Film Festival Circuit Founder Mikel Fair Shares Submission Insights for Filmmakers

Posted on: Oct 15, 2024

Photo Credit: Jessica Mathis

By Jessica Mathis

Mikel Fair is a sound mixer, production manager and founder of Film Festival Circuit, producing film festivals in cities across the U.S., including Atlanta, Houston, Austin and Portland. One of the most unique things about his festivals is the advice and education he provides to entrants concerning their entries. Since his articles and YouTube videos can be so helpful, I asked him to share some of his tips for producers and filmmakers to make sure their film festival submissions truly stand out.

Have Marketing Materials Ready

Most submission platforms have fields to fill out related to your project, so festivals can get an initial idea of your project. Mikel said it’s very important to submit a complete package to the festival. This will be their first impression of you, and you can’t make a first impression more than once. Even if you do make it into the festival without some of these items, you’ll want them to generate interest with the audience, otherwise your film could screen to an empty room.

According to Fair, “If a festival’s getting 250 submissions and they can only pick 40, it starts to become a process of elimination. If 50 of them don’t put a synopsis, a tagline, a director’s statement, a writer’s statement, a poster, a trailer or any of those things, you’re automatically behind the eight ball. So if you want to get accepted to a film festival, you can’t be the most incomplete form in the stack.”

It’s imperative that your materials reflect industry standards. Be sure to fill out all the fields with the correct information. These typically include:

Logline: A one or two sentence statement that shares the story concept and should include your protagonist, what they’re up against and the stakes.
Synopsis: For festival submissions, this should be longer than a logline, but still be a brief paragraph summary of what happens in your story.
Poster: Your poster should be industry standard format at 18 x 24.
Director’s or Writer’s Statement: A short written explanation of the film’s vision and the motivations behind its creation to help understand the film’s themes, messages and emotional journey.
Trailer: A short video clip teasing an audience to want to see more of the movie.
Links: Links to any sites, press about your project, or socials related to you or your project.
Tagline: Even if a submission form doesn’t request it, a short catchy line about your film is useful to have and can be on your poster.

Have the Right Format

One of the biggest problems Mikel sees are that people who submit their films are often so far from being technical that they can’t handle a common request for a specific format, such as a Digital Cinema Package (DCP). He said many people are confused by even the smallest technical details.

A DCP is standard for festivals screening in theaters, because it is the format they use to project the media. Every filmmaker submitting to festivals should have one. The format provides some encryption and works as a global standard format where everybody in the world is sending in the same stuff. Whether you’re in England, the Philippines or the United States, it’s the DCP file standard that you’re going to use, and you only have to create it once. That said, you should have at the very least a master file you can render out as any format, even if it’s not planned to screen in theaters.

“Unfortunately in the film industry, you have to have a little tech savvy if you’re going to be the person who’s running around with the film,” Fair said “If Netflix said [to] send me your movie, they would want the master file.” According to Fair, a master file is a copy that is as close as possible to what you filmed with the same resolution and frame rate. If you have that file, you can always render out other versions for lower resolution.

Consistency and Appreciation

By submitting to festivals and trying to gather awards without attending or communicating, you could be losing out on some of the biggest benefits. Some benefits and opportunities from showing up include:

Being able to network and make new friends, allies or collaborators in the industry
Increasing awareness of you or your project with a personal face and potential involvement in Q&A
Seeing your work on the big screen and evaluating quality
Gauging reactions to your work

“A lot of people think that the number-one reason to go to a film festival is to see if you won an award,” Fair said. “But when we’re making films, we’re trying to get better. If you don’t watch your film with a live audience to gauge their reactions, you [risk] missing out on the biggest lessons a filmmaker can receive.”

Mikel explained that you’re going to get a more honest reaction to your film, and critical reactions help you improve as a filmmaker. When he first started out, his short wasn’t being accepted to festivals, so he invited a bunch of friends over to screen it at his house and took notes. Afterwards, he was able to cut the movie down quite a bit, and then found it being selected to festivals.

“You’re not there to watch the movie. You’re there to watch people react to your movie,” Fair said. “What are they doing? Are they on the phone? Are they laughing? Are they checking it out? Are they looking at other people to see if they got the joke? it is very common for people to come to the festival, screen their movie, go home and edit it immediately.”

Communication and Support

Networking and talking with others at the festival is important, but you can also extend your reach by interacting online or communicating with festival organizers. Festivals often employ professionals from the industry itself, so you never know when someone influential may see your project or be emailing you.

Fair said that, similar to the lack of proper materials, the number of people who fail to answer emails from the festival team, or comment on posts about their own projects on festival pages is surprising. He recommends filmmakers take the time to promote their selection by the festival and meet everyone they can, but also take the time to explore and comment on posts about other filmmakers. It creates communities and increases chances of forging and maintaining relationships with other professionals that could lead to more work or collaborations.

The media industry runs on relationships, and some great ones start through communications at or around festivals. You can really maximize the value of your submission fee and time by presenting yourself and your projects well, showing up to make the most of the festival experience, and communicating with and supporting others.

Jessica Mathis (AKA Divinity Rose) is an award winning screenwriter/performer/producer from Louisville, Kentucky. She is the CEO of She Dreams Content Development and Production, which focuses on female forward projects in comedy, docustyle and genre entertainment.

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