Episode 8: Festival Strategy: How to Get Your Film Seen and Win
Download MP311,153. That was the number of short films that were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival in 2025. How many did they pick? 57. So you're probably better at math than I am, but that's a very tiny percentage of opportunities of chances of actually getting your film selected.
Bob Degus:The Toronto Film Festival, Cannes, Berlin, they all have similar numbers. So how do you position your short film to get it best seen and have a chance at being selected and seen by audiences? And that's what we're gonna be exploring in this episode. After forty years in Hollywood and watching more than 3,000 short films as an Oscar voter, I know what separates a good short film from one that wins awards. My name is Bob Degus.
Bob Degus:This is the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast where we'll help you create award winning short films. Episode eight, Festival Strategy, How to Get Your Film Seen and Win. So in the last episode, I shared with you what I learned working with a young Brad Pitt on a short film that was nominated for an Oscar. And if I look back on that era and think about how different the filmmaking industry was then compared to what it is now, it underlines a really important thing that you need to really be looking at present day data and thinking about what is it that's going to make my film stand out in today's market. Because when we made that film Contact, there were far fewer film festivals, and there were far fewer films being made.
Bob Degus:And so in a world where you're competing against 10,000 other short films, you really need a comprehensive strategy to be thinking about where will your short film have the best chance of succeeding. And that's what we're going to explore in this episode. We're going to go into some aspects of it that will help you understand what the lay of the land for film festivals is, and how to position yourself for that, because you really need to have a strategy, and you really need to understand this concept and think about it almost as two different pieces. So you have the journey, the whole journey of making a great film or a great short film, right? That's one set of skills.
Bob Degus:There's a whole second set of skills that's about bringing the film out into the world. And they're really two different parts of the journey and really require two different ways of thinking about things. So that's what we're going to look at. So these extraordinary numbers of submissions versus how few are picked are not meant to discourage you, although they're daunting, I think, but they're meant to underline this idea that just submitting your film without a strategy is like buying a lottery ticket. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't work, but it doesn't improve your odds.
Bob Degus:And I think people who navigate the film festival circuit successfully have an understanding of how they work and have a clear perspective on which festivals are right for their films. And I thought it might be helpful to just take a moment to talk about how how they a film festival that gets 10,000 submissions, how do they even look at that many films? Because it will give you a key way to kind of think about this. And so, obviously, with that many films, the main people who are in charge of the festival can't look at them. So there's a first pass that is done where they have other filmmakers, where they have critics, where they have other people watch the films.
Bob Degus:And in that first pass, they give them a ranking, maybe it's from one to five. And so the higher the ranking, it's sort of a pass fail system. So first people watching the film would evaluate, yes, this is a film to consider, and or no, it's not. Because one of the things I'm certain of with that many films, there's a whole bunch of them that are just terrible. I know we have that with the Oscars.
Bob Degus:There's at least half are like, I don't even why are we even looking at this? And so that first pass is really separating out, yeah, this film has potential from it doesn't. And then they go through this screener army, if you'll wanna call it that, looks at those films and makes the decisions to help the festival navigate those things. So then if you're in this group of possible to consider, it goes through a second round where it gets, you know, winnowed down and fewer people, fewer films rather. And at some point, there's a core group of films that are gonna be more manageable for the festival itself to look at.
Bob Degus:And then the festival programmers will come in, and they'll start watching those films, and they'll start figuring out how to put the film festival for that particular year together based on the submissions. That's why some of these film festivals have a many month submission process because there's so many films for them to watch that they have to have this process where they go through and figure out which ones are going to make the best festival for them. And so the reason I'm just sharing all this with you is to you could make a great and a fantastic film and it doesn't get picked for the film festival that you you wanted to go to Sundance and it doesn't get picked. You want it to go to Toronto and it doesn't get picked. And I know from my own experience that that's you feel bad.
