RSF (WEST) Update #4: Submissions and Rejections.

You make a film. Now what? You want to show it to people right? Of course. We all want our magical little baby film projects to learn to walk on their own two feet and show the world that after learning to walk they can briefly brush the "running" phase and skip straight to kicking ass. Here's where we are right now:

"Oh, you had your premiere in April." "For ten days... you don't say?" "That sounds nice." "Oh, in Memphis." "Has it played anywhere else?"

No it hasn't played anywhere else... with an exception of home theater viewings hosted by friends and (with all great hopes and wishes) a few festival screening nights. That is the dilemma known as the dead period between grand opening and festival limbo. I have submitted our wonderfully fun feature comedy DIVINE MANIPULATION OF THE THREADS to a handful of festivals. Every week (or two) I'm submitting the film to at least two film festivals. As I've spouted off before, the process gets expensive. So at an average I'm diverting money from paying off my credit card to tenderly gardening this growing bulb of a film at $90 bucks/dollars/greenbacks a week. Yeah...
So far I've sent the film out to eight festivals. You do the math. Done? Yep. Expensive. Therefore, when a festival writes us a letter that basically says, "Thanks for sending your movie. For no specific reason - because if we got into specifics we would have to write a more personalized rejection letter that gave some small hint that we actually watched your film and are not just writing this because you paid the 45 dollar submission fee - Your film was not chosen for the festival program this year. We look forward to you stupidly sending in your piece of crap movies to our festival so that we can Xerox this letter next year. Chump," It gets a little disheartening. There is a twisting in my stomach that runs similar to being kicked in the balls. It's not that I hold any ill will towards any one of these festivals, especially the very popular festivals that seem to make or break a measly little film no body like myself. This little stint of depression is not so much a feeling of rejection as it is a feeling of, "Oh shit. I have just wasted a bucket full of money that I will never be able to get back."
Perhaps I should remind those that have gotten down to reading this far that our film, DIVINE MANIPULATION OF THE THREADS was made with NO-BUDGET. Yes, we don't have money just to throw around for things like publicity, a press agent, or production representative. We can't pay someone to go out and work the system to get our film into the right hands. We have to ship it off to festivals and pray to the film gods that some fair wind blows our way. It's frightening. It's a huge leap of faith... but without those leaps and without the faith in ourselves as much as we have faith in our projects, we would no longer strive to do anything better than put in 40 hours a week at a soul-less job, paying a mortgage, car note, and cable bill.
I want more than that... and I think that our film shows that. Although we've only received one letter of rejection, I'm certain there will be more. You sling a lot of chum on a wide swath hoping to attract the big catch. Lets just hope that we're going to need a bigger boat.
I'll let you know.

-B