Film Festivals and Competitions

[GregB]

I'm sure that most fellow Songstuffers are cynical about entering any type of creative competition. Entry to blue-chip festivals costs a fortune and, based on the eventual 'winners' one hears/sees, it's hard to believe that there's a level playing field.  Does your own entry simply get sidelined because no-one has heard of you?  Are people just looking for new 'talent' to market?  One has to assume that most Festivals/Competitions receive at least 1000 entries ... who has the time or the sanity to manage and review this amount of material???

 

Mind you, it's a great business model.  I've often thought of starting one up but, having reviewed 5 CDs every two months for a folk magazine, the thought of listening/looking at just a few competition entries is enough for me to start lining up razor blades on the sink. 

 

But ... a "Songstuff Global Song and Music Video Competition" ... run by member volunteers.  JOHN?????

 

I have submitted tracks to several song competitions and have laughed ruefully at the earnest boiler-plate responses like "the competition received a huge number of entries and yours was one of many high-quality submissions, but ... ".  Did anyone really listen? Did they listen all the way through?  Was the listener the right person for the genre?  How many had they listened to before mine?  Were they in a good mood?

 

Statistics are important.  There are definitely less music videos than there are released audio tracks, and most of these videos are pure performance ... i.e. generally unremarkable in terms of a Film Festival.   I can at least advise my own Film Festival experience has been far more positive than Song Competitions and, January 2020 - April 2022, I've had a 1-in-10 success rate for my music videos (the minimum 'success' being "Selected" for the program and shown.  Approx 10 submissions are still awaiting results.

In order, the above icons are: Selected (in Program and Shown), 1st, Finalist, Semifinalist, and Hon.Mention.

 

Fortunately, I enjoy the visual creativity as much as I do the songwriting and production.  While it's additional workload and 'pressure', it's still fun, and is far less physical hassle than recording as editing can be done in any room without instruments, cables, 'silence', etc.. The final song version IS the film's soundtrack.

 

Any additional exposure means there will be some extra clicks on tracks/albums on Spotify, Apple etc.. (although that exposure can't be quantified).

 

I have only ever used FILMFREEWAY https://filmfreeway.com/ which is free to join and low admin once set up, and it is now probably THE leading service for submitting materials to Film Festivals.  You create your profile and upload your projects (e.g. MP4, captions, posters, etc.).  Then browse all available festivals of which there are at least 1000 each year, ranging from Cannes/Sundance to Woop-Woop/Timbuktu.  Most festivals now offer a Music Video category.  Costs can vary from free to USD$100 (for the blue-chips).  The majority that I myself have entered are USD$0-$5, and I ensure that my subject matter tightly fits the focus of the Festival ... e.g. three of my music videos are directly relevant to environment or climate change, an increasingly popular topic for Festivals.  Here are three entries I submitted this week:

 

My suggestion to you is to check out Film Freeway, and a few festivals to get a feel for the process.  Making your music videos more cinematic could reap benefits further down the track as well as just being good fun to create.

 

You're welcome to ask for clarification or further details.

 

Cheers,

Greg

 

 

 

 

 

[john]

Hi Greg

 

I have mixed feelings about competitions. Most of the larger competitions seem geared to make money for the people running the competition only. The winners of many categories seem to only be chosen to get extra social shares, and meanwhile the overall winners disappear into total obscurity apart from what their bragging gets them.

 

We used to run a competition on the boards, that was managed by staff and some members. It has to be said that it was hugely time consuming and the only people who really follow it with much interest are the contestants (pretty well what I imagine for the basic paid for contests. Considering our contests were free we had some ok prizes. Had we invested more time we could have listed some great prizes.

 

My main concern is the time it takes to do it justice. That we can make money from it is not in question. It takes a fair bit of time investment up front, but you rightly identify the amount of time listening to entries is the problem. Some big  contest might list up to 30 substantial celebrity judges. In truth, those judges only ever hear a small pool of entrants.

 

As I mentioned before, category winners only seem to exist to increase the number of people willing to talk about the contest on social media. Almost everybody else doesn’t give a damn, which is problematic. One of the key benefits for an artist or songwriter is to raise the profile of the winner’s music or video. Doing that in any meaningful way is difficult when people just roll their eyes. This has been made worse by suspicion of prize fixing within contests in general..

 

Delivering something meaningful in terms of prizes is possible once you get to be a larger contest, because you rely upon sponsors donating prizes in return for being featured. As a new contest it is possible to get a decent prize pool, but it takes a lot of upfront effort.

 

Contests can also be a bit “build it and they will come” leap of faith.

 

Lots to chew over and a few important things to think over! You raise some interesting points too.

 

Cheers

 

John

[GregB]

 

Two more successes with music videos.
 

 

 

Perhaps India is my target audience? ... as "Sunset" took first place at a Festival in Rishikesh last year.

 

All three can be seen on https://www.youtube.com/playlistlist=PLvCWgm9uEHNvpDJAnGUDPxH7bDl1FVn9g

(Tracks 01. 25. and 29.)

 

[Peggy]

Congratulations, Greg!