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Navigating Festival Rejections: A Short Films Guide to Success After “No”
I remember making my first short film, I had just broken up with a girlfriend and was desperate for a promotion at work. How about that for a perfect storm of motivation? My boss dangled a carrot, saying if I made something and it got into a festival I’d get the position I wanted and inspiration was provided by a messy break up and a slew of nasty voicemail messages left on my phone, this was pure emotional and creative gold.
At this point in my career, I didn’t know anything about festivals or shorts but plenty about making films, this was going to be easy. I made a call to my friend who had a camera, I called in an actor friend, a guy at work said he’d edit another said he’d do the audio. I couldn’t believe it was this simple, why were more people not doing this? I wrote a script about a guy who is dead and the messages on his phone allude to how this could have happened. So a dark but engaging topic, festivals were clearly waiting for this masterpiece.
I finished the film, very proud of myself, my friends all congratulated me and said it was a lovely piece of work. I sent it to a few big festivals and waited for the gold.
And the email came, “We regret to inform you that you film has not been selected for our festival”. This can’t be. Then another response “We regret…