Bob Degus:And the key thing to understand is that the that isn't a reflection of how worthy or how strong or how great your film is. Really, it's a reflection of they had to pick 10,000 films or they received 10,000 films, they had space to show 200 of them, and that meant that a giant chunk of very worthy films didn't get screened. And what's important is to not take that personally, which sometimes is hard, but to understand that that's just the odds of taking a film out into the world and going into the the film festival arena. So to develop an effective strategy for your film, you first need to understand the lay of the land about these festivals, and the festivals break into sort of three tiers. You have the first tier, which is kind of the big five festivals that everybody in the world knows their name.
Bob Degus:Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Venice, maybe Telluride, those are the big A list festivals, and they're the festivals that in many respects are the most political to get into. They're very opaque about their selection process, and your chances are statistically very low of having your film accepted. But you're faced with the idea that if you don't apply, you won't get in. So you kind of have to submit to those festivals. Now one of the things about the A list festivals that are important for you to understand is most of them want a world premiere.
Bob Degus:And so if you have shown your film on YouTube, or if you have shown it somewhere else and it's not a world premiere, you're automatically out of the running with those films, with those festivals. So you need to prioritize them, and I would say submit and see if you see if you get in. And now the next level are the tier two festivals, and those are smaller festivals, but they're still very they're still important festivals, festivals like Austin and South by Southwest, and every country has a number of these smaller but really major film festivals. They get slightly less submissions, and you would probably have a better chance at those festivals. But if you submitted to those first and showed your film at them, you would immediately eliminate yourself from the A tier.
Bob Degus:So you kind of have to start with the A tier first, see if you get in, then move on to the B tier, the second level of festivals, and see what the response is there. And finally, are the third tier festivals, which are oftentimes a lot of fun. They're more intimate. They're smaller. They're local festivals like, you know, the Boulder Film Festival or the Detroit Film Festival or the, you know, I think Big Sky Documentary Festival.
Bob Degus:They're they're little littler festivals. And what's unique about these festivals is a lot of them have themes. So you can look at your film and then find out of the hundreds and thousands of festivals, festivals that would be most interested in programming your film because it's what they're programming. So for instance, you can think about if you've made a film about American football, probably film festival that's about yoga and new age concepts isn't going to program your film. So you would make a strategic decision not to send it to that film festival.
Bob Degus:Now, when I worked on that film with Brad Pitt, there was not something, there was not really a way to organize this, and we had to do it all by hand. Today, there's a great website called Film Freeway, and it's free for you to join, and it lists, boy, 98% of the film festivals in the world, and there's thousands, what they're looking for, what their submission deadlines are, what the requirements to submit are, and this is a really helpful way for you to be able to, sitting in your home, start to look at festivals that might respond to the film you're making, and then develop a strategy around which ones to submit to, and the order that which you're going to submit to them in. So knowing your film is really the foundation of your festival strategy, And by that, I mean really understanding what it is, what audiences are going to respond to it, and how to position and share it with those festivals so that they can help you share it with those audiences. And if you think about this from a film festival's perspective, they rely, many of them, on ticket sales.
Bob Degus:So they're trying to program things that they think their audiences are going to like, and your job is to help them understand why your film might be good for them to include. And so what you wanna really understand is what kind of film have you made? What's its genre? What's its tone? Subject matter?
Bob Degus:All of those things are going to help you start to think about what film festivals might be really appropriate and excited to share your work. So that's the first thing. The second thing is this idea of who is the audience for your film. And this is probably something that needs a whole podcast into and of itself, but because as a filmmaker, think, well, my film is for everybody, but actually it isn't. It's for a very specific group of people, and the more you understand who your audience is, the easier it's going to be to identify festivals that serve the audience for your film that again are going to be excited to program it.
Bob Degus:Understanding who your film's natural audience is a really key thing for you to be confident in and really understand that. And then this question, which is what do you want from the film festival circuit? And by that I mean, you looking to get it Oscar qualified? That's a certain group of film festivals. Are you looking for career visibility?
Bob Degus:That's another group of festivals. You know, are you looking for distribution to have it sold? Are you looking to meet other collaborators? Each of these goals and each of these ideas creates a different festival strategy for your film. Some of them might overlap, but if you're wanting to get your short film considered for the Oscars, you're going to be looking at Oscar qualifying film festivals, and I think there's about 40 of them.
