Eugene Hernandez’ article The Future of Festivals? poses some interesting questions on the future of the film festival circuit and their changing role in gaining film distribution.
“Film festivals themselves [will] become part of a distribution strategy for a film,” new Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper told Hernandez. “That’s what’s coming. It’s right around the corner.”
Film festivals have always been acknowledged as a stepping stone in getting distribution, but they can also be seen as a unique and valuable source of audience demographic information and a great place to network with others in the industry and build your fan base.
To foster that spirit, IndieFlix created Indie-fest, hopin
g to bridge the gap between the actual film festival and online audiences. Basically, IndieFlix strikes a bargain with the festival: they give us their top short films that they didn’t have time to show. Then, we show them for free through an Indie-fest web site powered by IndieFlix. Audiences can then log in, watch the films in their entirety and vote for their favorites. Winners can receive a a slot at the actual festival and a non-exclusive distribution deal with IndieFlix.
After we tally the votes, film festival directors and participating filmmakers get demographic information on the users who voted, which can be a great asset to any marketing strategy.
Film festivals are critical tools in the indie film world and we want to find better ways to utilize their resources (and ours) to give audiences and filmmakers what they want while broadening the independent film community, filling in the gaps between movies and their audiences.
Do you have any tips or suggestions on ways we can improve our Indie-fests?
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