What to submit and what to skip
Festivals
Submission fees are the easiest money to waste in independent film. A hundred entries at thirty dollars is a camera package.
The distinction nobody explains
A festival programme shows finished films to an audience. A festival market or lab puts unfinished projects in front of people with money. For a film that exists only as a treatment, the second is worth ten of the first.
Many of the region's significant events run both. Submitting a finished short to the programme and the feature project to the lab, in the same year, is normal practice and doubles the reason to be there.
How to choose
| Ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Do buyers or funds attend? | If not, the only prize is the laurel. |
| Is there a market or lab? | Determines whether an unfinished project has any reason to travel. |
| Does it demand a premiere? | A premiere spent badly cannot be spent again. |
| Who was programmed last year? | The clearest signal of what the selectors actually like. |
The premiere rule
Larger festivals require a world or regional premiere and will decline a film that has already screened. This means submissions have an order, and the order runs from most selective to least. Getting it wrong costs a year.