Navigating the Film Festival Circuit w/ Jon Fitzgerald

In this episode, Jeff Everett sits down with Jon Fitzgerald — filmmaker, festival founder, former AFI Festival Director, and president of Cause Pictures — to break down the real strategy behind submitting to and succeeding on the film festival circuit.

Jon shares how he co-founded Slamdance after being rejected by Sundance, and how decades of festival experience have shaped his expertise in submission strategy, credibility building, audience targeting, and festival networking.

Together, Jeff and Jon explore how filmmakers can identify their goals, design custom submission plans, understand the differences between top-tier, regional, and destination festivals, and avoid the traps of meaningless awards and low-impact screenings. They also discuss strategies for getting on programmers’ radar, hospitality considerations, and how real distribution often happens outside of Sundance-level events.

Jon closes with insights into today’s evolving indie landscape — emphasizing that while Hollywood feels uncertain, independent filmmakers have more opportunity than ever if they’re willing to think entrepreneurially and creatively about screenings, audiences, and post-festival life. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lots of filmmakers struggle with what festivals to submit their
films to, how many festivals, how much to pay for
the submissions, the order that they should submit. The festival
submission process can be very confusing and if you get
it wrong, you can mess things up for your film.

(00:20):
So it's good to speak to an expert who kind
of knows their way around festival submissions and how and
which festivals to basically submit to and why. So today
we're very happy to have John FitzGeralds join the show
because he is an expert in this area and we're

(00:40):
going to learn a lot. If you want to be
a successful indie filmmaker, you need to know a lot
about not just the production of movies, but the business.
We are going to tell you the truth and reality
of what really happens in the indie film business. Hi, everybody,

(01:04):
welcome back to Indie Filmmaking Truth and Reality. I'm your host,
Jeff Deverett, and today we have a special guest with us,
John Fitzgerald, who is the president of cos Media, and
he is an expert in film festival what I'm going
to call navigation submission understanding. How to navigate the film

(01:25):
festival circuit. I myself have struggled with this for years.
I'm always confused as to which festivals I should submit to,
what order, what's important, what isn't important. So, John, welcome
to the show. Thanks for coming on, and I've got
so many questions for you, but let's start with just
can you introduce yourself and tell us kind of who

(01:45):
you are and how you bill yourself?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Sure? Well, first of all, thanks for having me jet.
It was nice meeting you last year at the conference downtown,
so it's cool to come full circle here. Yeah. So
the short version of the story is myself and two
other filmmakers in nineteen ninety four submit to Sundance and
didn't get in, so we started the slam Dance Film Festival.

(02:12):
So kind of by accident, I became a festival director.
I ended up taking over the event in ninety six
and seven as executive director, and from there went on
to the AFI and became their festival director. Run a
number of festivals since then, and after I'm going to say,

(02:32):
Santa Barbara, I realized that there were just too many
film festivals. And we'll get in and get into that
in a minute about just how many more there are now,
But at the time when we started slamming, there were
less than five hundred, and by the time we got
to two thousand and three, they were over twenty five hundred.

(02:52):
And I was constantly talking to filmmakers and helping them
map out their strategy. So I realized, you know what,
there's a business here. I started a business and basically
consulting the filmmakers and helping them map out the right strategy,
which vessels submit to and why. And I also helped
a lot of film festivals because I'd obviously learned how

(03:13):
to do that from scratch. So I had a business.
I helped Gasparilla, the Bahamas, Naples, Abu Dab, I helped
a bunch of vessels in their early years to kind
of establish themselves. So I kind of became the festival guy,
kind of by accident. And then I eventually wanted to
make films again, and so I gravitated more towards what

(03:35):
I would call social impact films and wrote a book
called Filmmaking for Change, did a half a dozen documentaries,
some of them you know by Magnolia and Gravitas. You know,
they've all they've all seen festivals obviously, and and and
been distributed, and then I eventually kind of moved into

(03:56):
more kind of entrepreneurial spaces. I'm a co founder of
a few differentvents and just like to have as much
support as I can in different categories for filmmakers. So
I do panels quite a bit. I just get back
from London doing a panel there on distribution and working
with a company called Hike that we'll talk about later

(04:16):
that's going to take on film Freeway. So that's kind
of exciting. Oh and a couple other really exciting startups.
And I do a blog that you probably know about
called on the fest Circuit that goes out to I
don't know, seventy thousand plus people. So that's the short
version of what I'm up to.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
All Right, thank you for that. You just mentioned film Freeway.
I'm going to assume that most filmmakers have heard of
film Freeway, but I'll explain it then you can go
into details. So if you're wanting to submit to festivals,
film Freeway is basically a website app app that you
can use to register your film and basically submit it

(04:54):
to thousands of festivals. Now I have recently submitted John,
I made two films last year. Submitted them both to festivals.
When I first without filtering, because you'll explain filtering and
all this kind of stuff. Without filtering, I think there
was fourteen thousand, three hundred and fifty festivals or something
like that, some live, some online. I mean over fourteen

(05:15):
thousand festivals. You just gave the numbers when you started
with five hundred. I mean, how do you figure this out?
How do you navigate it?