Bob Degus:And those are gonna be your priority festivals to get into because what an Oscar qualifying film festival allows you to do is if your film is picked and wins the best in festival prize at this film festival, you're automatically considered for a best Oscar nomination for your short film. That's one strategy. But maybe that doesn't interest you as much as you want to get your career established and you're wanting to go to festivals that have a bigger industry presence and you want to use that short film to make career connections. Well, that's going to be a different strategy. And so you really wanna spend a lot of time really soul searching and thinking about what it is you want from the festivals and kind of ranking the priority of those so you can narrow down which direction to look in to bring your film into the world.
Bob Degus:And then just like filmmaking, what is your budget for film festivals? Because if you think about, you have the submission fee. So if you're gonna submit to 10 film festivals and they have a $60 submission fee, that's $600 And so submitting to these festivals is one part of the budget you need to consider, but then you also need to consider what happens when you get into them. Hotels, especially for festivals like Sundance and Toronto, hotels are extraordinarily expensive. And so you're gonna need money to be able to go to, if you get in, to go to the festival and participate in it.
Bob Degus:It's an expensive step of the process that comes after it. And so those four areas are things you need to spend a lot of time thinking about and really coming up with how they intersect each other and which ones are important to you. So how do you build a festival strategy? What goes into that and how do you think about it? So the first thing I would say to you is start going to film festivals long before you have a film ready to go there and attend film festivals that you think one day you might like to have your film at.
Bob Degus:Now, part of that could be very expensive, like, oh, I'd like my film at the Cannes Film Festival. It's going to be a very expensive journey for you to just go to the film festival and participate in it and get the accreditation to attend and those sorts of things. But there's many other festivals that are near the city and town that you live in that you could start going and participating in and getting the feel of what it is like to attend a film festival. What's exciting about it, what isn't exciting about it, what you would like, what you might want to get out of it. You know, you hear of Sundance is this very glamorous festival that all of Hollywood goes to.
Bob Degus:Well, for years, they had really horrible screening rooms. And so if you were someone who wanted your film shown in a certain way, that might be a factor that you would consider in ranking this festival over that festival. So the more you can attend film festivals at the beginning, get a filmmaker pass or some way that you can actually really participate, a couple things are going happen. You're going to get the knowledge and insight into how to think about film festivals. You're also going to start meeting industry contacts that help you and will be able to help you further develop your strategy because you're going to meet other filmmakers, you're going to meet other festival programmers because the programmers from who are programming for different festivals often go to other film festivals to look for films to show at their film festival.
Bob Degus:So you would meet potentially some of those people. So that's my first biggest piece of advice. Go to the film festivals, go to the ones that are in your local city, go to some of the bigger ones that you can afford to that are near you and start that process. There's no downside to it, and you're really going to meet people, like I said, and that will help you. So that's the first thing.
Bob Degus:The second step of this is to figure out with these tier one film festivals, Sundance, Toronto, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, pick two or three that you really feel might have a chance to accept your film, Then you're going to want to submit to them. Now the challenging thing of this is they're all at different times of the year, so Berlin I think is in February, Cannes is in May, Toronto is in August, and so if you're submitting to say CAN, then that makes you ineligible for the festivals that are in February, March, and April because you're waiting to hear whether you got into the Cannes Film Festival and you can't show your film prior to that, so that's your festival. Or if maybe you think you've got a great chance at Toronto for these reasons and you're gonna skip Cannes and go to Toronto, then that changes what festivals you can do. So the first thing is to think about the tier one, the dream festivals that you should submit to, because if you do get in, it will be life changing. And then when you don't get in, you have to just understand, well, they got 10,000 submissions, and I tried.
