Inflated entry fees
Keep the entry fee as low as possible—you’ll get more submissions as a result.
Unnecessarily long entry forms
Keep the forms simple for entries. You can always send a follow-up form for more information once a filmmaker is accepted.
Poor travel deals
Filmmakers make choices about traveling to a festival based on cost. If it’s a choice between a festival covering hotel only versus a festival covering airfare, hotel, and throwing in per diem, there’s no choice to make. The festival offering the better travel deal will be the one that always wins.
Failure to send rejection letters
Send a rejection letter to every film that does not get in. It’s tough, yes, but necessary. Here’s the one that I sent out when I was at Sonoma:
Dear [Filmmaker’s Name]:
I really hate having to send letters like this. It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that we were unable to program your film for this year’s Sonoma Valley Film Festival. The final schedule will be up on the festival website in the next week, should you wish to peruse our offerings.
Please do not take this rejection as a reflection of the film itself. I really wish we could accept more films—but due to schedule and timeslot restrictions, we were limited this year, but hope to expand in the coming years. In many cases, it was not a matter of rejecting films that were not worthy, more that we received so many quality films that our choices proved incredibly difficult.
I encourage you to send your future projects our way. Thanks again for considering us in your festival plans.
If you have any further questions, please contact me.
Thanks, Chris Gore
Technical mistakes
Be sure to hire the right people to handle your tech and print traffic so that each film is seen in the best possible way—the way the filmmaker intended. Nothing is worse than seeing a stressed-out filmmaker pacing the lobby because his or her movie is being shown in the wrong aspect ratio or the sound is garbled. Make technical excellence a top priority (and not number five, like it is on this list).