RFI: Running a film festival

My friends and I are running a short film festival! We've already done it once before, and it while one screening went flawlessly, the other was a trainwreck. My question to you, if any of you have done this type of thing before, is: what is the best way to organize and screen submissions? Last time we simply requested a DVD accompanied by a "QuickTime file" which is vague as fuck (my friend who worded it meant something exported from FC Pro), and our intention was to author a DVD with all of the films on it so that we could just press "Play".

We ended up not being able to get DVD Studio Pro to work, and wound up putting them in a fucking iTunes playlist, which worked but was not something we ever want to rely on again. Anyone have suggestions? Is making a compilation DVD the easiest way to do this?

hey dude, i have friends who do this and you may want to consider using an online submission form like withoutabox

oh... i see what you're asking.

i would ask for an UNAUTHORED DVD with a quicktime on it and be specific.

http://m60.ca/make.php

look at their tech specs page (scroll down)

Aaah, these two links are wonderful!!

We definitely want to allow online submissions but aren't sure how to handle them. Any clue what m60.indyish.com are using (their own server, I assume)? Should we just bite the bullet and pay for a box.net/whatever acct or something?

s1ocki 100% OTM about withoutabox, i interned at a film fest once and it made things so much easier

We're planning on capping submissions at 30 minutes, but if they're going to send us QT files to put on a DVD, is there any manageable way to implement online submissions? I mean, a 20 minute film compressed clearly enough to recompress into mpeg2, it's going to have to be much larger than 500mb, right? I mean, does it? I don't know.

yeah, it'll be too big for that i think. might just have to swap DVDs.

m60 used a friend's server i think.

yo i am s1ocki's m60-runnin pal.

yes we are using a friend's server with home-cooked upload software, but it should be fairly easy to set up for any server-head. (ie, not me.)

specifying film specs is by FAR one of the hardest things to figure out.

you DEFINITELY want to ask for UNAUTHORED dvds, or else it is an enormous pain to rip all the films. of course lots of people don't know what unauthored means and so it only saves you half the trouble.

file-sizes for 30 min films (esp HD) will be big. an upload tool is useful but will be hard to set up. might be worth just demanding physical submissions as you get started...

Yeah, we're asking for both a screening copy (playable DVD or online link) as well as an exhibition copy (I'm just specifying QuickTime file and letting them figure out that it needs to be burned onto a DVD; I'm afraid "unauthored" will just confuse the simpler people). We want both since we'll probably be doing screenings at different peoples' houses that will have DVD players/internet connections but likely not FC Studio. We don't have a designated server, and any file-hosting services will likely be much too cost-prohibitive, unless anyone can think of a reliable peer-to-peer application. I think we're just going to limit it to snailmail submissions for the time being.

Now as far as withoutabox goes, from what I understand it's more of a marketing tool to reach out to filmmakers/organize online submissions? We're charging an extremely modest entry fee ($5), so would we just put it at $10 for wab since they take $5 off?

About the most suitable thread I can find...I'm volunteering this weekend at the inaugural Stratford Winter Film Festival:

https://stratfordwinterfilmfestival.ca/#112dd908-eeb8-4285-9046-565f670620a7

I tried to launch monthly screenings in St. Marys last year, and that was a total failure--never got more than six people out--so I wanted to get involved in this. Modest launch, but a couple of the films look interesting; I'd like to see 32 Sounds and The End of Time. I saw the Syd Barrett documentary a few months ago.