Bob Degus:The second thing is looking at these tier two festivals that are really important. Things like Tribeca, South by Southwest, you know, the Palm Springs Short Film Festival, those are really great respectable film festivals, also very competitive, but they have slightly lower requirements. So for instance, if the Cannes Film Festival wants a world premiere, something like South by Southwest might would be delighted to have the world premiere, but they also would be okay if it was the North American premiere. So you're looking at what are the requirements that they want to accept films and look at again which of those film festivals would be really interested in your project. So just a really clear example for you, if you have a documentary and you want to submit it to a film festival that rarely programs documentaries, well you're probably not going to get in and that's probably a waste of the money for the application and the energy to apply.
Bob Degus:So you want to look at those strategies, and this takes time of researching and reading, and like I said, if you've gone to these film festivals, you have a better sense of what they're programming and what they're looking to program. And then the third are the community film festivals. These again are really exciting because there's way more of them, and often they're very tailored to specific things. If you're a female director, there's a number of great festivals that focus on supporting women in film, and so those are gonna be festivals that you're gonna really want to apply to because you're gonna have a much better chance of getting into those than, say, a male applying to them. So really look at these things, and like I said, you can research this from filmfreeway.com, and it's going to be overwhelming when you first look at it because there's so many festivals, you'll start to see these festivals I would be interested in going to, these festivals are good for my film, festivals aren't, and then you lay all this out on a calendar and you start to make decisions about which festivals are the priority to bring your film to.
Bob Degus:So then you also want to think about your premiere strategy. Where do you want to premiere your film? And that's a really important question because you have this idea. Maybe you wanna premiere it at one of these tier one big A level festivals, But maybe there's a different strategy that would work better for your film, not premiering it in any of those, but premiering it someplace else. And that's something you wanna think about and really include where in your ideal world, where are the top three places that you could do your world premiere and build your strategy around that.
Bob Degus:There isn't an easy answer to this because it's so vast. There's so many festivals in so many countries looking for so many different things. It's really about you taking the time, like you took the time to write your script and you took the time to make and edit the movie. You have to sit down and take the time to look at a festival strategy and figure out which pieces go together in a way that might work well for your film. And then you start applying and you're going to see you either get in or you don't get in or what that strategy is, and you make adjustments to it as you go along.
Bob Degus:One thing that's critically, critically important, especially for short films to keep in mind, if you're thinking of qualifying it and having it considered for the Oscars for the live action short film. It's really important you understand what you cannot do with your short film prior to its Oscar qualifying run. So if you put your short film on YouTube, you've disqualified yourself. If you run it on television, you've disqualified yourself. The Oscars are a theatrical organization, and so the first thing you have to do for the Oscars is have a qualifying theatrical run, and that's running it in a theater for, I think it's seven, for seven consecutive days, something like that, maybe it's four, but look at the OSCAR website to get the exact requirements.
Bob Degus:Once you've done that, then you can put it on YouTube, then you can put it on television. But if you do YouTube first, you've disqualified yourself. And I know a lot of times we would see great films, and when the Academy investigated their journey, they would discover that this had already been on television or this had been on YouTube, and that film that might well have been nominated was disqualified because it didn't meet the requirement. So with your dream festivals and with things like the Oscars and probably BAFTA and any of these awards organizations, really want to take the time to understand what their requirements are and make sure if it's something that's important to you, that you follow those requirements. Because one of the interesting things that makes it so complex is if you do a theatrical run on your film, you've commercially put it in a movie theater, that potentially may disqualify you from other film festivals because you've already had the premiere, it's already been publicly released.
Bob Degus:And film festivals exist in this, you've made your film, you're doing a film festival run, then there's a commercial release, and then there's awards like Oscars. And so you need to really understand how these pieces fit together and how they would fit together best for your film. Because what is the right strategy for one film may not have anything to do with how you see your film coming out and how you want to be sharing your film with the world. But this is a very big complex part of the life of your film that really takes a lot of time to understand it and to think about how you're going to move the different pieces around to bring your film out into the world in the best way that it can. So another thing that I think is important for you to understand about film festivals and film festival programmers are that they're building a program.
