?¢‚Ǩ?ìA Cheaper Way to Go?¢‚Ǩ¬ù just screened at its first film festival; Indie Memphis in Memphis, TN of course. Once you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve had a film on the festival circuit you come to a bitter realization; you are wasting your time if you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re doing festivals for the sole reason of getting distribution. Unless you play at Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, and a scant few others you won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t find distribution opportunities. We learned this fairly quickly when our first feature film ?¢‚Ǩ?ìFans and Freaks: The Culture of Comics and Conventions?¢‚Ǩ¬ù played the festival circuit. The film was fairly successful, especially for a quirky documentary (more often than not serious issue based docs get the attention at festivals) but there were no distribution opportunities. That, in fact came later from cold calling and sending out screeners. It wasn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t just our film, no film we were acquainted with got a deal at the festivals we attended. So, once you get to that point you have to decide why you want to go to festivals at all. It?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a pretty expensive endeavor with the entry fees, the travel, posters, and other marketing materials to do a festival run. We do festivals to be able to put those laurels on the material we send to distributors, to network and just meet other filmmakers, and for mini vacations. We?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re filmmakers, we love film, so what better vacation than to spend a weekend having real film chat with filmmakers and seeing indie films we might never get to see anywhere else.

?¢‚Ǩ?ìA Cheaper Way to Go?¢‚Ǩ¬ù is a short film though, so festivals are the obvious place to go. There are a few other opportunities, such as here on the Doc Channel, to show your film but mostly short films are tailor made for festivals. We always seem to finish our films in mid summer so the first screening opportunity for us is almost always Indie Memphis. This festival focuses on southern films and filmmakers so we often see familiar faces at this festival. We were excited once we heard the film had been selected because we also saw that some other filmmakers we met at previous festivals in the past. We ran into Craig Brewer (?¢‚Ǩ?ìHustle and Flow?¢‚Ǩ¬ù) an always humble and interesting guy, another husband and wife filmmaking team who live in Memphis, and Jay Edwards (?¢‚Ǩ?ìAqua Teen Hunger Force?¢‚Ǩ¬ù). We spent most of the weekend with Jay and the local couple seeing films and chatting.

Our film was set for a Saturday afternoon screening which could be good or bad. The time seemed good but most people tend to come out at night so we weren?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t sure what to expect. Ten minutes before the screening the theater was basically empty. We started to settle into the idea that this would be what another filmmaker called a ?¢‚Ǩ?ìpeer to peer?¢‚Ǩ¬ù screening. A ?¢‚Ǩ?ìpeer to peer?¢‚Ǩ¬ù screening is basically a screening with other filmmakers in the audience and no general festival attendees. Our first time at Indie Memphis we played at 10:30 am on a Thursday, most definitely a ?¢‚Ǩ?ìpeer to peer?¢‚Ǩ¬ù screening. Being the grass roots marketers that we are we struck a plan at that showing to bring in some audience members. Our film was about comic book freaks, the theater is in a mall, so we handed out flyers in front of the Hot Topic the day before the screening. We ended up with a few other audience members other than other filmmakers. Anyway it looked like we were in for something similar this year. Just two minutes before the screening, the theater packed up! The audience seemed to really enjoy the film and by the end of the festival we were approached by representatives from three other festivals.

So, Indie Memphis was a great success. It?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a small festival that focuses on southern filmmakers and southern films. They throw some good parties for the filmmakers too! Now that?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s really what these trips are about!