Speaker 2 (05:23):
What do you do? I'll just say, you're right, it's
a really big number now. But one of the reasons
why this new company is so exciting is that I
think the truth is they're probably closer to seven thousand
film festivals, but film Freeway isn't really good at policing them,
and there's a lot of scams. There's a lot of festivals.
I was hired to start a festival on the Queen

(05:45):
Mary of All Places a few years ago. We shut
it down because the company ran out of money. They
still send me emails saying are you ready for your
new call for entries? So they just don't police it
very well. They've been bought and sold three times in
the last five years. It's just it's a mess. And
even though functions it's not very clean. And they do
do screenplay competitions now too, which is also I think

(06:08):
part of that number. What I tell filmmakers is I
do this course called Film Festival Mastery with my partner
Justin and basically we do this webinar where we break
down what we call the three keys. The first key
is understanding your goals, the second key is getting on
the radar, and the third is really how to participate,

(06:30):
how to make the most of that opportunity when you
show up at a festival. So to start back from
scratch is to build a custom strategy for your film.
You have to know what your goals are. As you know, Jeff,
a lot of filmmakers are making shorts as a calling card.
Sometimes they're making even an independent feature as a calling card.
They don't care how much money to make. I was
at this festival rain Dance in London. A guy made

(06:53):
a film for three thousand bucks. He's like, I'm just
going to make this on the cheap and hopefully I'll
get to make the next one with more money. By
the point is, you can scrape together funds to get
a movie made now, but what are you trying to
accomplish with your festival circuit. Are you trying to sell it?
Are you trying to just get laurels for your poster?
Are you trying to meet other filmmakers you can network with.

(07:14):
Once you know what your goals are, then you do
the research and you think through, Okay, so I want
to play industry festvls can look in to sell my film,
or I'm trying to play to packed houses because i
want feedback. I want to qualify for Oscars. Sometimes short
filmmakers are looking for that. Once you know what the
different festivals are, right, there's industry festivals, community festivals, destination festivals.

(07:37):
You can map out your strategy and you can kind
of look into the articles that are on Indie Wire
and movie Maker and you can use that kind of
as a place to start. I think it's always helpful
if the festl's been around a while. Most credible festivals
that mean something if you put those layls in your poster,
have been around for fifteen, twenty, even thirty years. The

(08:00):
regional festivals, in my opinion, is really where it's at
because these guys have been around long enough they know
what their communities want to see. They know how to
take care of filmmakers because they've been around a while,
and most of them have hotel partners, right, so they
can put you up. Because that's another thing when you're
researching festivals you want to go If networking is part
of your goal strategy, then you want to go to

(08:23):
festivals that can actually invite you out right put you up.
That's where you meet people. You can meet potential investors,
you can meet panelists. I did a panel in the Bahamas.
They had two senior executives, one from Netflix and one
from Amazon on the same panel. So it's like you
can meet people, you can network with other filmmakers, but
you have to know. You can look at the website,

(08:43):
what kind of films they're showing, how long they've been around.
So it kind of starts with that. In terms of
goals categories, do your research I think is critical.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Okay, let me interrupt you for a second. So maybe
I'm you know, I'm uber focused on sort of distribution
and commercial viability of filmmaking, So what I'm about to
say is maybe a little bit convenient from my personal agenda.
But I got to assume that most filmmakers have two
goals in mind. One is they want accolades, They want

(09:15):
to be they want their film being celebrated, they want
people to recognize it. Like, this is what I call
artistic success is basically somebody saying, Wow, that's a great
film and congratulations, you did a good job as an artist.
That would be one goal. And then the second goal
is ultimately a financial goal. How do I get it
in front of distributors, in front of streamers? Like, ultimately,

(09:39):
I think a lot of filmmakers that I speak to
want to go to a festival with the hope that
their film will get screened and discovered, so it'll get distributed,
so it will eventually be in front of a lot
of audiences and make money. To me, those would be
the two goals. One artistic being everybody celebrating your film
and two making money with it.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Well, let me tell you two things that may or
may not be obvious to people. There was a time
right after sexalizing videotape, and then we had another wave
with the streamers and Amazon, Netflix descending on Park City,
thrown down big minimum guarantees, buying a ton of movies
out of the festival. Last year. I think there were

(10:17):
less than a handful of sales out of Sundance. So
there's this giant misconception that you have to play an
industry festival of which you can count on two hands
to sell your movie. I mean, we could have a
whole separate podcast when I could go down a list
of movies that have been acquired on the festal circuit,
and not one of them that I would talk about

(10:40):
was acquired at one of those industry festivals. It's about
establishing credibility. You play Newport, Mill Valley, Cleveland, Chicago. There's
a ton of great regional festivals that have been around
a long time that have strong programmers, right, so industry
professionals can say, look, got Laurels from Newport, must be

(11:02):
a decent film. So it really matters which fessels you play.
You talk about the idea of awards, Yes, that's true.
I can't tell you how many filmmakers reach out to
me after they've gotten invited even once. Some awards at
festls I've never even heard of, first, second, third year events.
Those awards mean zero.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Make the filmmaker feel good, you know it does.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
But most of these filmmakers are trying to make a
movie and advance their career, whether they're going to sell
it to a twenty four or use an aggregator to
get it on iTunes, whatever the case may be, they
want to move their career forward. You send a press
kit with a bunch of laurels on it from fessels
that are meaningless. These distributions laugh at you.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
So it's almost a negative.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Would you say, well, yeah, absolutely, because not only that
you're using up those cards, there's like twenty five fessels
in la Now twenty of them are an absolute waste
of time. So if you're looking for credibility, if you
just want to tell mom and dad you got this
cool prize, right right, that's great. But if you're trying

