FestivalsHowTo
From The Star And Shadow Cinema Wiki
Here is a sheet from a training thing i went to on how to do a film festival. got some quite good advice:
10 things I know about film festivals
This document is aimed at people thinking about running a film festival for the first time and for all of us who run events on a shoestring. In many ways the list is basic common sense and for most of you it will act more as an aide memoire than a definitive list of do’s and don’ts.
What’s your festival for?
The reasons you have for running a film festival will inform how it’s organised, how it’s funded and its future direction. If you don’t have a clear idea of what your festival is for, you will be at the mercy of competing inputs. You need a clear idea of the ‘purpose’ of your product so you can make a place for your festival in the ‘festival marketplace’.
There are many reasons to start a festival: national and regional politics, civic pride, the need to get more people into your cinema, the desire to celebrate a genre. The Sheffield International Documentary Festival is a good example of a ‘genre’ festival. Leeds and London are ‘civic pride’ festivals.
Showcomotion was set up by the Showroom Cinema in the first instance to grow a young local audience who would learn to love independent and foreign language film and thus become patrons of the cinema when they got older.
Whatever its origins, in order to survive in the long run your festival has to have some economic raison d’être. It has to appeal to someone, such as the film industry adopting it as a market, your regional film agency or a sponsor wanting to support it, or your venue seeing it as a benefit to its business.
‘A short history of film festivals’
below, describes the origins of Venice and Cannes. Cannes became the biggest film festival in the world by turning itself into a film market and industry event. Venice is struggling today with its identity and position in the film industry. A short history of film festivals
The first international film festival, known as the Esposizione d’Arte Cinematografica, came into being in 1932 as part of the Venice Biennale, the bi-annual celebration of the arts.
The 1932 festival was held on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior on the Venice Lido. It was not, at that stage, a competitive event. There were no official awards but there were two audience awards for best director and best film. The first competition was in 1934: the first awards being the Coppa Mussolini for best foreign film and best Italian film.
In those days, the festival and its awards were as much about national prestige of the participating countries as it was about film. As war edged closer, the awards at Venice began to favour the Italians and Germans.
The Cannes Film Festival exists as an indirect result of the rise of fascism. In 1939, a group of film makers petitioned the French government to underwrite the costs of running an alternative event where films could compete without political bias. The City of Cannes agreed to build a dedicated venue for the event and so the competition came to the south of France.
What’s your niche?
Or put another way: what’s your Unique Selling Proposition? Festivals are ‘products’ in the same way that films are ‘products’ and festivals compete with each other in the ‘festival marketplace’. You must ensure that your festival is a sufficiently different product to the other festivals. When you are asking a producer for a premiere, asking a sponsor for money or talking to a journalist, they’ll want to know what makes your festival different from all the others and why they should be supporting you. Are you the first festival, the largest festival, the longest established, the only one showing certain films...?
One way of testing if you have a niche is to come up with a tag line. I love tag lines. For example, the Sheffield International Documentary Festival is ‘the UK's premier international event for factual film and television’. The 2005 Showcomotion Young People's Film Festival was the ‘largest and longest established children’s film festival in Great Britain’.
You’ll need to protect your niche. Keep an eye out for other festivals – are they encroaching on your territory? If so, you might have to change the direction of your festival or strengthen aspects of your programme to deter the new opposition. MIFED, a long standing film market held during October in Milan, failed to keep up with the times and was forced to close when the American Film Market moved its dates to November.
You might need to amend your tag line. The arrival of the London Children’s Film Festival means I’ve created a new conference and a new tag line: ‘Showcomotion Children’s Media Conference: the UK’s premier meeting place for the children’s media industry.’
It’s the programme, stupid
You’ve got to make the festival programme of events the very best that you can: the films have got to be the best they can be; the speakers and guests, the workshops, the sessions have got to be the very best quality you can get. From this, all will flow. A festival with a good reputation will accrue premieres, grant aid, sponsors, top advisers and so on, building a virtuous circle for the next year. Reputation is absolutely vital in building your brand and building the long term sustainability of your festival.
