Alas, no, I do not handle the actual submitting of your film to festivals for you. ;) The point of my course is to empower you (with the knowledge I’ve acquired over more than a decade spent as a festival organizer and winning awards for my own films) to manage your submission strategy, yourself. The old proverb holds true: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” (and save him a lot of money in the process).Â
Now, there are other consultants out there who you can pay to manage your film submissions. If you have the money and don’t have the time, this may be an option for you. However, if you want my two cents, I see a couple of drawbacks to this approach:
- Consultants that do this type of work typically work on a retainer basis. These fees can really add up, especially considering most films are on the circuit for at least a year.
- By having someone step in for you in your submission process and communicate with festival programmers on your behalf, you are missing out on opportunities to build your own relationship with the festival.
- As a festival programmer myself, when I see a film has been submitted by a festival consultant, it has no effect on whether the film is selected. Films are selected on merit, not on whether you paid a lot of money to a consultant to do the work for you.