(12:08):
to advance your career, then you want to win something
at a festival that means something.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
So credibility meaning that if you are at a legitimate,
credible festival and you are recognized or even just even
just being there, yeah yeah, even you were accepted to
the festival, then a distributor or an agent will recognize
that and say that this film is at a certain
caliber because it got into this festival. Is that the

(12:33):
credibility we're talking Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
And Let's say, for example, that you played some strong
regional festivals. I'll give you an example. A film called
Breaking Bread. Didn't get into Sundance, didn't get into Toronto,
didn't get into south By Southwest, but it played NAPA,
won an award, played Santa Barbara, played a bunch of

(12:55):
respectable events, and eventually the Cohen Media Group bought the film.
Didn't buy it out of an industry festival. It tracked
the progress. It was interested in the film. The filmmaker
reached out to them. They had a press kit with
laurels on it that means something. They took a look
at the film and they made them an offer. They
had a bunch of offers, but that was the company
that made the most sense. But the point is it

(13:17):
didn't necessarily have an acquisition at an industry festival. It
was generating momentum, positive reviews, laurels from credible events, and
then you use that in your materials and that's how
you generate interest and awareness in selling your film. And
by the way, even if you don't sell the film
to them, you now have the momentum. This is a

(13:39):
whole other podcast, right, It's like, Okay, I just played festivals.
What's next? So even if you don't get acquired, you
may have some ammunition now right, and some momentum. So
now you can go out to these companies with some
credible laurels on your breast kit and say, look, look
this is where I played. These credible programmers wanted my movie,
so they'll take a look at it, and if it's

(14:00):
not for them, maybe it's the next project.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
You keep saying industry festivals or something. What's the term?
You using industry events? So what's a different treeen to
say an industry event and a non industry one, like
a consumer one.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Well, when I say industry, I mean the festivals where
there are predominantly industry professionals flocking to look for discovery
and content, whether they're buying a film or they're signing
a new actor or director. So you've got sun Dance Toronto,
Tell your Ride can Berlin. You know again, you can
count these on two hands. But these are the festivals

(14:36):
that have more industry than anything else. I mean, I
guess you could argue Toronto has a very strong community
as well. Right, they're really good at separating the two.
There's industry screenings where you use your industry badge, and
then there's screenings for the general public, which is, you know,
they do it better there than anywhere else. But for
the most part, if you go up and down the

(14:58):
sidewalks of Tell Your Ride, you're going to see more
industry professionals than.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
You are consumers. Yeah, I okay, that's what I okay. Now, realistically,
before we move on to the next thing, how realistic
is it for an indie film, no recognizable talent, sort
of low budget but good film, you know, legitimately entertaining
film to get accepted into one of those festivals. The
acceptance rates that I've been reading about.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Are less than one percent.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
I thought it was less than point one percent.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
I mean it's less than half a percent. Yeah, to
get into Sundance or slam Dance. I can't give you
the numbers for Tell Your Ide, but it's pretty low.
It's low, so it's low. It's less than five percent.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
Filmmakers should not kind of like a lot of filmmakers
say to me, here's my plan. I make a good film,
it gets into Sundance, it gets recognized by an industry professional,
and gets distruy. I mean, come on, seriously, that's like
saying plan. Yeah, that's like saying my plan is to
win the lottery.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, don't plan for those festivals. You plan around those vessels.
And frankly, you know, this is a big consideration. When
I talk to clients, I have a service. I do
a film festival consulting passage, right. I charge a fee,
They send me their film, We set up a call,
we talk about their goals. Based on their goals and
their timing, then I put together a custom spreadsheet that

(16:10):
has the dates of de ends, everything, and then I
work with them on their materials. And then once they
submit to certain fessels, I reach out to the vessels
and make sure they get seen. Because the second big key,
which we haven't talked about yet, is getting on the radar. Right,
A lot of films aren't even getting seen anymore. This
is a whole other problem. But the point is is
once you submit to these festivals, you have to accept

(16:32):
the fact that you For example, the fall season is
the biggest season, the most festivals, and frankly the biggest
concentration of strong festivals. Let's say you're submitting to Sundance,
but they're not notifying you until late fall, but you
get invited to a new Port or a mill Valley

(16:52):
or an Austin or one of these other really strong festivals.
Are you really going to pass up those opportunities because
you're hoping for some dance. So I tell clients, absolutely not,
you take those invitations, but you'd be surprised. A lot
of these filmmakers just hold out for Sundance. They skip
all those opportunities, then they don't get into Sundance, and

(17:12):
then they got to start over.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah. Just by the way, some filmmakers are listening and
they're saying, well, why can't they do both? And the
answer is that Sundance you have to be a world premiere.
If you accept any other invitation that goes before Sundance,
you disqualify yourself from Sundance. Correct.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Correct For Sundance, for sure, they need a premiere. There
are other festivals that just need a US premiere or
a regional premiere. But you know, the other thing that
a lot of filmmakers make mistakes in is they play
a smaller festival that invites them in a certain region
and then it takes them out of the running. Like
they'll play a smaller festival in lac So are so

(17:47):
excited and now they've missed an opportunity for dances with
films or AFI or one of the bigger ones. And
the same for you know, New York or Texas. Right
these cities, there are certain cities have tons of festivals.
You got to be careful because if a festival plays
it in that region, none of the other festivals in
that region are going to play it.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Right, right, So there is this exclusivity thing that goes on.
Some of it's published, some of it's probably unspoken or
just you have to understand it. Okay, So John, just
before you go in, So now you take a client
on they have a film. Let's say it's me, And
the first thing I would say to you is which
festivals should we even submit to? Like obviously you know
which one. So let's take out all the non credible

(18:31):
ones are the ones that don't even exist. I mean,
like you just said, of the fourteen thousand i'd identified,
maybe only seven thousand are even real. Half of them
aren't even real. So how do you know?

