Yet another Berlinale has passed, and somehow the Zombies crawled out, barely alive, but breathing. We thought about writing a small survival guide based on our experiences, from the filmmaker’s perspective.
Three kind of filmmakers go to the festivals: directors, actors and producers. They all come there for different reasons, so let’s go through what these creatures are up to, one by one:
THE DIRECTORS
Directors – you know, those bearded, charmingly scruffy people who are usually drunk and can be met either at the parties or at dinners all around the city. Usually, directors come to the festivals to either to promote a film they’ve just finished, or to accompany the producer who’s running after money for a new one.
The directors are a nice bunch, but they are usually a bit confused, since they’re not there to actually sell anything, or to buy anything, or to do anything meaningful – they mainly just run with the producer from a meeting to another and act as the comic relief among the business talks.
The best thing a director can do in a film festival is to drink. A lot. Meaning, going to all kind of shitty parties that are around the city, drink a lot of free booze and act like an idiot and hope some producer or buyer or whoever thinks he’s cool and wants to know about their film.
The trick is then NOT to tell about the film – but to have someone (maybe some other director) close by, and let him/her rave about the production. Then exchange cards (proper director never has business cards, remember that – but there’s always some way…), and one out of a hundred of these might end up to something. A meeting. Possibly a free lunch. Who knows, even few bucks for the next film.
PRODUCERS
Festivals are one of the main work fields for the producers – usually, most of the deals are done, or at least negotiated at the festivals and most of the important partnerships are created and discussed over there.
A producer wakes up at eight, eats a healthy breakfast if possible after a night at some nameless, unforgettably crappy party, and then starts the run: some meetings at the market, few meetings at Hyatt, then some at Marriott, few at the coffee shops… you name it. They go over the same pitches, the same funding structures and the same funny backstories over and over again – the trick is to keep it fresh, interesting, exclusive and never break out of the character.
And later at night, there are parties. And parties are the best place to meet new possible contacts. So the producers keeps the business cards ready to get a good meeting for tomorrow.
Eventually, everything is evaluated by the quality of the meetings: the bigger the boss or the richer the guy, the better the meeting. So if someone re-schedules your meeting – or doesn’t show up – you know he/she has met someone more important than you. Don’t feel sorry about it, just accept the pecking order – there’s always a better meeting than you.
ACTORS
And then there are the actors. Now I don’t know very well what the actors actually are supposed to do at the festivals, and how they are supposed do their job there, but there’s always loads of them hanging around. As far as I’ve understood, they might hook up with some directors who would just happen to be looking for their exact match for the film – not very probable – or hook up with some producers who could force their directors to put them in films – mildly more probable. But you see them swarming there anyway, and you know them because they are the hottest or the most handsome folk out there who usually have the most interesting things to say and the best anecdotes to tell.
Another reason is, of course, that they are promoting a film. That makes more sense – and the strategy is easy to understand: they hang with the producer, go to dinner with some fat fuck with money, flirt a bit, and the film gets some hard-earned dollars.
And of course, in some very rare occasion, they might be out there because there’s a film playing in the official selection. This means they hang around for the whole festival, get drunk and finally go to a premiere of their feature, flash a smile or two for the cameras and that’s about it for them.
THE DESPERATES
There’s a fourth group of people, the desperates, who are basically a random mix of the aboves – but the ones without a real job. You’ll know the difference: the desperates are the only nice people who actually come to talk to you and are actually interested in what you are saying. But remember, they’re there to get a job from you, so if you give them your card, you’ll end up having to exchange endless emails during the following years with these people. And no, the table almost never turns: you’ll keep on chasing your stupid dreams of once making a film you actually like (not very probably going to happen), and they’ll keep on chasing everyone who lends an ear to them for a moment.
One might think film festivals are about films – you know, big premieres, red carpets, stars and such.
No.
You can spend most of the active working hours in chasing tickets and actually watching films, but it’s really not why you are there as a filmmaker. For film critics, or film buffs, or buyers – it’s a whole different story – but you really shouldn’t worry that much about other people films, concentrate on getting yours done and/or promoted.
THE MARKET
The biggest film festivals always have the Market. It’s basically a marketplace full of people either selling films (that’s, of course, distribution rights, not individual copies) or buying them. If you are there to do business, it’s the place to be. I’m not quite sure how the buyers and even the sales people operate, but basically you set up a stand there, put all your posters up on the walls and hope someone interested comes to buy the distribution rights for the film.
For a filmmaker, the most interesting thing you can do at the Market is to spy what kind of shit other people do, and how they promote it. The best way to entertain yourself is to set up a contest with your pals: go and find the worst film in the market and see who gets the most horrific one – winner gets a beer. That’s an easy one, since the biggest quantity of films at the market are just pure, horrible bullshit. The big ones – the ones in the competition and the big Hollywood films – are in another league, but the massive heaps of crappy local films from some never-heard east European country, and the embarrassingly obvious horror flicks just seem to be flooding most of the actual market space. It’s exceedingly hard to find the pearls among the piles of crap.