No one cares that the production process has been horrendous. No one cares that the printer in your office doesn’t work properly, that you’ve got no money, no staff and you’ve been up till 3am for a week writing the catalogue. All that matters is the festival as experienced by the punters. There were rumours that The Full Monty shoot was not a happy one: some of the talent became unhappy with the production, confidence in the venture was low. It turned into a charming film and still showing on a TV channel near you. Who cares about the production process now?
You will never have enough money
You will never have enough resources to organise the festival you want. If you wait until you raise all the money you need before you start planning the festival, you will never run a festival. You have to start with the resources that you have and expand or contract as you go along from year to year. This clipping from Screen International perfectly describes the tension between resources and year-on-year expectations. It’s from an interview with Gilles Jacob, Head of the Cannes Film Festival published on Friday March 13 1998 on the occasion of his 21 years at Cannes:
‘Another problem is the psychological one. As soon as you achieve an improvement it becomes matter of fact and is no longer even noticed. If an extra press screening is added of the comfort and efficiency of the journalists, the following year another one is needed, and so ad infinitum. This requires an effort of the imagination and financial resources which are not freely available. As the age of donations is behind us, this means the use of commercial partners. Sponsors provide the means, but in exchange require public relations operations and seats in theatres. Even with cautious growth, these places have to be found somewhere.’
And that’s Gilles Jacob talking: head of the biggest film festival in the world.
Festival organisers are born, not made
Not everyone is cut out to be a Festival Director. Event management requires a high level of flexibility, personal communication skills, pragmatism and the ability to balance the often competing needs of partners. At the same time a great deal of event management comes down to sheer slog: unless you have unlimited resources, as a Festival Director you will be spending a lot of your time stuffing envelopes and doing other mundane tasks. I sometimes say running a film festival is like organising your wedding except it lasts 10 days and you have to get people to pay to attend. Don’t start a festival unless you really HAVE to. Make a proper budget and keep revising it
The world of film is littered with failed festivals. I remember there used to be a Cardiff Animation Festival and the Banff Festival organisation was recently bought out after it went bust (it overextended into history and science forums and the such like).
I think there are two basic things to remember with festival budgets. Firstly, you have more control over costs than control over income. If your budget is adrift and the festival is getting closer, look very closely at cutting costs. Secondly, try to be modest with your income projections. When I make my new budget I keep my income projection as the same as the previous year’s actual total. That way, if you have any increase in sales you might have a little surplus; if you don’t, you’ve broken even.
If your festival is a stand-alone organisation or company, keep a constant eye on the cash flow. If you have delegates, an early bird rate is an excellent way to generate cash in advance of the festival.
High production value in print and marketing
Your print is the public manifestation of your festival and will be the only thing you have left after the festival week has been and gone. Try and make your print and marketing of the very highest standard that you can afford. Any money you do have should be seen in the printed materials and on your website.
Some advisors will suggest that you ask a local print company to sponsor the design and print of your programme: go ahead, if you want no control of what your print will look like, how it will be printed, the quality of the stock and the date you will receive the finished articles.
No one cares about the state of your office, how you hate your advisory committee, or how the festival is run completely by teenagers on work placement from school. If the public and delegates think the print looks good, they will think your festival is good. Added value
Partnerships are very important when you’re running your festival on a shoestring.
You will need to make alliances with other organisations who have similar aims to yours and whose programme of work compliments your own. Showcomotion has a very good relationship with Norton College (the local FE College) and we co-organise a media careers conference for students; between us we can find the resources both financial and staffwise to make the event work. Separately we would struggle.
Creating an advisory committee is an excellent way of creating added value. Find a chair who is respected within the industry and together recruit a committee of well-connected, respected people who are interested in helping you. A good advisory committee will help you with finding industry speakers, getting premieres, raising sponsorship and generally help you build the value in your festival and raise it to the next level. You can have different advisory groups for the different markets you want to influence: teachers, young people, industry etc.