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Or well, I've got a list of roughly five hundred
festivals and I really focus on usually a two hundred
of them and depending on again, on the goals, depending
on the filmmaker, how many film festivals they want to
submit to. Some will submit to over one hundred festivals.

(19:03):
Some people don't have a budget for that. It is
short and they really want to qualify for OSCAR consideration.
Then you bundle a combination of some of the top
OSCAR qualifying festivals with some other festivals that I would
say are more of a Tier three festival that are
easier to get into, but are equally well, maybe not

(19:24):
quite equally, but almost equally credible right where it's worth
your time. You don't want to go to a festival
because you were able to get in and then you
show up and there's five people in the theater.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
That recently happened to me, that happens here. You go, oh, yeah,
I was at a festival recent I won't even say
because I don't want to taint anything, but there were
lots and lots of people at the festival, but nobody
was going to the screenings. The screenings were empty. And
I'm talking, you know, two o'clock in the afternoon, five o'clock,
seven o'clock, and nine o'clock. All the screenings there were

(19:58):
five to ten people in every screening, and some of
the films were good, and it was.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
A lot of these. The other thing there's an issue
for these kind of what i'll call fourth and fifth
tier festivals and sometimes even tier three does this is
the festival has to know what the capacity is for
their audiences, and that has to help dictate how many

(20:24):
screens you have going at the same time. And this
may not make a lot of sense to some of
your listeners right off the top, but if you think
about it, if you're going into a multiplex where there
are five screens going on at the same time, but
you're a fairly new festival, it doesn't have ten or
twenty thousand attendees, yet you're going to have a situation
right where one or two of those films is probably

(20:46):
going to get the lion's share of audience, right, the
one that sounds the most interesting, the one that had
the most press, the one that you know was hustling
with their postcards or what have you, and and some
of those other films are going to struggle. And so
it's this weird balance right as a festival director, how
many screens can I have going at one time so

(21:06):
that I can give my filmmakers a chance to actually
have an audience, and it's hard sometimes if you're only
playing on a three or four day stretch right Thursday night,
opening night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. That's kind of the average
thing these days. Well, if I only have two screens,
I've only got you know whatever, ten slots a day

(21:27):
times three, you know what I mean. It's not a
lot of movies. So they add another screen. Yeah, but
they can have more movies, but it's counterproductive if nobody comes.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Which is and it's demoralizing for the filmmaker.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Very Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Okay, so we started with the goals. You assess the goals,
then you're gonna choose sort of which festivals you want
to submit to. But obviously you know the good ones,
and on average, say somebody has a budget for festivals,
you know what would be kind of an average type
of submission.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Twenty I think it's on average, like thirty to forty
festivals is probably the sweet spot because again, you want
to have a creative combination of some of the top
line festivals. Maybe it's not Sun Dance or Tell Your Ride,
but other festivals that show a lot of movies, you know,
hot Dogs, has a ton of documentaries, Toronto has a

(22:20):
ton of films. Seattle has a lot of movies. South
By Southwest. These aren't easy festivals to get into, but
the odds are better than five percent, you know that,
you know are one percent. So sometimes you put some
of those on your list and hope for the best.
And then you put in some second tier festivals, and
then you put some third tier festivals as long as
they're credible, and you try and do it in waves.

(22:43):
So you do, you know, call it half a dozen,
and you tick a few of those categories off, and
then you see how you do. Do you get shut out?
Then maybe your next wave is just tier three and
tier four. Sometimes I talk to a client who says, look,
I only want to play ten to fifteen festivals, and
they have to be first tier or second tier. I've

(23:04):
done this before. I don't want to waste time with
these third tier festivals. I got a family, I'm not
traveling over the world to network. I just want to
get some credible laurels on my poster to try and
sell my movie. So I would structure their list accordingly.
But some filmmakers are like, look, I just got out
of film school. I want to travel as much as
I can. I'm a family yet, and if they'll stick

(23:25):
me in a hotel room, I'll get there. And they
want a network and they want to meet me, so
they might submit to fifty seventy five festivals. So it
really kind of depends again back to the goals of
what you're trying to get out of that festival run.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Realistically, aren't festivals paying for filmmakers to attend. I mean,
I haven't seen that in a long time.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Most of them aren't paying everything. Most credible festivals have
hotel deals, so whether they're putting the filmmaker up for
three nights or they're getting a strong discount for the
filmmaker for three nights. Most festivals don't have airline deals. Now.
I mean, if you're a top tier festival, you've got

(24:04):
a budget to fly people out and put them up.
But that's important too. You know. One of the things
that I always ask filmmakers when we're talking about the
goals is how many festivals do you want to attend?
If hospitality is important to you, then you want to
go to a festival that has a strong hospitality program, right,
that has some hotel deals or comp hotel rooms that