Bob Degus:They're not just selecting great films. When we're looking at the Oscars or BAFTA or, you know, the French Caesars, those awards organizations are really looking to find what, in our opinion, is the best films that were made that year. Period. The film festival programmers are really looking to build a group of films that work well together around maybe they have a theme for that year, but they're looking at how do these different films fit together to make a cohesive whole. And again, understanding that, knowing that that's going on, and then knowing what your film is about and how it might fit into that strategy is going to be very helpful.
Bob Degus:They're looking for films that have a very specific point of view, that are films, like I've said many times in this podcast, that really only can be made by that specific person who happened to make it, because that's going to be exciting for them, that's going to give them distinctive films, so they're not just programming a generic bunch of very good films, they're programming things that have a unique perspective and a unique point of view that might be different than what normally gets programmed or normally seen. They're looking for films that serve their audience, and this was something when I first learned this that really surprised me, but like I said earlier in this podcast, many festivals, especially the smaller ones, depend on subscriptions, on the ticket sales from the people who are going. So they're looking to program films that are going to appeal to their audience. And so, you know, if you have the Asian American Film Festival, they're going to be programming something very different than the New Age Film Festival. There might be one or two films that overlap, of course, but in general, they're going to be looking for a different set of films from another festival, because that's how that film festival distinguishes itself from some other film festival.
Bob Degus:And finally, this and this is really, really, really important. The festivals really rely heavily on your submission materials, because if I have to sit down and watch a twenty minute short film or an hour and a half feature, The quicker thing to start with is to read your synopsis that you've submitted, to read the director's statement, to read the different statements that you've written about your film, because I can read those in a minute or two and really get a grasp on your film and and put in my mind, oh, wow. This is really interesting. I I wanna make sure to to pay attention to this film when it when it comes in. So these written materials are critically important.
Bob Degus:One of the great things about Film Freeway is that they have organized all this, so you need a synopsis that's 50 words, you need a synopsis that's two fifty words, you need a director's statement, you need all of these written statements you'll see on the website, and really spend a lot of time thinking about those statements because you have the general public audience for your film, the people that you've made the film for, but you're really in applying to film festivals, your audience is ultimately the programmers who are deciding whether to pick your film or not pick your film. So you wanna be writing materials that are sophisticated, that are showing your film off really well, that give them an idea of who you are as a filmmaker, what your talkback after the film might be like. All of those things go into this, the written materials that you submit with your film, the photographs that go with it, the behind the scenes thing, and I think a website is tremendously important because you can really shape the message of your film through your website. You need a preview reel for it like a trailer.
Bob Degus:You need, you know, who the filmmakers are, who made it, and why they're interesting, and why this film is important, and why people should pay attention to it. You can do a lot of that through your website. So these written materials are incredibly, incredibly important, and I can tell you the synopsis, the short synopsis, is something you should spend a huge amount of time thinking about, because when we're looking at the Oscars, okay, we're going on to watch film 74, and what's it about? And you read this sentence or two, and then if you watch the film and the synopsis is different, there's a dissonance. You're like, wait, what what did I read?
Bob Degus:And so you really want your synopsis to set up the film for the person who's evaluating whether it should be included in the festival or not. I want to take a minute to really focus in on this idea of the director's statement, because it's a really extraordinarily critical piece of the writing that goes into your film and your film submissions. You know, directors, it's not like a diary of making your film. It's not a synopsis, right? It's a window into why this specific story mattered enough to get made.
Bob Degus:And it's the statement that is going to get a programmer really excited about showing your film at their film festival. Now, let me give you an example of what makes a great director's statement. I want to read you two things here. So it's a director's statement needs to be specific and not general. And so what I mean by that, this is specific.
Bob Degus:I made this film because I watched my grandmother lose her language as her dementia progressed, and I needed to understand what was left when words were gone. Okay? That's a director's statement because it's making me think about the film, it's making me think about that moment when dementia comes and we can't speak. That's very interesting. Versus I'm passionate about stories that explore the human condition, which is just really general and non specific.
Bob Degus:Now, of those two statements is going to heighten your interest? Obviously, first one. Now, maybe your film festival isn't interested in doing programming about people with dementia and losing language, but maybe they are. Maybe they're very interested in films like that, or maybe they have two other films that they're programming, and wow, this would fit really nicely with these other films. So this director's statement is incredibly important.
