out one at a time here on the blog. Savor them. Promos by Mark Potts of Singletree Productions.
So this article’s a few years old but it made me smile and still contains a ton of great, relevant ideas. Sneaky, low-down, dirty ideas, but still: ideas.
Before Bikini Bandits was even accepted to premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival, [director] Grasse and [producer]Alan took out full-page ads in The City Paper, the local alternative weekly, promoting their participation in the festival. This naturally pissed off festival brass, creating more press in the ensuing uproar. When the film officially became part of the festival, the Bikini Bandits team purchased every available seat at the premiere, creating a sold-out screening and generating more frenzied buzz. They then threw a big ol’ party, let 3,000 in to celebrate and left 2,000 cooling their heels on the sidewalk. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
I love this article from the Collegian, in which a random college student who took a ski vacation to Park City during Sundance reveals her hurt feelings about being shut out of Sundance screenings.
“I primarily went out there to ski and see some friends, but I wanted to get a feel for how Sundance was, so yeah, I was a little disappointed,” she said. “I thought it would be different. A lot of the stores were closed at like 6 or 7 at night for private parties and stuff. You would really have to know someone to get in.”
Bird said she thinks the Sundance cannot be considered truly independent anymore.
It reads a lot like a facetious article from The Onion — except that if it were in The Onion it would be even funnier.
Two things: if you can’t get into a screening in Park City during Sundance, you’re just not trying. Sure, most of the more anticipated flicks are sold out, but there are always smaller films or showings at odd times with tickets available. Then there are the satellite festivals — there are no fewer than four other festivals besides Sundance (Slamdance and the Park City Film Music Festival, just to name a couple) going on at the same time. You can see some great movies at those fests, too — particularly if “independent” (i.e. unknown low-budget) film is your thing. Parties are pretty much the same way — for every high-end soirée guarded by a surly bouncer there are a handful of open-to-pretty-much-anyone parties going on at nearby condos, bistros, and retail shops. You just have to talk to enough strangers around town and make enough new friends to get invited to them.
The other thing? It’s been a long time since Sundance pretended (if it ever did) to be anything but a festival for the very best independent movies out there. Sure, a lot of those independent films are well-funded efforts with full crews and big name stars, but Sundance prides itself on showing great pictures, not just the ones made by struggling and emerging artists. It all goes back to the question of “what is an independent film, anyway?” — something people are going to be arguing about for years to come, probably without any meaningful resoluton.
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While doing some research I came across this entry on the Environmental Defense Fund blog:
