INTERIOR Festival Strategy

GOAL STATEMENT: The goal of my festival strategy is not necessarily to "sell" the film, but to attach a sort of brand qualifier to the film. In addition, getting into some of these festivals will have great networking opportunities.

STRATEGY: No Sundance, No Tribeca, No unrealistic festivals. Solely genre fests, and as many of them as I can afford. The plan is to submit my film along with two short films, so hopefully one of the projects makes it in. Once in, network, shill, give out screeners, etc.

FESTIVALS:

Fantastic Fest ( www.fantasticfest.com )
Years: 10
Earlybird Feature Submission: $35 (April)
The Creme de la creme of genre fests, the most important one to get into. One of the three most important in the world. As a veteran of this fest, I hope that will translate into an advantage. Only problem, it's getting so big that most of the features shown are already established films from other fests.

Toronto After Dark ( www.torontoafterdark.com )
Years: 9
Earlybird Feature Submission: $50 (April)
One of the other three most important, showing more horror centric films from around the world.

Fantasia Festival ( www.fantasiafestival.com )
Years: 17
Earlybird Feature Submission: $50 (February)
Late Feature Submission: $70 (April)
This is the last of the three, and comes before Fantastic Fest, which ends up getting a lot of the films from this fest.

Screamfest LA ( www.screamfestla.com )
Years: 14
Earlybird Student Feature Submission: $50 (April)
This festival has a lot going for it. 1) It's in LA. 2) It has a student category. 3) It's the festival that discovered Paranormal Activity, another micro-budget feature you may have heard of.

Florida Film Festival
Years: 23
Earlybird Feature Submission: No submission fee. Played Florida in 2012.
Home turf, they have midnight features, and they spotlight Florida filmmakers occassionally. Also, thought I'd submit to at least one of those "normal" fests. Also have slight advantage having played there with Séance.