(24:25):
has happy hours and brunches and receptions. You need to
go to the ones that actually have a reputation for that.
I have this thing on the circuit. I count down
like the top ten hospitality festivals, you know, festivals that
are known for taking care of filmmakers, where filmmakers have
a good.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Time and paying though like, well, maybe not the whole ticket.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yet, most of them will cover your hotel for a
few nights, and at the very least they'll give you
some discounted rates at those hotels.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Right, so, I find that all of them have a
big awards ceremony at the end of the festival, you know,
which is the big hoopla. But you have to pay
for that, mind you. I guess if you're a nominee,
you don't have to pay for it.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
It depends on the festival. I won't name names either,
but I know there are a few vessels that actually
charge for that. I've never done that. I think it's insulting.
You have to be able to invite your filmmakers to
come to the award ceremony in any vessel that's charging
for that. I frown on that heavily and there's some

(25:23):
that take it to an extreme where they literally say
you're required to come to the awards ceremony and you
got to pay this, and yeah, that's where you kind
of start thinking, hmmm, is this festival really worth my time?

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Okay? In terms of strategy, so there is a strategy
obviously you're talking about which ones to submit to. Now,
is there a strategy in your submission on how to
submit to get to the top of the pile to
people like you who have all this kind of insider
knowledge and maybe you can't even talk about this, Are
you able to make a call to get one one

(26:00):
film higher in the like I call it the pile,
you know, in terms of being recognized, not necessarily chosen,
but at least screened or whatever in front of something else.
Is there something?

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, what I do, because I've been around long enough,
I know a lot of festival directors and a lot
of programmers. So what I tell my clients is if
the film is decent, right, I don't do it. If
it's a film that I don't think has a prayer
of getting in, because it's my reputation on the line
too at that at that point. But I do for

(26:33):
the most part, agree to reach out to film festivals
that I know and say, look, here's you know, film X,
and I always submitted and it's worth a look, And
I'll be honest, you know, sometimes I push a little
bit harder. Sometimes I'll say, this is a terrific film,
you'd be lucky to have it kind of thing, and

(26:53):
they're looking for their world premiere. Still, so sometimes I
push it a little harder than others. But I feel,
you know, wearing my festival director hat, I still feel
like it's my job. Somebody paid paid us money to
submit their film, we owe it to them to watch
their their movie. Most often, if I have a relationship

(27:14):
with a festival that's on a list that I've sent
to a client, I'll reach out to that film festival
and at least make sure that I've done what I
could to at least get it on their radar. And
sometimes it's as easy as you know, here's a trailer.
It's something I tell people has become more and more important.
A lot of times, these film festivals have like seniors

(27:36):
that are film fans or film students, and some of
these folks, unfortunately, if they're not if they're not into
it right away. You can track Vimeo stats these days, right,
and a lot of times it's a little questionable, but
a lot of times it's true. And you could see
that this personally watched three minutes of it. So I
feel like if you lean into the trailer idea and

(27:59):
your material and send out a notice eight ten weeks
from the notification date saying, you know, whatever your excuse
might be, I have this whole thing on the radar,
you know, this whole module and our course about getting
on the radar. What's the angle? What's the approach that
you shoot the film? There? Are you from there? Is
one of your actors from there? What's the approach? What's

(28:21):
the angle? Did a film that come out of there
did really well kind of fit in the same same
style or genre as your film? Like, what is the approach?
You don't want to just send a form letter saying
I've heard great things about your festival. If I can
play there, what is the approach? And then send a
link to the trailer And if you have a trailer
that's compelling, that might help improve your chances of getting seen.

(28:45):
Whether I make a call or another consultant makes a
call for you, you can be your own best publicist
to just reach out with something to get them excited
about it.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
That stutt you just said, you know that the Vimeo
three minute watch. So I'm convinced. And here I'll tell
you why in a second, that most films actually don't
get watched this when they get submitted, they actually don't
get watched, or they get watched for a minute or
two or three minutes at the most. And that's just
because it's numbers. I mean, think of a festival that gets, say,

(29:17):
even five thousand submissions. You know, Sundance gets ten to
fifteen thousand whatever, but five thousand submissions, which is not crazy,
it's a lot, okay.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
And I think most first or second tier festals are
getting at least five thousand, okay.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
So and let's say on average a film is let's
just to make the math easy, an hour and a half,
all right, So you're getting you know, thirty so five thousand.
It's like seventy five hundred hours of viewing. Now, how
many how much can somebody actually watch? How many people

(29:52):
do you need to watch seventy five hundred hours over
what period of time? That's a lot of people, a
lot of time. I'm who go boggly eyed after they
watch too many films, So it feels to me like
it's almost too overwhelming to actually watch all the movies.
And I'm kind of convinced that they don't. Am I
being too skeptical?

Speaker 2 (30:14):
No, I think you're right. I mean I do. I
wouldn't say that that most films aren't getting watched, but
I would say that it's become a problem to the
point where there needs to be more policing. There needs
to be more follow through on the part of the filmmaker, unfortunately,
and there needs to be more accountability from the film festivals.

(30:36):
And Hike is working on some of those tools. It's
h I I k E. By the way dot com.
They're going to have some more advanced search tools on
the filmmaker side and help it help filmmakers find the
right fit. They're also going to have more policing tools
and support festivals who are leaning into that, because some

(30:56):
festivals that we talk to are really trying to be accountable, right.
But I think again, it's true that some of these
films aren't getting watched all the way through, but if
you can find an excuse, you can find an angle
and send something to these programmers. Now, look, there are
programmers out there that are you know, if they're listening,
would say, you know, John, I wish you didn't say that.

