Staff writer, Ted Rubin, got the chance to sit down with Communications Director of the Atlanta Film Festival 365 , Charles Judson, and discuss the inner workings of the festival. In a crowed coffee shop the two swapped stories.
Charles, first off we want to thank you for taking the time to allow us to interview you. The Atlanta FIlm Festival (ATLFF) has become a staple in the Atlanta film industry and beyond, from your perspective how have you seen the festival grow and what do you see has helped succeed?
Since I’ve started here in 2007 and even long before that, I’ve seen the festival evolve into an organization that continues to become ever recognized for it’s programming across the country. Even more so, we’re seen as an integral part of the film community, which is important. However, that sense of community has been there since our founding in 1976. The Festival was started by local filmmakers and their connection to Atlanta is built into the fest’s DNA.
We’ve also become very close friends with other festivals, Sidewalk, Oxford and IndieMemhis as examples, and those ties have made us part of an extended festival circuit family. It’s allowed us to keep tabs on new and returning filmmakers, rely on each other for advice, and to partner with folks we’ve met year round.
Your team must see thousands of film submissions throughout the year. What is that process like? Is there something that makes a filmmaker standout more so then others? Is there any advice you can give the filmmaker to better their odds in the submission process?
As with most festivals, we solicit submissions through Withoutabox. We use a screening committee of 50 to 100, depending on the year, to then watch and judge those films. Every film is watched twice and each judge scores the films for Story, Technical, Originality, Acting/Subjects and Entertainment to evaluate the films on a 10 point scale.
The places filmmakers tend to the take the biggest hits on their final score is in Story and Originality. You can be very strong in other areas, but you can lose a lot of traction if you’ve submitted a film we’ve seen time and time again, or a film that has a very loose narrative structure. What hurts some filmmakers is being topical and building a film around a hot subject, such as Katrina, Iraq, or the Economy as an example. As a screener, it can be hard to give a film a high score for Originality when you’ve just watched another film on the same topic, in the same day. It’s also the same for social issue films.
I always try to warn filmmakers that thinking in terms of the “best” films is something they should get out of their mind, because being the best isn’t the only element we have to factor.
As an example, for shorts, we like to program thematically. It makes for a better screening experience and can raise some interesting questions when you have films all touching on the same ideas and questions, or share the same elements—an example is in 2010, we programmed three Doc shorts that all were made from found and discarded footage. A film could have great scores, but we may not be able to find a place for it in the lineup. Or it could be, and this truly sucks, just too long to fit.
And going back to Originality, we sometimes see films we really thought were great, but when you’ve screened films on that very topic the past few years, as a festival you tend to lean towards films on other subjects as time goes on. For a festival, you always want to be fresh and not repeating what you did four years ago ad infinitum.
And film Festival audiences tend to be savvy folks as well, thanks to Netflix, HBO, etc. Keep in mind thousands of films are released every year, through festivals and theatres and via home distribution. So, we’re having to think of not just what we’ve programmed in the past, but what the entire climate for film has been like for the last few years.
As far as submitting, my best advice is for before filmmakers even submit and even before they’ve shot one frame of film.
First, attend film festivals and local film events whenever possible. See what your peers are creating and see what festivals actually program.
Second, really tighten up those scripts. If a 20 minute short can be 15, make it 15. If the story truly requires 30 instead of 25, then make it 30, but ff you can leave it off the page, then leave It off the page. And make sure the arcs and goals for the characters are clear. Knowing what character wants, doesn’t mean we know what the character is going to do. That’s the fun of a good story, being taken somewhere unexpected.
Third, cut out anything superfluous. Ask hard questions. Does the short need music, or does it work without it? In the editing room, cut, cut, cut, cut. A minute or two of credits doesn’t sound like much, yet, for a 10 to 15 minute short it can feel quite long. Shorts are sprints, not marathons, so you need to shoot out the gate and get to the end in the shortest amount of time required for your story to work.
Fourth, when you look for festivals to submit to you should always check the previous years’ programs to see if the festival has chosen films like the one you’re submitting. Sometimes that’s not easy—for us, we program pretty wildly, so any style of film has a legit shot of getting in—but for some festivals it’s obvious.
Fifth, pick up Chris Holland’s Film Festival Secrets, he really beaks down how to approach festivals from a filmmaker perspective.
Staying on the forefront of the festival market has helped ATLFF stand out from the crowd. Are there any future goals for ATLFF? Should we be on the lookout for new and exciting additions to the festival process?
We’ve got a few thoughts on that. Trying to develop even better ways of identifying filmmakers who are up and coming is one. Not just through submissions, but throughout the year. The festival circuit has been a place many filmmakers have found their voice and then graduate into other areas. Finding new talent is key.
We’re also looking to do more interactive events and events with value added to them in the future. A good example is last year’s Closing Night film that featured a performance by the Drive-By Truckers after the doc that featured them played.
We also want to expand our workshops and panels we’ve presented in the past and to move them from being more indie and introductory focused, into spaces that we can bring industry into discuss issues and topics that are of interest to all people who create media. We want to be an incubator for ideas and partnerships. So much of the future of being a filmmaker will be in also how you work as a film professional in this new environment and how to work in various formats (games, webisodes, etc). Being indie is starting to many more than just feature films and shorts.
I know you guys always have big events and celebrity appearances, is there anything this year you have lined up?
Still working on the programming for the festival. We’ve got ideas, but nothing to announce yet.
It seems like every day the indie landscape is shifting, from your perspective what are some film making and marketing techniques filmmakers must do if they want to see their projects become a marketable success?
Embrace social media is one. But, do it to really establish yourself as a brand. Don’t just do it to tell people about your film, do it so people get to know who you are. That way you can bring your fans with you and not rebuild the base for every film. Use social media to give insight into the things you care about and what influences you. If your film is about child abuse, linking and talking to stories in the news, can be a much more powerful way to connect with audiences than asking them to watch your trailer.
I also suggest really learning the difference in how all the various storytelling structures work. Webisodes aren’t a bunch of shorts strung together, nor or they exactly compact versions of TV shows. We have new ways of telling stories and they each have their own language, as well as positives and negatives. Being fluent in more than one “language” gives you flexibility in how you can tell a story and where you can work.
With so much time and effort put into any film, filmmakers should also always be thinking about how they can create their films holistically. Don’t make a short to be a calling card, make it to be part of your body of work for the world to see and enjoy. It doesn’t do you any good to create a film that you will never upload or a film that feels separate from your other work. Does that mean share every film, even if you know it’s not good, no. But, every new film says something about who you are and creates something you can pull audiences into. We generally like filmmakers (Spielberg, Lynch, Fincher, Scorsese) not because of a film they’ve created, but for the films they’ve created. And that can work on a smaller scale.
Lastly, really try to bust out of the film community bubble. Next time you’re at an event, especially if it’s one showing your film, look left and look right. If you only see people you’ve worked on films with, you’re probably not tapping into even 5 percent of your film’s potential. Atlanta has 5 million potential audience members. Tapping into all of them is impossible, but if we as a community collectively tapped into just 1% of that crowd over a year, that can reap huge benefits and be built up over time.
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