How to Prepare Your Indie Film For A Film Festival Premiere

Common Film Festival Formats

A film’s format will depend on both the filmmaker’s artistic intent and budget. The most commonly-used formats at film festivals include Digital Cinema Packages, digital files and 16 mm film. Below, we explore how to deliver these common formats to a film festival.

Every film festival has different requirements, so you should always follow the technical specifications outlined by each individual festival.

Closed Captions and Subtitles

Closed captions and subtitles expand your audience and make your film more accessible. Plus, there’s a growing movement to make screenings more widely available for hard-of-hearing viewers.

You can recruit your editor to help with closed captioning, or enlist an affordable captioning service to lighten your load. Our experts at Rev can do it without breaking the bank.

When submitting your film to film festivals, make sure you know in what format the festival wants to receive the closed caption files. For instance, some film festivals may request that you submit your closed captions in separate sidecar files, while others may want files encoded into the digital video file itself.

Akin to closed captions, subtitles allow those who don’t speak the language used in the film to follow the story seamlessly. The good news? Along with closed captions, you can get your film translated into subtitles. This instantly makes your film ready for international distribution.

It’s ideal to have your captions translated into widely-spoken languages including Spanish, French, German, English, and the native language that is spoken in the country hosting the film festival.

Creating Promotional Materials for Your Film

Creating a presence at a film festival is time-consuming, but well worth the effort. If you can afford to, hire a publicist — especially if you’re attending top-tier festivals in North America like the Toronto Film Festival or Sundance.

A public relations representative or firm can be a huge help stirring up publicity for your film’s festival circuit and beyond. But, the reality is that quality firms can cost upwards of $7,500, and a quality solo rep will run you around $2,500.

So if you’re down to the last dollars in your film’s budget, you’ll have to tackle PR yourself. If you choose to go the DIY route, compile a press kit that includes:

• Print images from your film: Select several film stills and behind-the-scenes images to give to festivals and press outlets. Make sure to caption them and credit your photographer or cinematographer.
• An official film poster: This helps build your film’s branding. Plus, you can give copies to festivals and PR outlets.
• An official film trailer: There’s no better way to pique your viewer’s curiosity than with a killer trailer. Remember, movie trailers also need closed-captions.
• A brief film synopsis: This is a quick-hit promo tool media outlets and others can use to get a sense of what your film is about.

When you’re building your press kit, don’t forget to include your film’s run time, the cast and crew lists and bios, and your film’s prior screening information.

How to Market Your Film

Press kits aren’t the only way to draw attention to your film. There are tons of cost-effective tools you can use to spread the word about your project, including the almighty Internet.

“You need an online presence to help your audience find and identify you before and/or after they see your film.”

– Brent Zaffino of Sharegrid

Here are a few proven ways to do just that.

Preparing for Film Distribution

After achieving the hard-won goal of completing your film, getting it into a film festival and setting up your marketing, start thinking about distribution strategy before any awards are presented.

Start by creating a document with the information distributors need to know before buying your film. For example, make sure to include:

• A proper chain of title for the script and film
• Screenplay purchase agreements
• Assignment of rights to the film’s controlling company
• Any other chain of title documents (copyrights, certificates of recordation, etc.)

Distributors will also want a list of all applicable guilds your film worked with, like SAG, WGA, DGA, and so forth. Additionally, they’ll need a list of above-the-line obligations including deferments, back-end participations, final-cut approvals and credit or likenesses ties associated with your talent or director.

Finally, if you don’t already have one, hire an attorney to handle the complexities of the distribution legal processes.

Navigating Film Distribution Offers

If you’ve created a film that hits all the right notes with all the right people, you may get approached by distributors. Typically, distributors offer filmmakers two types of deals: a gross adjusted deal, or a first dollar split deal.

A gross adjusted deal means filmmakers get a cash advance for their film before distribution, then the distributor and filmmaker split the profits after the distributor has recouped their cost.

A second common, less ideal situation is the first dollar split deal, in which the distributor and filmmaker agree to a 50-50 split of the profits with no advance. The danger of this type of deal is that the distributor is under no pressure to, well, distribute the film. They may sit on it and do nothing until the contract expires, which could take up to 15 years!

While it might be tempting, don’t take the first distribution deal offered to you. Wait until after your film’s world premiere. This gives a larger audience — including more potential distributors — the opportunity to see it.

Film Festival Preparation is Worth It

You’ve worked hard to get this far, and packaging your film with these supplementary materials will help make your film’s debut a smooth one. Follow these best practices and set yourself up for success at your next film festival and beyond.

Don’t forget to prepare closed-captions and subtitles for your film and movie trailer. But, save yourself the headache and order it from Rev for only $1 a minute.

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