(31:17):
I don't want to end up with two hundred emails.
But the truth is most festival programmers worth their salt.
That's part of the job.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah. I mean, like you say, you're paying your submission
fee and you're hoping that they're being credible to actually
give you a chance. But okay, you you've mentioned Hike
a few times. So film Freeway seems to be almost
in some ways a monopoly in terms of the submission process.
Before them was without a box from Amazon and then

(31:47):
so what Hike? Can you tell us what it's all about?

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Well, it's the truth is it's very similar to film Freeway.
You know, there's there's a whole filmmakers submission side, and
there's a whole film festival toolbase right where they're tracking
the submissions and creating the tool set for the programmers
to be watching and tracking and communicating with the filmmakers.
So it's very similar in concept, but there's two big differences.

(32:14):
The first is there's a lot more personalization and personal
time and attention that Hike is going to give to filmmakers.
So in other words, they're going to create webinars and
podcasts and chats, and there's going to be this whole
hub that I'm going to support. Actually I'm a co founder.

(32:36):
We're going to really support personal connections with these filmmakers
and help them. Now, certain pieces of that will be
an upgrade. Right if I'm watching the film and creating
a custom spreadsheet, that's not coming for free. But there
is a lot of community based services and support that
Ike is going to offer filmmakers that film Preuid is not,

(32:58):
in addition to a lot more coprehensive advanced search tools.
One of the biggest problems with film Freeway is they
don't have enough advanced search tools, and another is their
customer service. Both those things are failing miserably. The other
thing is we're gonna have accelerator programs where we're helping
film festivals first, second, third year. Sometimes it's a tenth
year and they just need a refresh. So we're gonna

(33:20):
have a lot of community speaking webinars. We're gonna do
an accelerator program with a lab where we're doing a
ten week program to help festivals. So it's gonna be
pretty comprehensive. And to be honest, as you said, film
Freeway has had a monopoly for quite some time. It's
about time somebody takes them on. And these two gals
that are running the show, Brandon Tyler, are really sharp.

(33:44):
They're a great combination of skill sets and I'm kind
of coming in with the years of experience.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
But is it an American Is it an American platform? Like?

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Is it's Yeah? Yeah, just launch. It's just launching like
literally days ago.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
So you said, h I K E?

Speaker 2 (34:03):
H I I K E?

Speaker 1 (34:05):
And is it an acronym for something? Does it stand
for something?

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Yeah, there's a story, and I think I'll let I'll
let people discover the story when they visit the site
and hear it when when Brynn puts it up. But
she used to be a skier, so there's a whole
symbolic thing around the hike and you know, regardless of
what happens, you got to just pick yourself up and
do what it takes to get to the top kind
of thing. But it's it. It's a strong platform with

(34:32):
with with more vision quite honestly, and film Freeway, I
don't if you do this. But they've they've literally sold
to a couple of different companies and they're just not
they're just not paying any attention to it. The founders
aren't even there anymore. They're not filmmakers, not film people.
So they got lucky. They provided a good service coming
in on the heels of without a Box and that

(34:54):
was great. It was great. I remember David Strauss, I mean,
I was close with those guys and finders, and you know,
they provide a great service. Fill out one application, check
a bunch of boxers, you need to admit, I mean,
it was brilliant. The problem is, it's like there's so
many now that you can't just have a tech based

(35:15):
tool provide the support. There has to be some customization
and some personalization.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Okay, now there you said there at the beginning, there
were three things. There's the goals, there's the kind of
understanding who to submit to. What was the third thing?

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Again? The third thing is is maximizing your participation because unfortunately,
a lot of filmmakers will show up to a festival
and they first of all, they're not prepared. They haven't
thought through what they need to do, what they need
to bring. They don't have postcards, they don't have press
kits because it's their first rodeo and they don't necessarily know.

(35:50):
And then they get their goodie bag and they go
in the hotel room and they pour themselves with a
glass of wine and they kind of look through the
catalog and the program and maybe they show up for
a happy hour, maybe they go to a coffee. I
just have seen it happen a lot where filmmakers aren't
really capitalizing on that opportunity. I feel like I do

(36:11):
a whole across stick where I have like each letter
for participate stands for something. But the bottom line is
I don't want to go through the whole thing with
you today because I don't want to take up all
that time. But the bottom line is you need to prepare,
think about the audiences there. If it's a yoga film
or reach out to the yoga studios. You can't assume
that the vessel is going to fill the theater for you.

(36:31):
What can you do to help be your best publicist?
Reach out to the local papers, the local radio. Make
sure that you're showing up with all the happy hours
and the receptions. Make sure you're connecting to all the
filmmakers that are there. You invite them to your screening,
you go to their screen There's a whole camaraderie thing,
be connecting with the team members, as you know, Jeff

(36:53):
huge alumni. I think going on with festivals, they're always
inviting filmmakers that played there before. So connect and meet
with those with those filmmakers and just see it as
an experience and show up ready to talk about your film.
Right you show up at some filmmakers get up for
the Q and A and they're like deer in headlights.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
You know, last thing? Do you think it? I mean
a lot of there's publicists who offer services, sometimes quite expensive,
like I've seen five thousand dollars packages where they say
they're going to promote you and you know, do what
you just said. Is that something a filmmaker should consider
or is it?