Bob Degus:It needs to be personal from you. It's not a CV. They need to understand why you, specifically you, made this film. It should be short, one page maximum. You have to think of a programmer reading 500 or 1,000 submissions.
Bob Degus:They don't have time for a long dissertation. They want a couple paragraphs, very concise, about why you specifically as a director were drawn to this material and why they why it mattered to you. It should be honest in the sense that it it shows the director's true truth about what why this film was important. It's not this this polished thing. It's almost better to be raw and truthful than a piece of marketing material about your film.
Bob Degus:That's a different aspect of it. This is really and then it should speak in the sense of the way people talk about cinema or the way educated people talk about cinema. And it's those things that are going to make you look professional that are going to, in thirty seconds, get the programmer excited. Yeah, we should watch this film and take it seriously. And so the director's statement is really an incredibly important document, and it's something that you should write and revise and revise and revise just like you did with your script, where you do a first draft and you think it's great and then come back to it a week later and adjust it, maybe share it with some people and get their opinion on it and keep reworking it until you get something really tight that's engaging and interesting that will make festival programmers both want to meet you as a director and also want to program your film or at least watch it to consider programming it.
Bob Degus:So I want to take a minute to share with you specifically about the Oscar submission process and things that you need to keep in mind if you're thinking about submitting the film for Oscar consideration. Like I said earlier in this podcast, the most important thing is to be sure that you don't do anything that would accidentally disqualify your film from Oscar consideration. And that means putting it on YouTube, putting it on television, that the first thing that happens with your film is a theatrical release of the film. One of the challenges is with many film festivals, they have an online version of their film festival. And the last time I read the rules, something like that would disqualify your film from Oscar consideration because it would be shown in its entirety on the Internet.
Bob Degus:There's certain rules about how much of your film can be shown on the Internet. So obviously, you could have a trailer, you could have a scene or two, but you can't show the entire film and there's a certain number of minutes that you're allowed to post, and if you go to oscars.org or you do a Google search and look up the short film submission requirements, you're going to see them listed. They do change every year, so make sure you are reading the requirements that are for the year that you want to be having your film considered. So that's the most important thing. Secondly, please make sure you have all the rights to your film, the rights to the music especially, the rights to the music, and all of the proper professional things that you need to do, all the contracts in place.
Bob Degus:There were a number of films that I've seen over the years that I've been judging that ultimately didn't have the rights to their music and were great films that would have been nominated and ended up being disqualified. The Academy does a really tremendous amount of work verifying that the films have not been shown online, not been shown on television, and looking into the rights issues. So those things are really just immediately important for you to know and to make sure that you've accomplished both of those things if you're serious about submitting your film for Oscar consideration. There's two paths to have your film well, three, actually. There's two paths.
Bob Degus:So the first path is the qualifying theatrical run, and that is having your film showed in a major city, usually it's New York and LA, for a certain number of days, might be four or five days in a commercial theater where people are paying to see your movie. And now you have a theatrically qualified chore, and you can then submit that short film to Oscars organization, the Academy, for consideration. You will need to get some proof that you did that that usually comes from the theater that's run it, and they will verify that. So that's the theatrical run. The second way is by submitting it to what's called a Qualifying Film Festival.
Bob Degus:A qualifying film festival is one of about 40 festivals that have really healthy short films competitions, and if you win first prize, best of festival, at one of those qualifying festivals, then you're also that qualifies you to be considered for the Oscars. The third way is in this podcast, I'll be sharing a number of these films because I always find them really exciting. If you've done a student film that has won the Student Academy Awards, then you're also looked at for winning the Best Live Action Oscar. So those are the three ways, and there isn't one way that's more right or the other, but then all of those films come in and then we would screen them and pick the nominees. Now, again, it's important each year they do change the rules slightly, so you want to listen to me in a general sense, but specifically you want to go and read those rules because they change each year very often, and you want to be making sure that you're doing what is required for that year.
