Film Festival question. Please help!

[bugzilla]

OK. I've read Chris Gore's "Film Festival Survival Guide" and every article I can get my hands on about planning a festival strategy, so I know in theory how I should plan out a festival strategy.

My problem is that I don't see my film fitting into the standard film festival strategy. I am working on a feature length CG animated epic fantasy which I am producing in a serialized format. Chapter I is finished and I want to release it at festivals and/or online to get feedback, exposure and hopefully build an audience when all the chapters are finally released as a feature film.

I have several concerns about doing this. One is will most festivals accept a "short" which does not have a self-contained story? In general, do they care if the story does not have a conclusion but ends with a "TO BE CONTINUED..." Since this is the first chapter there will be no confusion about story or character, it will just end on a cliffhanger.

Another concern is that since parts of the film will have already screened at past festivals will this ruin my chances of getting a premier at a major festival when the feature is complete?

Animation takes a looong, loooong time to produce. I really need to get something screened to keep my passion up for such a long project. I don't care about festival awards. I just want to get a public audience reaction. Any thoughts?

 

[knightly]

Rent a theater in your area that does dvd projection and hold a screening. My Local theater that does this is about $200 / showing. If you advertise (local papers should give you tons of exposure...they're starved for local positive content), you can probably get enough folks at $2-5 a seat to fill it up...or just consider the expense advertising and let them in for free and have them fill out comment cards.

 

[indietalk]

If you submit it to festivals don't call it a work in progress, call it part one of a trilogy or something.

 

[bugzilla]

Rent a theater in your area that does dvd projection and hold a screening. My Local theater that does this is about $200 / showing. If you advertise (local papers should give you tons of exposure...they're starved for local positive content), you can probably get enough folks at $2-5 a seat to fill it up...or just consider the expense advertising and let them in for free and have them fill out comment cards.

I would consider four-walling it if the entire feature film was complete, but I won't go through that to show what is Chapter I of a 4-5 part series. I just got word back from one of the festivals that they accept work-in-progress which is what I will consider all the Chapters of my film from now until the feature is finally released. My hope is that festival goers will be intrigued by the first few chapters and build interest for the release of the completed feature. I just don't want to knock myself out of contention to some of the larger festivals by having screened previous segments of the film.


Does anyone have any experience screening work-in-progress at festivals and did that help or hurt you when you approached bigger festivals later on?

 

[filmscheduling]

I would say the only important thing is to get it in front of people and hope that they like it enough to recommend to their friends or check the webiste out. Shorts competitions at festivals are lower key and friendlier than the feature competitions - I would recommend screening one episode as a short at the festivals if you don't have 75 minutes finished yet of episodes. I would say get your material out there sooner rather than later and start a feedback loop with your audience.