Remember an advisory committee is not ‘free’. You will spend a lot of time servicing the committee: arranging meetings, writing minutes, writing reports, sending out agendas, paying for sandwich lunches, attending to demanding committee members and chairs.
I like advisory committees as they are invaluable in advising on editorial, programme and sponsorship matters. This is different to working with a management board who are responsible for employing you and for the fiduciary management of the festival.
Who’s your headliner?
‘Who’s doing the keynote speech?’ or ‘What’s your opening film?’ are shorthand for ‘Is your festival any good?’. Never underestimate the importance of a short pithy response to these questions. ‘The Director General of the BBC’; ‘Shrek 2’; ‘Michael Moore’; ‘Errol Morris’; ‘Madagascar’; ‘The incoming head of children’s BBC’ are all good responses. Try to book at least one thing that can be your ‘headliner’.
In delegates’ feedback questionnaires from the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, the highest satisfaction ratings are given to the difficult documentary films and the keynote speeches are often rated quite low. BUT delegates will not buy a pass if you tell them the obscure Russian documentary they’ve never heard of will be their favourite thing at the festival. They buy their passes because they’ve heard of the headliner, they’ve heard of Michael Moore or the DG. Cross subsidise
You need the headliners and the mainstream programming to provide you with support for the more challenging aspects of your programme. Box office attendance is of interest to both funders and sponsors and you must use popular, mainstream films to drive up your numbers. In turn, this gives you a bit of breathing space to enable you to book excellent films which you know will attract a smaller audience.
Thank goodness for Rugrats and the Little Polar Bear because I know that when I book them, I can also book Magnifico from the Philippines and You Are Free from Iran.
People don’t go to themes
Industry types and delegates will go to ‘a festival’ particularly if it’s a genre festival: they’ll go to a documentary festival or short film festival because they’re interested in documentaries or short films. But generally your local audience will only come to your festival if there’s something specific within the festival that appeals to them. This means that you need to produce some targeted postcards or leaflets as well as the festival programme.
One year at Showcomotion I didn’t print a special postcard for my under 5’s screening with Bob The Builder, thinking that parents would find out about the screening from the main festival programme. They didn’t and the attendance was lacklustre. The following year, Postman Pat adorned an A6 postcard and we were back in business with full cinemas.
In other words, get the individual parts of your festival to work. If you concentrate on marketing a few key events or strands in your festival using special postcards or leaflets or letters - like the 14-19 media careers conference and the 4-8 years short animation screening – you can start to build your festival audience. Each year try and market a new strand and that way your festival attendance will grow. Remember the old saying: a thousand mile journey starts with the first step. Year-on-year marketing effort will be rewarded with substantial attendances in the years to come.
When you book something for your festival, always ask yourself: who will come to this and why would they? Then ask, how will I tell them it’s on?
Gather intelligence
We all know that trade magazines can be boring but it is important to read them regularly and keep up with the industry. One of the downsides of living and working in Sheffield is that I’m often on the train to London. Instead of taking a laptop, I spend the journeys plodding through magazines and festival catalogues. If you can’t afford the subscriptions, ask someone who does subscribe to pass them on to you at the end of the week or ask if they have them at your local library. Data capture
When you have few resources, turn to direct marketing. Every year I print a cheap and cheerful Showcomotion postcard asking people for their names and addresses. These postcards are distributed around town about three months before the festival. The names are added to my growing Showcomotion mailing list and they all get sent a Showcomotion programme four weeks before the festival. This way I can reduce my print run of the (more expensive) festival programme because I know I’m sending the programme to people who want it and who want to buy tickets.
E-lists are also good as direct marketing but I find they work best with industry people such as delegates. At the moment, my general public still prefer to buy tickets from printed programmes.
