u/i4film

I’ve submitted short films to (smaller, more local) festivals before, and have dreams to play at bigger festivals (like most people here probably haha).

But I never understood the full scope of what a sales agent does, particularly in regards to bringing your film (short or feature) to a larger audience.

When is one needed? And what exactly do they provide for the filmmaker?

I know people who got short films into Sundance, SXSW, etc without one, but I know the odds of this are extremely low.

I’m based in New England, and completed my debut short film last year.

I knew I wasn’t in a position to submit to any big name festivals, so I focused on the more regional ones to my area and one of them was the Lowell Film Festival (For Future Filmmakers) <— btw now that I think about it, this is a stupid name, because the people submitting are already filmmakers, but that’s beside the point.

At the start, everything was totally fine. The email correspondence was pretty solid, they seemed to have a pretty good local reputation and I was still “riding the high” from a festival showing before that, so I was excited.

A week before the program, I went on their website and saw they spelled my name wrong. I kindly emailed them to note the mistake and get it corrected, but they never responded.

Ok, whatever, it wasn’t the biggest deal. I assumed they’d make a correction before the screening.

Nope.

I sent a second email, no response.

They printed out loads of flyers for people attending, and my name was STILL misspelled.

On top of that, I got there early and was “admiring” the flyer, when I heard multiple of the volunteers/employees absolutely shitting on peoples short films. “These ones deserved to get in, but others really did not and aren’t good at all.” I thought that was crappy of them, but then one of them (holding back from naming him), started going on about how terrible the sound design of my short was.

Now, I really have no problem with feedback, I’m not someone who thinks their work is perfect, and this was my first short, but I specifically edited the sound (I also have a background in SFX and composing) for it over and over to make sure it was good. And here I was, maybe less than 50 feet away with other filmmakers nearby, and this guy is trash-talking it.

Feel free to label me as the a hole in this situation, but when I PAY to submit to a festival, I expect all of those things to not happen.

I sent two emails after the fact, trying to get updates on the festival (they never updated their website at all, it’s stuck on the 2025 version they did), and no response.

Just putting this out there, not sure if I’m reading too much into it, but let me know what you all think!

Patty Jenkins supported In Other Words, my first short film. It screened at regional festivals. Now I'm reuniting the same DP (Best Cinematography, Commonwealth Film Festival) and cast to make A Good Lie.

A politician stages his own son's assault to win a city council race. The son agrees to it. Nobody in this film is purely a villain, that's the whole problem.

It's a proof-of-concept for a completed feature screenplay. I'm writer, director, editor, composer, and producer.

29 days. $680 of $9,150 raised. Boston-based. We shoot in June.

Happy to talk script, the feature, or what it's like wearing five hats on a shoestring!

Now I'm making the next one and it's darker. Here's what I learned writing a story where nobody's purely a villain.

Patty Jenkins supported \\\*In Other Words\\\*, my first short. It screened at regional festivals. Now I'm reuniting the same DP (Best Cinematography, Commonwealth Film Festival) to shoot \\\*A Good Lie\\\* in Boston this June.

The premise: a city council candidate stages his own son's assault to win a race. The son agrees to it.

The thing I kept running into while writing it: every draft where I made someone clearly wrong felt like a lie. The politician loves his son, he also uses him. The son knows exactly what he's doing, and does it anyway. The campaign manager is cynical, and correct about almost everything. The script only worked when I stopped trying to distribute blame evenly and just let each character be fully themselves.

I'm writer, director, editor, composer, and producer on this one. It's a proof-of-concept for a completed feature screenplay.

29 days left. $625 of $9,150 raised. Happy to talk script structure, wearing five hats on a shoestring, or what it actually looks like to get a name director's support as an emerging filmmaker!