Speaker 2 (37:30):
It's a very good question, and I get it a
lot in my stances. If you are playing a top
tier festival or a really crowded market, like you know,
one of the top ten markets in the country, where
there's a lot of people, it can help to have
a publicist. I don't think that as a short filmmaker,

(37:51):
it's money well spent. I think that you can probably
find a way to band together with the other filmmakers
and get enough people to show up at the screen.
If it's an industry festival, then maybe because you want
an industry to show up and discover you, so to speak.
But if it's a community festival and a short film,
I think that's money down the drain. I do think

(38:12):
that if you're a feature and you're planning on some
type of release, whether you're going to streaming platforms or
you're doing an event release or you know, a non
theatrical virtual event, whatever it is, you might need some
publicity when you release the film, when people can come
and buy a ticket or buy to download it. Like,

(38:34):
that's the time to think about a publicist note for
a film festival.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Right, all right, this has been incredibly insightful, interesting, Like
you say, you've said it three or four times, and
one hundred percent agree with you. We could do separate
pod maybe not just single episode podcasts, but multiple podcasts.
You teach courses on all this stuff. There's just so
much content to kind of delve into if we wanted to.

(38:58):
But I think we've kind of scre the surface enough
to kind of really understand. Is there anything else that
filmmakers should be cognitive of in terms of the festival
submission and navigation process. I always tell them, don't get
your hopes up too high, especially with the big festivals,
and if you get lucky, great, and if not, like
go down the middle road. As you were talking.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
About, well, yeah, I think we covered most of it
on the film festival front. The only other thing I'll
add is, and again you're right, it's another panel or
another podcast, but the idea that even though people are
talking about how Hollywood is broken and how it's a
real slog and how you know, there's less productions, there's

(39:40):
less movies in theaters, theaters are going dark, it's everything's bleak.
And what I'd like to say is that the truth
is there's probably never been more opportunity for independent filmmakers.
You just have to be more of an entrepreneur now
than you did twenty years ago. You have to wear
multiple hats, and you have to think you know theaters.
Now we'll talk to independent filmmakers that wasn't happening ten

(40:04):
years ago. AMC and Regal and all these theaters. This
film with Peter Haigucci, The Occult. It's a road show
playing across the country. He's shown up, he's got an
AMC theater on a Wednesday night and he's doing a
Q and A and he's selling out and hundreds of
beaters made over a million dollars going to art house

(40:24):
theaters and showing up and doing Q and as and
bringing merch and costumes. So there's a lot of opportunities
for filmmakers after their festival run to go out there
and get an audience. You just have to be more creative.
So I get frustrated sometimes when I hear filmmakers kind
of bitching and moaning about how hard it is. Yeah,

(40:44):
it's not easy, but there's a lot of opportunities out there. Now.
You can promote on social media and make some posters
and go into any city and get people to come
to your movie if it's a good movie, right, I
think there's a lot of opportunity out there. I'm very
I'm very opportunistic and optimistic about how to make the most.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
This is what we would call or what you call
alternative distribution. So I mean, if you have a few
more minutes, I would love to talk of I mean,
this is my sweet spot, this whole I mean, I
call it self distribution, but it's definitely alternative. Do you
do you have a few more minutes?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, yeah, I'm good for another ten. I mean, I
think the important thing is that to your point, whether
it's self distribution or altern distribution, again, back to the goals,
what are you trying to do? Like II, Gucci wants
to take this movie on a road show and convince
theaters that there's an opportunity to play these kinds of

(41:46):
films without a distributor mucking it all up, right, He's
talking to theater managers.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
The ultimate goal for somebody like that, because I have
clients also who do this, who have gone and done
their own road shows, paid for wall of the theaters,
done that kind of stuff. Advertising so that they can
create their own audience awareness and ultimately hopefully grow the
audience by word of mouth, where.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
I create a fan base for themselves.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Correct, correct, But with the ultimate goal of making money.
That's their goal. They don't want to be like they're
not giving they're not renting the theaters out and opening
it up for free. They are selling the tickets. So
they do want people to come and do paid admission
and hopefully lots more people will do it the way
they do it for the big movies, just you know

(42:30):
the big movies are. You can't get the attention of
the big studios obviously, so they have to do it
go to alone. That's why I call it self distribution.
And you know, somebody who believes in their movie a
lot wants to take a shot with it. But it's
not easy. Obviously, it's very expensive to get the theaters,
expensive to do the advertising.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
You can do revenue shares. That's the thing, and I
think if you can. Yes, the four wall thing was
a thing, But the truth is a lot of these folks,
now Peter included, you don't have to four wall the theater.
You just have to convince the theater manager or the
booker that you'll put cheeks in the seats. And I
got to tell you on a Wednesday night in a

(43:08):
ten screen AMC theater, you've got a filmmaker saying, look,
I'll put three hundred people in your theater. Those are
people that are buying popcorn. He's making more money with
Peter than he is without him, So it's not a
four wall thing. All the time anymore. It's now like
a revenue show.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
I agree, But how do you guarantee you're going to
get three hundred people in those seats?

