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Film Festival History

A very long time ago when I lived in Kansas City, I attended a workshop on how to write a screenplay. At the time I was already editing my own fanzine that I later sold for an outrageous profit. I was also writing regularly for a handful of local magazines including New Age and Health topics, like the kind you find in massage studios. I did quite well and kept in touch with the instructor, who was a Hollywood Reader - the people that pre-screen submissions to studios.

I wrote a screenplay and shopped it around some, getting a call from a VP at Viacom at my job in landscaping. I was completely and totally unprepared for that call and botched it terribly. I kept that bug in the back of my mind for a few years, and later when a company moved me to Utah for a tech job, I ended up hanging on the periphery of the Indie Film crowd.

I went to a very professional Short Film Fest in Nevada, and decided I would make one for a Utah fest. The topic of the short was supposed to be something about "memories" so I created a short about my deceased father's funeral. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the fest to discover it was primarily a gang of hooligans barely out of their teens, and that the majority of the videos seemed to be about drunk college kids blowing milk out their noses while setting Christmas trees on fire.

I was humiliated when only two people clapped for my film. I was related to both of them. But I did manage to do some jobs writing, directing, and editing commercials for a local franchise, as well as for clients for a marketing company. Just for fun though, I did do a tongue-in-cheek look at the silliness that seemed to prevail at Utah-other-than-Sundance fests.



Take-aways from the above experiences:

1) don't send a letter to a Hollywood VP if you haven't explored at least ten possible flows of discussion it could lead to. as well, be ready to get a ticket to fly to visit the next day.

2) don't send in a submission to a film fest you've never attended in person (this also applies to any type of event)

3) even after all that, if you can at least get in a good networking opportunity hanging on the periphery of a group, you can cash in on it

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