• Halifax’s Rob Cotterill, producer/writer – Treevenge:  Winner of the 2009 Best Short at Fantasia Film Festival and Honorable Mention at Sundance 2009. Treevenge won the Audience Award at New York Horror Film Fest, Toronto After Dark, Fantasia Film Fest and San Francisco Independent Film Festival – See the full rundown of awards. 

• Vancouver’s Michelle Porter, writer/director – Regarding Sarah: Michelle capped off the 2006/2007 festival season with a Genie nomination for her short film – which enjoyed so much festival fanfare that today – a good four years after its premiere – it’s still appearing on television somewhere in the world.

• Toronto’s Spencer Maybee – writer/director – The Eternal Void – An Intersteller Love Story: Maybee is father to the breakout film of the 2009 CFC Short Film program, Man Vs. Minivan. His latest film is just hitting the festival circuit this year.

• Vancouver’s Katie Weekley – Producer – The Auburn Hills Breakdown: The winner of Spain’s Malaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema, San Diego’s Comic-Con International Film Festival and the Audience Winner at Sweden’s Fantastic film festival this 2008 NSI Drama Prize short has been scooping up awards wherever it goes.

• Toronto’s Jill Carter – writer/director/producer – Ninety One: An extremely prolific short filmmaker, Carter seems to be in some stage of production / distribution at all times. Her most recent premiered at the Newport Beach International Film Festival in May. 

Where did you find the money for your film?

• Porter: Canada Council, BC Arts Council, NFB's FAP and personal contributions.

• Weekley: Cash and in-kind services: $50,000 (approx) NSI Drama Prize/NFB FAP Grant.

• Maybee: Bravo!FACT, Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council

• Cotterell: The budget for Treevenge was around $5,000. The director, Jason Eisener, and I financed the film with our own money.

• Carter: Approx. $25,000, from NFB FAP Grant, a fundraiser, crowd funding and family donations.

Were you strategic with your festival entries?

• Porter: Some festivals only want premieres so be strategic on the first couple of festivals you submit to.

• Weekley: Very strategic and we had a reasonable acceptance rate so we must have done a good job on our research! We aimed for horror/fantasy festivals as well as festivals which had horror/fantasy programs. We also found that our film played really well in certain countries. We've played several in Spain, Italy and Scandinavia. We looked for festivals in those regions.

• Carter: Yes I was strategic. I did my research in as much as I could. I liken festival submissions to gambling ... you just never know. I basically submitted to what I would consider 'A List' festivals first - and in that category ones that had a completed-by deadline. The 'B List' festivals etc. The more you submit and attend festivals you are accepted into, the more you know about submitting. But it's still a crap shoot and a very competitive one at that.

• Cotterell: We were very strategic about where we submitted at first. We made a genre film so we submitted to genre film festivals and underground fests such as Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, Toronto After Dark, Buff, NY Horror Film Fest, etc. Once the film started being successful, festivals started coming to us and asking for the film. All kinds of different festivals. We sent our film out to every festival that requested it.

• Maybee: Absolutely. If I'm going to pay to submit, pay to ship a screener, and then ultimately send a print (or clone) of my film to a festival, I want to know that it's going to be a well-run festival. I wouldn't send my kids, had I any, to a camp without checking to see if it's a good camp and well-run, so why would I send my baby to a festival without checking up on it?

How much work is involved in managing your festivals?

• Porter: It takes time to submit films to festivals and to track which festivals have your copies but it is worth it. Check festival submissions every month or two and submit to all eligible festivals.

• Cotterell: There is a lot of work in managing the festival circuit. It's a constant process of monitoring your films whereabouts. Fortunately most festivals are quite aware of each other and want to help each other out so planning your film's schedule between them becomes a lot easier when you get the festivals to talk to each other about sharing your prints. As long as you know where your film needs to go, have a few different prints in different formats, you can pretty much send out a tape and never see it again for months. For me that was the most efficient way to get the film to festivals - get them programmers to send it to each other, plus it saves big time on mailing expenses.

• Weekley: A fair amount of work. Withoutabox is a great tool but it seems to be mostly North American festivals. There are lots more international festivals not on Withoutabox and many of those are free to apply. So it's definitely worth doing research and finding those festivals. Aside from research, managing the mailing of all those DVDs took some time too. Withoutabox and IMDB now offer a secure online screener but from my limited experience, it seems that festivals want a back-up copy of the film submission on DVD. So you have to allot time to go to the post office!

• Maybee: Having a festival strategy is paramount. You can blow all your funds submitting to fests that cost more than they're ultimately worth in terms of exposure and opportunity.

• Carter: It's a HUGE job. I don't think people realize how big of a commitment it is. There are many areas that go into submitting and I am still learning about all of them. Naive submissions, past festivals to screen work submissions, lobbied submissions, requested submissions, hope and a prayer submissions.

Was there a point where you didn’t need to submit directly to festivals anymore?

• Porter: We did have word of mouth invitations to some smaller festivals.

• Weekley: Yes. The Auburn Hills Breakdown won quite a few awards which got us press and, from that, we started getting invitations to other festivals.

• Cotterell: Once the film got accepted into Sundance we stopped submitting. We were inundated with requests for the film that there would have been no time to find other festivals to send to.

• Carter: You can kind of tell when the interest is dying down. You have to ask yourself that if people aren't asking for your films anymore do you want to keep spending money on it? Especially if you have limited resources and new projects to work on.

• Maybee: When I felt that the film had received all the exposure it was going to, that's when I'd put it to bed. Many fests have a "produced after" date and they won't accept submissions produced before. Older films aren't as easy to shop around to fests as new ones. 

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