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Well, you can't guarantee. But the point is is that
a lot of these theaters are almost empty. And what
Peter's doing is he's saying, look, I'll spend the money
on buying the postcards. I'll do some Facebook ads and
some Instagram ads. He's spending three to five hundred bucks
on a city, if you will. That's nothing. Used to
be ten thousand dollars to open a picture, right, So

(43:52):
he's spending very little money, and he's filling a lot
of these theaters. And what he's hoping is that some
of these theaters will say, Wow, these people loved your movies,
got all these testimonials. Let's hold it over and see
how it does. And in some cases it's working. And
it worked for hundreds of Beavers. And I think the
important thing to get here. I don't know if you
get Steven Follows on substack, but he just wrote a

(44:15):
great piece about it last week. I promoted it on
the circuit this week about what audiences are looking for
when they come to the movies now. And I think
the big missing link here is with these two filmmakers
that we're talking about now have done, is they've created
an experience. They're showing up and they're doing a Q
and A and they're signing books or they're signing posters,

(44:38):
or they're interacting with the community. And you can't get
that watching a movie on your couch and watch.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
A NETLIG festival screening.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah. Right, So that's what's getting people to show up.
So I think as long as filmmakers are willing to
be creative and think about the markets, that will work,
Like hundreds of Beavers probably wouldn't work in downtown palms,
rings older community, not necessarily the target audience, you know,
so you got to know which communities to go into.

(45:08):
But I just think that there's tremendous opportunities. And if
you have like an educational film or something that is
that appeals to the art house crowd or or or
culturally relevant community that cares about art and culture, there's
there's films like like was it Five Seasons, right, This
this this gentleman that was creating art out of out

(45:30):
of landscapes, and he took his film into museums and
art houses and galleries, and he made a ton of
money and had people coming out because he reached the
right audiences and played in these non traditional places. So
I think depending on the film and depending on your audience,

(45:51):
hundreds of Beavers went to art house theaters leaned into
that community. But but but Hayaguci went to AMC because
he's like this date night movie.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
What if you didn't want to do the theatrical thing
because you didn't have the time or the wherewithal of
the money or whatever, and you want it, could you
do it on streaming? Could you go out?

Speaker 2 (46:09):
You go to Gather, you go to Kinema, these two
leading places. There's a company called Olin l y N.
There's another company that I promoted yesterday in my blog
called Bingeable, which has a brilliant affiliate model. So all
your your your bands, and your actors and your crew
members are promoting the film to their groups. Everybody gets

(46:32):
an affiliate. You can create your own page, a lot
more exciting than a typical streaming platform detail page. There's
a few different places to go. I think Gather, g
a t h R and Kinema with a K, those
are the two kind of leading virtual experiences. They also
do community screenings, but you can set up an account
for free, you can they'll sell tickets for you. I

(46:56):
want to say Kinema has even got like a whole
streaming library now happening on top of just the events
that they're doing for filmmakers.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
And are they getting the audience people or do you
also still have to promote as a.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Commerce it's a combination. You still to you still have
to hustle. But you know, we did an event last
year and a nonprofit had chapters all over the country
and they reached out to their chapters and they decided
which communities would get people out. So that's another thing, right,
I think about partnerships. What are the types of partnerships

(47:29):
that could really help you and have them do the
work for you.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Yeah. I mean I say this to filmmakers all the time.
That's knowing who your audience is, being able to focus
on it and getting their attention, creating awareness. And I
say that's way more difficult than actually making the movie.
Marketing the movie is so difficult.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Marketing's tough, and I think, you know, it's unfortunately one
of those things that filmmakers don't always think about before
they roll cameras. Right, They just think they're going to
make a good movie and they're going to promote and
everyone's going to come. But I think it actually helps
if if you have a niche audience, right, yea cares
about a certain subject, right, or that appeals to a

(48:11):
certain demographic, Like you know, the independent filmmakers aren't making
four quadrant movies, just not a thing. So who is
your audience and how can you reach them?

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Yeah? No, no, I think it's so important to focus
on that. All right, John, this has been super insult insightful.
I really appreciate all your your input and your knowledge.
I look forward to seeing you at at festivals and
or conventions. You and I kind of run cross paths
here and there. But thanks for coming on and uh,

(48:42):
of course, happy fourth of July.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Same to you, same to you, And just for your
for your users, I want to just make sure everybody
knows how to find me, cause pictures dot com is
the easiest place C A U S E. Pictures dot
com is the best place, and people should check out
any of the filmmakers listening should check out the substack
for on the fest circuit because there's tons of valuable

(49:06):
information there.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Okay, so cause pictures is if they want to hire
you to help them navigate the uh, the film festival.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Just get some free resources. There's tons of resources. There's
a book on how to play the festival circuit. There's Yeah,
it's a it's a good it's a good place to start.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Perfect. Okay, Well, thank you, John Fitzgerald. It was a
pleasure having you on the show, and I will see
you out in the industry.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
Sounds good, Jeff, You take care, have a good fourth
to you and all of your fans. And uh yeah,
I'm sure I'll see you around.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
So that was John Fitzgerald. I've known him for many years.
He's a good guy who knows all about the film
festival circuit because he came from it, and I still
think it's a tricky thing to navigate. But check him out,
check out his materials, and hopefully you'll figure out the
right direction to go into, which festivals to submit to,

(50:01):
and how to navigate them. As always, if you have
any questions or concerned, send me an email at Jdeverett
at Devertmedia dot com and please subscribe if you haven't
done so yet, and I will see you next time.