Looks like you are a new visitor to this site. Hello!
Welcome to Hope For Film! Come participate in the discussion, and I encourage you to enter your email address in the sidebar and subscribe. It's free! And easy! If you have any suggestions on how to improve this website or suggestions for topics please don't hesitate to write in to any of the blogs.
You can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook.
(If you keep getting this message, you probably have cookies turned off.)
I do my best to answer that, address the power of film, and share my favorite film experiences. Give it a listen here: [...]
By Kellie Ann Benz
Okay, I’ll admit it. I think ‘Jersey Shore’ offered some of the best life lessons. I’m not too cool to reveal that I gleaned much from the leg-humping silverbacks who F-bombed their way into obscurity on that cautionary tale of a show.
Replace, if you will, their onenightstandpad with a film festival party, and you can see how they offered all of us a first rate how-NOT-to for which should be grateful.
I cite their example as a sobering reminder for everyone packing for their first film festival.
First, the good news. Film festivals are wicked wild fun. Truly.
Festival attendees are some of the most electric creatives you’ll ever meet – and when actors or actresses are in attendance, some of the most beautiful humans you’ll ever see with your own eyeballs – film festivals offer a throwback to Dominick Dunne-esque invitation only cocktail parties. At the best international festivals, the ribald wits congregate as safe harbour from a cruel, cruel world that only understands their stories when told in a linear three act structure. At the discovery-zone of regional indie festivals, you can feel welcomed into an exclusive club where only the cinematic smarty-pants go.
For the chosen ones with films competing, a film festival is [...]
[tweet https://twitter.com/TedHope/status/276351869205499904]
A couple of weeks back I used Twitter to crowdsource advice on what first time attendees of Film Festivals should do. See the responses below. It makes a decent follow up to yesterday’s post. And if you’d like to be part of future discussions, just follow me on Twitter: @TedHope.
What did you wish you did — but did not do — at your first film festival? What advice can you give someone going for the 1st time?
— Ted Hope (@TedHope) December 5, 2012
The Miami Movie Co.
@TheMiamiMovieCoI wish I’d pirated all the films instead of licensed them, just to show how lame the
@MPAA is. But hey, that’s just me.
talk to EVERYONE.
Enjoy yourself. The business stuff is largely out of your control. Take time to meet people and make connections.
Always easy to forget but especially for the 1st timer… Bring business cards (of some sort). [...]
Ted Hope
FreelanceLies 
Don Hardy 
Gary Ploski By Melanie Coombs
FIRST TIME AT THE FEST: 20 Guidelines* for a successful Market or Festival (*Producers don’t do Rules; ‘everything is negotiable’)
Over the last decade I have assisted new Producers as they attend their first market or festival. Here are 20 tips to help you enjoy the event while looking after yourself, your project and your professional reputation.
1. PRODUCING IS NOT COOL – tragically for us all, if you haven’t been completely humiliated you probably haven’t really financed your project. Be warm, not cool, and be all the things that make you a Producer – an Advocate, an Enthusiast, an Eccentric, a Charmer and an Artist.
2. PRODUCING IS NOT A COMPETITIVE SPORT – help each other. It is so rare that you are ever genuinely competing with your fellow producers – you have different taste, projects, Directors and are approaching different investors at different times. By working as a friendly colleague you will not only help others but will get their help in return. And you wont be alone as you go about the often frightening business of pitching into the marketplace for the first time.
3. DO NOT PITCH UNLESS ASKED TO DO SO. [...]
Tweet
Last week I gave the keynote at the International Film Festival Summit in Austin, Texas. You now have a chance to watch the video of it. Check it out here.
You also get the Q&A — which is always my favorite part of any talk. Here it is: why do we have so many festivals? Why are we neglecting the youth? How can we best address student work? How can niche festivals remain competitive when distributors favor the larger ones?
If text is more your bag, Indiewire ran the first part here, and HopeForFilm (that’s me btw) ran the second part.Tweet
Yesterday I gave the Keynote Address at the International Film Festival Summit in Austin, Texas. You can read the speech on Indiewire here. Or watch the video here. I ended the talk with a host of questions — 12 to be exact, and they follow below.
The abundance of questions I’ve raised, point that we have a tremendous opportunity to unlock all ta new power of film festivals — and I certainly can brainstorm with you they myriad of ways that can be done –but if we seek to begin to recognize the boundaries we can push at the festival level, I want to first shower you with even more questions — not answers — as I suspect they will allow far more solutions to flower.
I have twelve questions I am going to be pondering this year when I look at our festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, when I come to your festivals, and when I hear the tales of the intrepid filmmaker / traveller ushering their film from one festival to another: [...]
This site could not have been built without the help and insight of Michael Morgenstern. My thanks go out to him.
Help save indie film and give this guy a job in web design or film!
