Festivals
This tutorial is a guide for film festival programers to learn how they can interface with our film. There are 3 festivals that we don’t put plan to interface with in this way, but those 3 are never going to look at this page, and they now who they are. This tutorial post can also be utilized by other filmmakers who need context in figuring out how to deal with festivals.
The period in which Four Eyed Monsters is officially submitting to festivals has ended, however, we’d be happy to have the film a part of your festival anyway. We are working on new projects so we can’t attend the festival, or apply, or pay a submission fee or provide materials or anything that requires any work on our end, however, everything you need should be at your finger tips on our website.
How to show the film to your programmers:
Your programmers can Watch Four Eyed Monsters Free on YouTube. Or you can Buy Four Eyed Monsters on DVD or as a super high quality download from our store.
How to get accept the film:
If the film is accepted, just notify us on our contact page once you have the screening times and we will do our best to provide information about the screening on our website and to everyone who signed up on our “request page” to see the film. That isn’t a promise since we don’t yet have the automated software for that, but soon will at which point every screening we add to our site will notify our people near by. Now if some how you contact us and don’t hear back, don’t worry, your fine, just do the screening, you don’t need our approval.
How to screen the film:
We don’t have film prints, however, if you would like to make one at of your own pocket or from a grant, we can provide a hard drive with the needed files for that. But in most cases, you’ll need a digital projector and a DVD player. Now, if the DVD player isn’t okay with you guys. Then the other option is an Apple TV. If you buy the 8 dollar download of our film it will look better then our DVD projected off the apple TV and you don’t risk any skipping. Just make sure the projector you have has the connections or any adapters needed for the apple TV. The Apple TV is 300 dollars and also great for showing short film programs and every festival should consider using Apple TVs to basically load up for the entire festival and just have to hit play.
Get our 8 dollar Apple TV version of the film here. And the final way is to get that file and dubb it to DV or Digi-beta. This file should be able to be brought into Final Cut, Adobe or Avid and then played out to a digi-beta tape. Or you should be able to download that file, burn it to a data Disc or put it on a hard drive, drop it off at a transfer house and they’ll transfer the digital file onto typical formats like digibeta or whatever you need.
How to promote the screening in your festival:
Check out our publicity page to get materials for local press. Also, feel free to download and air on local channels, even public access if you’d like, our episodes 1 through 8. Come to think of it, you are even welcome to screen those back to back in the festival if you wanted to. We’ve done that a few times and they seem to go over similar to people watching the film. So if you do want to air the video podcasts on a local channel, we here by give you permission to do so. So just take our DVD, pull the episodes off it in DV quality using the handbrake
Where to get bio’s and synopsis and stills:
Everything you need should be on the Feature Film page of our site.
What to charge for the screening:
We would like every screening put on to be free if at all possible. If the festival has a sponsor or uses alternative screening spaces, this should be possible. However, if you have to charge to cover costs, then see below the terms we ask.
Selling Merchandise
We’ve always sold more shirts and DVDs in person at screenings then we are able to do online. To sell merchandise you can buy wholesale and re-turn not used stock with a re-stocking fee. I don’t have the link to place into this page infront of me, so contact us for that link and remind me to add it to this page.
How and what to pay us if you charge for screenings of our film:
This is a sticky subject. We know that festivals rarely pay filmmakers, but our question is, “Why Not?” The festivals charge admission and sells badges, the festivals take sponsorships, the festivals have volunteers that are doing most of the work and all for free, and most importantly, festivals will sometimes pay a screening fee for a larger budgeted hollywood or indiewood film to attract local media to the festival. Not only that, but hundreds and sometimes thousands of filmmakers often pay large submission fees only to then have that money turned around and given to the larger films that do get paid. It’s not right. So if those guys get paid, we are here to put our foot down and say we get paid too. So what we ask is that half the gross ticket sales be sent to us either via check or through pay pal donation button on our site. Why half? Well we know thats steep, but like we said, you can always just do the screening for free which we prefer, but if you are making individuals pay money, then we think that the individual should know that half of that money they are paying is going to the filmmaker to continue their filmmaker aspirations. We know this is the honor system that we are asking for, and you don’t have to honor it, so if you simply can’t do what we are talking about, don’t contact us to negotiate something different, just simply disregard what we ask, but feel bad, feel corrupt, feel you are taking advantage of artists, because you are, and have been since you started your festival, and it’s time to change, it’s time to start evolving the film festival circuit into a distribution platform that helps contribute to filmmakers recouping, and you should really help start this transition right now.
Thats about it, post a comment below if there was something left out of this, or if you have anything to add or respond to.
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June 28th, 2007 at 1:04 am
wow cool…. the future has begun..the honor system…… just show any movie from anyone and send 50% back… wow