Your friends in the regional press
When you can’t pay for advertising or acres of print, the local press are your best friends. Here, the clue is in the title: these are newspapers and they tend to be interested in …news. Your local paper is not a free publicity sheet for your entire festival programme. Think of the most newsworthy aspect of your programme, think of an angle that might appeal to different journalists on the paper: schools angle, women’s interest. Quite a few sports documentaries showing at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival ended up on the back page of the Sheffield Telegraph. Your local paper will have a ‘Diary’ type column and the poor person who writes this is always desperate for little snippets; make it your job to suggest diary items on a regular basis throughout the year.
On a practical level, find out deadlines. If it’s a weekly and you consistently send your copy the afternoon after the print deadline, then the journalist will think you, and by extension your event, pretty stupid.
Send advance emails with the dates of your event so your festival can be included in ‘forward planning’ diaries. Send press releases not too soon and not too late: I always stick to the three weeks’ rule. Check if a journalist can receive your release as an attachment, and don’t send jpegs unless you are asked to: some companies only allow their journalists to have small inboxes so don’t clog them up with fancy graphics and big attachments.
Always write your press release in the third person in the style of your local paper, as if the journalist is writing about your event. In this way the journalist can directly cut and paste your copy without having to make many amendments and that helps them like you and your festival.
Local papers always like a good photo story, and children seem especially popular. If you know you have something coming up that might elicit a good photo, ask the paper to send their photographer along. If they can’t come, take the photo yourself and send it digitally THAT DAY. Even better write a caption and don’t forget to get the names and permissions of all those in the photo.
I wouldn’t bother with wining and dining journalists, as local journalists are usually too busy. Instead cultivate them by always being efficient and timely, sending them what they ask for, on the day they ask for it.
PR agencies
People are often scared of journalists and think that you need special skills to deal with them and thus end up employing a PR agency. However, I find that a lot of journalists don’t like agencies: they’d much rather deal directly with the source of the news. My opinion is that PR agencies are really only good at doing one thing: promoting themselves. In addition, local agencies generally don’t have a lot of specialist skills in film and media. By the time anyone at the agency has got a grip on your festival, the festival will be over.
If you have the money to take on an agency, I’d say you’d be better taking on a lively up-and-coming freelancer or a student volunteer with a bit of energy and common sense. That way, you and your festival are building useful contacts with the media, not the agency. Take your eye off the ball and organise a launch
I’m not a great fan of launches. Launches are good if you have something major and new to announce and you want to tell everyone at the same time. Your festival is probably not in this category.
I don’t think festival press launches make any difference to press coverage and more importantly they take you away from your main job of organising the actual festival at a really crucial time. I remember that one year a sponsor was keen that we have a Sheffield International Documentary Festival launch so they could host it at their offices. Rather than enjoying the launch and hobnobbing with guests, I spent the whole event proofing the festival catalogue which had to go to print the next day.
Launches are fine if you have unlimited resources and you can employ someone to organise the launch whilst you get on with the real job of organising the festival.
We do have a Showcomotion Teachers’ Launch in late May: we have tea and cakes and we show clips of the films we will be screening at the upcoming festival in July. We call it a launch but it’s really a sales event: it’s to encourage teachers to book school groups and it works.
Kathy Loizou
Director Showcomotion Young People’s Film Festival
www.showcomotion.org.uk
www.showcomotionconference.com
What do I know?
I’ve been Director of Showcomotion Young People’s Film Festival since 2002. Showcomotion is based at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield.
It’s the longest established children’s film festival in Great Britain with industry conference of growing importance. The aim of the festival is to broaden the cinematic experience for young people thorough subtitled films, practical film making workshops and careers advice.
From 1996 until 2002, I was Director of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, the UK's premier international event for factual film and television. Previous to that, I worked in London for 15 years in the arts and the media.
My main interest lies in working with genre, i.e. documentary or children, as opposed to general interest festivals. My main expertise is in building value and building national and international profiles for events in the regions.
