The Film Festival Experience

I've been in two film festivals in my life. One in New York and one in Los Angeles. Not bad for a film that wasn't supposed to even be a real film at all. It was actually made for a friend of mine, Christian Johnstone's actors reel. A reel to show what performances the actor has been in. He had been know as a comedic actor most of his career and wanted to show a different side of his skills. He came to me with an idea. It was a pretty intense piece about a child molester so he really was looking to go in a different direction. We shot it in one afternoon, edited in about a week and put it on his reel. Done.

After you look at something over and over while editing it starts to lose what made it interesting in the first place. That changes over time and so I pulled it out again a few weeks later to look at it and found that it had actually been one of my best pieces as far as cinematography and editing and started to see it as it's own piece with a potential audience in that great equalizer YouTube. After posting it I kind of forgot about it. Then something strange started happening. I started getting a large reaction all of the sudden, like it was being passed around or at least viral on a very limited basis. The problem was the reaction was not good. Not that it was being called bad cinema, it was the subject matter itself. I was getting death threats from people that thought it might be real. If you've never received a death threat before, it can be a little disturbing, especially since all of my information was on YouTube for anyone to find. I put a disclaimer on it explaining the subject matter and not to watch it if it's going to offend you, but people continued to watch and comment. Some actually good reactions because of the acting or the photography. I eventually got an email from YouTube that they felt it was against their policy of displaying certain material (of what I don't know) and actually removed it temporarily. I wrote back with my best freedom of speech knowledge from high school that I could muster and they actually relented and put it back up without any explanation.

It was at this point that I thought it might have potential other than YouTube and brought it to the attention of a representative of the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. She loved the reaction it was getting and immediately wanted me to submit it to their film committee. I received a letter from them with generally positive reviews and was surprised that they wanted this actors reel clip for their festival. No one was more shocked than me. I immediatly started getting together promotional material (because this is what I was told to do by the festival people) and made a facebook page and invited all my friends. I found that a strange thing happens to artists at some point. No one, not even your friends are as excited about what you've done as you are and you really have to work at getting them interested enough to come. I've heard this from writers, painters, photographers, etc. All your friends are very supportive until it actually comes to seeing something you've done. it's very disheartening, but it's part of the game to get them there. I admit to being guilty of it myself when a friend's band might be playing or someone has written a play, sometimes it's hard to generate the energy to go and I feel bad because I would want them to come see my work. I also had to deal with jealousy issues from another filmmaker, but that's a story for another time. As the screening day arrived for my film I was actually happily surprised by the people that did make it. It was not a huge crowd, but a good crowd of people, mostly friends that were there because of something I did and that was a good feeling. There were others there to see the other films showing in my block also that I didn't know. The actual worst part for me is the introduction of one's film to the audience. This has never been my strong suit and try to avoid it at all costs. Ten years ago I had directed a comedy. We rented our own space and a bartender for a private screening. The place was packed. As the film was about to start, I had a sudden urge to leave the room and didn't want to be there so I left. What should have been my shining moment and I was gone. It was only after hearing people laughing at the funny parts that I could bring myself to come back to the party. This year was no different. When asked to say a few words I begged my actor to get up and say something profound. As grateful as I was for him doing this he actually only said about 20 words and I thought "I could have done that", but was eternally grateful. As it turned out the film generally got a good response but I couldn't tell if it was from my friends being there (probably) or because they actually thought it was good. Very confusing, but satisfying at the same time. It was over and I could relax.

Then I got a call from the Los Angeles NYII Film Festival. They were looking for a short drama and had wanted me to submit to them as well. The process started all over again, but this time it was LA and I felt more pressure to do something out of the ordinary and more interesting visually with the art to get some kind of attention for the film. Turns out most people use these advertising postcards you painstakingly create as beer coasters anyway at opening parties. Oh, they might look at them, but whether they remember anything they read is debatable. I was actually in LA by myself, no one to lean on this time. I went to the parties and seminars and meetings telling myself how good I was being instead of hanging by the pool all day. The very first seminar was about distribution of films, I was the first one there and was actually wondering if I was in the right place. The waitress knew nothing of a meeting but as I was looking over my information again a man in a black leather jacket came through the door and said he was there for the film festival and they all jumped to attention. I think he could tell I was either lost or confused and probably both and came up and introduced himself as Stuart, a name I recognized. He asked me where I was from and if I had a film in the festival and I said I did. He seemed unusually interested and wanted to know the name. I told him Short Eyes and gave him a postcard for the film. He got a look of recognition on his face and said "I know that one, it's the one with the pedophile in the playground". I was amazed that he knew this information. Turns out his name was Stuart Alson, not only the head of the film festival, but the editor of IFQ, International Film Quarterly, the official magazine of the Cannes Film Festival. Here's a man that had seen over 100 films for this festival alone and he remembered mine. He turned to me and said "Great poster". Before I could pick up my jaw from the floor, the others for the seminar started to pour in.

After that, the screening itself which was a couple days later was pretty uneventful. I had a great lead in film before mine, but was a little worried because I knew no one in LA and didn't invite anyone. Turns out about half the crowd from the first film left, but still left a big enough crowd for me to be reasonably happy. This time I had to get up and say the 20 word introduction myself and rambled through something, I'm not quite sure what I said but people applauded. I always worry about the reaction to this film because of the subject matter, some people are appalled, others blase' it all depends. I left the theater that day feeling alright about the crowd and their reaction.

Next up I've applied to the Chicago International Film Festival. Am I up for all this again? Do I want to keep flogging this movie that really has no chance for distribution? Is it going to get anyone's attention? Is it all getting a little old? I really want to do something new but it's not that easy. Maybe we'll wait to hear from the Chicago Festival first....