Other than that, there’s nothing much to do. Coffee is expensive, there’s no free wi-fi and the buyers and the sellers are too busy to be entertaining.
THE HOTELS
Most of the meetings usually take place in the three or four biggest hotel lobbies around the festival. In Berlin it’s Marriott & Hyatt, in Cannes it’s Grand Hotel and Carlton, etc. The reason for the meeting at these hotel lobbies remain a secret for me. They are usually hyper-expensive (coffee: 12e, beer: 20e…), the service is bad and there’s usually no room to sit – and definitively, no free internet.
The good thing is of course that they are usually easy to find and close to the main venues… But I think the biggest reason is because they make you seem (and feel) a bit more important than you actually are. But remember, filmmakers don’t fit in there, so don’t get too comfy. You’re a bunch of artsy-fartsy semi-alcoholics, not businessmen.
THE PARTIES
The one thing that connects all of the festival-going filmmakers are the parties. There’s a bunch of them every night in the city – either organized by a distributor, or world sales company, or a some film foundation or some film that’s just premiered somewhere.
To get into parties you either need to know someone from the organizing party, or have big eyes and convincing smile when you go begging for the invitations. But even if you don’t get one, there’s still a good possibility that if you just walk in and bullshit the people at the counter for a moment. It’s an art form like any other, and if you’re good at it, you’ll get in.
Parties have loads of free alcohol and food, and they go on mostly all night long. Sometimes, there’s a band playing – more often not – and usually the only thing that reminds you of what parties you are at is trailer reel playing in a flat screen hidden into some corner.
In case you want to actually do some work, the trick for the festival parties is to not to hang out with your friends. We Finns tend to be quite slowly-warming bunch of people who mainly sulk in small groups and avoid eye contact. The best way to get something out of the parties is to go bravely into some group you don’t know anything about and just start chewing. Just as long as you remember the first basic rule: fail fast. If it’s not going anywhere, get the hell out and find someone else.
Parties are nice, but remember not to overdo it – and as one very experienced producer said: remember to keep one day off. Otherwise, you’ll end up a disaster of a human being by the end of the festivals.
THE TRADE PAPERS
Then there are the trade papers. All festivals have a different set of papers, but there’s three main news sources that are around at every festival: Variety, Screen and The Hollywood Reporter. Those are the ones that matter – everything else is, well… nobody reads them anyway.
First tip for the festivalgoers is to start early by reading the papers – you’ll get a good grasp on how they approach the festivals, and their approach is quite often the most efficient one. Best free marketing is to get a story to the trade papers – read them, and you’ll understand what they are interested in, and craft your press releases accordingly.
You win 10 points if you’re on the papers every day. So don’t spill all the good stuff at once.
Few general tips:
1. They are called “trade papers” for a reason – they are interested in film as business, not as art.
2. As trade papers, they are always interested in exact numbers and figures. If you don’t have them, don’t go bothering the journalists – they are damn busy.
3. Never believe the reviews. For some reason, the reviewers of the trade papers are usually horribly wrong, and mostly hate everything. Also, if your film is playing there, and gets a bad review – don’t worry. It’s not the whole truth.
4. Meet the journalists. These guys are there after stories, and if you have something interesting to tell, don’t be afraid to contact them. It might be complicated to organize a meeting with them, and another way is just to march into their office and ask around for them – if they are not around, you can leave your contact there. They’ll respect the initiative.
5. Remember: journalists are the princesses of this community of the cavemen. If you treat them well, they’ll write more about you, if you treat them badly – well, they’ll write, but maybe not so nicely. And what’s even more important: they can help you get very good discounts from the ads in trade papers. Just ask.
STARS
Stars are a completely different breed of people at the festivals. They are treated like the most important persons in the world, and whenever a star might be showing up to a party, there’s a big buzz about it. Eventually, they rarely do, but that’s even better for their star imago – these people do whatever they want. The only way to really see some of the big stars is to either wait around the biggest hotel when there’s the most security around, or join the huge crowd swarming around the red carpet for their premiere to get a glimpse of them passing quickly in or out of their limo.
Stars are a very good representation of the whole festival spirit: everyone is a part of the big machine that’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make things interesting, exclusive and damn sexy. It’s depressing, and has absolutely nothing to do with film making, but that makes the whole business keep on going.
So there you go. That’s how film festivals work for the filmmakers. You’ll find out there’s a lot of interesting people around there in addition to the filmmakers – buyers, sellers, journalists, film foundation representatives, politicians, students… And there’s even some people who come there to actually enjoy the films.
. They’ve been shunned for quite some time, since the general atmosphere has been that animation is for kids… But now we’re starting to see more of these. Do you think there’s future in animations for adult audience?
