Don't miss your niche: special interest marketing

Planet Out recently published their Queer Park City preview for the Sundance and Slamdance film festivals this year. It's a terrific reference for those interested in gay & lesbian programming at both festivals, but why should the LGBT crowd have all the fun? Why not a cheat sheet for animal lovers? Where's the environmentalist's guide to Park City? Seems to me there's a filter for just about any special interest group out there, if only you're willing to dig through the program guides to find the relevant films.

You should know the marketing niches for your particular film backwards and forwards. Prepare a number of different press releases highlighting the special interest appeal and make sure you can plug in the name of your festival contact to give it local relevance. When you're accepted to a new festival, you'll be ready to contact the local organizations with news of specific interest to them. When you learn about the festival's full lineup, you can create another press release highlighting the other films in the lineup that match up to those interests (being sure to focus on your own film, of course).

Example: When attending the Austin Film Festival in 2006, the makers of Prison Pups contacted the local Humane Society about the screening. Not only did the HS contact their members about the screening, but they also brought animals to the theater (with prior permission, of course) to add to the screening's appeal.

You. Yeah, you. You're breaking Matt Dentler's heart.

The SxSW programmer blogs on his experience wading through screeners as the festival draws near.

I always say, and it's true, the films that pain me the most are not the really bad ones but the ones that were so close to being good and missed the mark.

Toronto IFF announces "Canada's Top Ten"

One of the ways that TIFF seeks to distinguish itself from other major North American festivals is by dedicating a portion of its festival to focus on Canadian film. Of course there are now dozens of festivals in Canada that purport to do the same thing, but as a top tier fest Toronto naturally commands attention that the others do not. This week TIFF announced its top ten list of Canadian films made this year.

A quick scan through the titles reveals new work from Ellen Page (Juno, Hard Candy) in The Tracey Fragments and what sounds like some amazing short work in Terminus and Farmer's Requiem. Of course some attention will be paid to David Cronenberg's new thriller Eastern Promises with Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts.

Canada's Top Ten will exhibit in Toronto for a series of nights beginning January 25th.

Sundance releases its feature slate

Over at Indiewire you can get a taste of Sundance's roster of feature films for the 2008 event in January. There really isn't enough there to get a real feel for each film, but hopefully some trailers and whatnot will surface soon on the actual Sundance site. I'm not gung-ho enough to try and hunt down the trailers and individual film web sites myself (especially since many of the filmmakers don't seem to have built sites for their films!) but there are a few docs and narrative features that have piqued my interest. I can do without the Roman Polanski documentary and the film about Palestinian rappers (it seems like everywhere you turn someone's making a documentary about hip hop), but Trouble the Water and Secrecy both look fascinating.

Of course there's still the shorts left to hear about, and of course Slamdance will announce before too long.

Doug Block's Ten Rules of Personal Documentary Filmmaking

Who doesn't love a good list of rules for success? Doug Block, the director of one of the most fascinating personal documentaries I've seen in years, 51 Birch Street, provides his personal Ten Rules of Personal Documentary Filmmaking as a series of entries on his blog. Doug knows of whence he speaks; 51 Birch Street is both compelling and (at times) uncomfortably personal. You could do a lot worse than to take his rules to heart.

KC Jubilee offers $5000 cash prize for short film winner

That's a pretty decent cash stake for a short film. Visit www.kcjubilee.org for full details on entering. Early deadline is November 15.

2007 Insomnia Film Festival

This year Apple is again running a film festival for high school and college filmmakers -- the idea is to make a film basically from scratch in 24 hours.

Thinking of participating? Check out John August's top ten tips for making a short film in a limited amount of time. My favorite: "Protein, not carbs. Because you’ll likely be working all night, sugar will send you into a crash."

Of course, the most practical is to "Go funny." This applies to documentaries as well as narrative films; if you can display a sense of humor towards your subject -- however dire -- your film is much more likely to be remembered and rewarded.

Best of luck to the participants.