Bob Degus:And there is a submission process that you how you fill out what the forms are to submit your film and how you submit your film. So those things are important to do. And then, you know, the rest of the process, don't have really a lot of control over. It's viewed by a group of people. We the thing I do love about the the Oscar voting is it is private.
Bob Degus:No one's trying to convince someone to vote for for their films, especially in in the short films. You're just watching them as filmmakers and ranking them as you think they should be ranked. And then obviously the shortlist comes out, which is very exciting if you're included in the shortlist. And then it's very sad if you don't get nominated. I read this thing, it's very interesting, Olympic gold medalist, right?
Bob Degus:So you have the gold, the silver, and the bronze, and the most unhappy person is the middle person who won the silver because they're feeling like, oh, I I almost got the gold, but I didn't. And the happiest person, maybe even more happy than the person who won the gold medal, is the the third place bronze medal person because they're like, Oh, thank God I got a medal. And I think that's kind of the journey with these awards is that it's, oh wow, I'm on the shortlist and then I didn't get nominated or I got nominated and I didn't win. And I think the thing you need to keep in mind as an artist is it's somewhat arbitrary because I've been many years where there'll be 10 films that every one of them is worthy of an Oscar nomination, and we have to pick five of them. And how do you do that when there's 10 great ones?
Bob Degus:And then there's other years where the films weren't that strong and we're struggling to find five that are worthy of an Oscar nomination, and we still have to pick five. So it's a very arbitrary thing and I would encourage you not to take it personally, but take it as part of the process of bringing your work into the world and fingers crossed, you know. So that's how this works for the Oscars, and I think it's probably pretty similar for BAFTA and the Caesars. What does this mean for your film right now, and how can you use all of this information I've shared with you immediately? If your film is finished, before you submit it anywhere, you want to answer the four strategic questions that I kind of outlined, which is What kind of film is this?
Bob Degus:Who is it for? What do you want from the festival circuit? That just is really so, I think, important. And what's your submission budget? And when you have those pieces of information, then you can start to look at the Tier one festivals, Cannes, Toronto, those festivals, Sundance, the Tier two festivals, South by Southwest, Tribeca, and the Tier three festivals, and you can build a strategy to navigate through what you think might be the best path for your film.
Bob Degus:Make sure you write a really clear, beautifully written, emotive, fascinating director statement that's gonna make festival programmers want to look at your film. And then, armed with all that information, you can then make intelligent decisions to how to step and move forward. If your film is in production, start researching festivals now. Start looking at where you think that the film might play well, and knowing those things will give you more lead time to develop a really effective strategy to bringing your film into the world. And then if your film is in development or it's an idea that you just have, this is, I think, in many ways, one of the best times to start this process because start going to film festivals, start meeting people, start making those connections, start developing the strategy that's going to bring your film into the world because it goes hand in hand with the question of who is your audience.
Bob Degus:By knowing who your audience is, you know what potential film festivals might be worth submitting to, and then armed with those two things, have a much more effective strategy for bringing it out into the world. I want to kind of close with this idea that this is a very big complex topic with a lot of moving pieces and a lot of things that you as a filmmaker can't control. And so the best thing you can do is make your film and know that that's one part of the journey, and then the second part of the journey is how do you bring it out into the world and be prepared for the strategic thinking you need to be doing and the research and the excitement that comes with getting your film selected at different film festivals. And so this is such a big topic. I'm sure I'm gonna do other podcasts about it further down the road to go deeper into certain aspects of it, but for now I hope this gives you insight and direction in how to best be thinking about positioning your film for taking it out on the festival circuit.
Bob Degus:One more thing, if today's episode sparked something for you, head over to hollywoodfilmcoach.substack.com for the companion piece. It's original writing that goes deeper into the most important idea from today's episode and includes links to every film we've talked about so you can watch them yourself and form your own conclusions. The gap between a good short film and a great one that wins awards is smaller than you think. I'm Bob Degus. This is the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast.
Bob Degus:Be sure to subscribe, follow us, and check out the next episode. Join me for episode nine, The Producer's Eye, How Thinking Like a Producer Makes You a Better Director.
