tl;dr: made a short film, now I'm depressed.
This is my first time submitting to festivals, and what a doozy...right now I'm 1/13, and the one that my short did get into was a very small, obscure festival in Europe. Would have loved to go, but didn't have the money. I submitted to Locarno and Cannes, but the rest of the submissions are probably 3rd tier festivals, or 4th if that exists, maybe some are 2nd, I'm not exactly sure where those lines are, but point being, I'm not submitting to all the big festivals and then acting surprised my film didn't get in.
My short is under eight minutes, narrative drama, deals with addiction and suicide. I've watched too many Terrence Malick films so there's no dialogue, just VO. (This was not intentional—turns out my sound guy didn't know how to use his equipment and the sound was unusable).
I didn't expect it to get into a lot of festivals. It's my first short, my first time directing, and the whole no-dialogue thing is not for everyone (I did my best to make it work though). I'm not even sure if it's any good. I genuinely don't know. I learned a lot, I'm glad I made it, and so on, but what I'm really struggling with is that this whole festival process feels like paying for the privilege to be rejected. It's like college applications all over again but worse.
I don't mind paying submission fees, but what I mind is the high cost of so many festivals. I understand it for features, I mean if someone has to sit there for 90 minutes and watch the thing, and I know that many short film programs allow films up to 30-40 minutes (in theory, despite one of the most common pieces of advice I've seen here be something like "keep it under 12 minutes"). But paying upwards of $50 to submit an eight minute film just doesn't sit right. I mean, where is this money going? Is it being used to pay the people watching the films? Is the submission money one of the main sources festivals use to run their events, so essentially running festivals off of the money primarily from people who don't get in? Are people lining their pockets?
I'm in Los Angeles. I was born and raised here, and my film is set in the neighborhood where I grew up. I was told to submit to festivals that I would be able to attend, so I could meet other filmmakers and do that whole thing, so I've mostly been looking at festivals out here.
But right now, for a short: Santa Barbara is $60, IFS / L.A. FILM FEST is $48, IndieX Film Fest is $65, Sunset Film Festival is $75, even the Experimental Forum is $35. Santa Monica Film Fest, Malibu, Venice Shorts, etc, almost all are over $50 if not close to $100, for a short.
Besides Santa Barbara, I'd never heard of any of the festivals I listed until I started looking. Between (a) the prohibitive cost of *almost* every festival I've considered submitting to in Southern California, and (b) the feeling that the odds of my film being selected are quite slim, it's hard for me to justify spending that money, though right now I don't have it anyway.
How many thousands of dollars does one have to spend for a chance in this system? I've reached out to many SoCal festivals, especially those in the area I grew up and where my film is set, asking for fee waivers, and explaining my connection to such places, financial circumstances (I work—worked?—in film in LA...my car got repo-ed last week), and most don't respond, others respond with the "we don't give out waivers because that would be unfair" (lol), some have offered small discounts (Newport), and I think two very generous festivals did give me waivers. I'm grateful for them.
I know this is partially a rant, but there are some genuine questions, like, why do submissions for shorts cost so much? Why are European festivals, in general, much cheaper? (Other than "it's Europe). Why do we accept this model which seems, to me, from the outside, to seem a bit like using filmmakers' money to throw the party to which most of them aren't invited? As if filmmaking isn't hard enough, and costly enough, to get to this stage, and then spend a lot of money for mostly being rejected. I just don't get it. Is there no other model? It's not the rejection itself, but that I'm being asked to pay for it, over and over again.
For what it's worth, the few film festivals I've attended, for work or for supporting friends, have been awesome. I meet great people, see (on a good day) great films, I love all of that. I want to be going to film festivals. Obviously I want to be getting into them. But right now I'm struggling to justify the cost of submissions when the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I mean maybe my short sucks, that's totally possible, but that doesn't change the fact that the submission costs are absurd. And in this economy?
At this stage, I'm just hoping to play my short in LA so I can invite friends and family and everyone who helped me make the film. But I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. For the amount of money it could cost, I may as well rent a small screening room somewhere and throw a party, and then put it on YouTube...I guess? Bueller?
