Seeing your film on a big screen with an audience teaches you a lot. David Kaminski shares four important things you learn about your film at a festival.
1. What Your Image Looks Like
You will know what your film looks like when you watch it on a large screen. Do you want to see if your shots are in focus? On a big screen, it will be evident. And you will experience the differences between watching it on a monitor and seeing it projected. The colors will be less saturated. Your blacks will not be as deep. You will see video noise in your blacks, and even in your colors if you were shooting in low light with a less expensive camera or in a compressed format. And whatever motion artifacts or green screen keying problems exist will be evident. Any title that is not title safe may fall off the screen.
Ultimately, it is good to know this information, and you can experiment, make changes, and you will learn to ask in advance about the file types that you can send to festivals, their projectors, and the details of frame rates and aspect ratio will take on new relevance.
2. Theater Sound Systems
Everyone who has edited their film or played it back on their computer will tell you that they know what their film sounds like. But do they really? Likely not. At best, they might have some professional near-field reference monitors. Those are useful to about 40 Hertz. If they are very lucky, they will have a subwoofer, too, to fill out the bottom. How have you been listening to your film?
Did you hear the footsteps in the background cross from left to right? The people talking off the set behind you? The rumble of traffic? The low thump that your composer added for dramatic effect?
In the end, even if you are lucky enough to have everything at your disposal, the sound systems in the best theaters might be a few hundred thousand dollars, and they are in a large space that has profoundly different acoustical qualities than what you are used to hearing your film in. Allow yourself the luxury of the best directors and sound mixers, and let yourself experience your film in a real theater with great sound. Even a local cinema can provide you with a new experience of your film. The best theaters will give you even more. You will be back at your computer editing it the day after you hear it in a theater, and you will feel glad at the opportunity.
3. What Your Audience Thinks
Among the opportunities at festivals is the chance to sit through your movie with an audience that will react in real time to your music, edits, characters, dialogue, and the story itself. You will hear them talk during the movie, jump at a startling scene, or laugh if your shot is too cheesy to be believable. After watching your movie with them, you may go home and make changes. If you are lucky enough to do a talk-back and field questions from the audience or at least talk in the hallways with those who saw your work, they will tell you what they have seen and how they would have done it differently and what they like. Listening to your audience, and not just you friends and family, is be invaluable. They are also among the consumers your agent will be trying to sell to. So if they are confused about your plot or dialogue, ask to hear more. If they have other feedback, take notes. It can only help you in your journey to making better films and getting this one to market.
4. Meeting Your Distributor at the Festival
Make luck happen. You will want to be standing in the hallway outside before your screening when the person who distributes films is standing there, shuffling through the schedule. Engage them in conversation, and invite them in to see your film.
During the festival, do not spend all of your time talking to your best friend. Extrovert. Head out to lunches, dinners, social events, mixers, chat up the table next to yours.
Be aware of those around you at the hotel, taxi stand, the airport shuttle, the airplane non-stop to LA–all these are places you can meet the right person. You might have a non-stop flight with an executive next to you. It happens. It is not just at the festival that you meet people, but on your way to them and from then that coincidences occur. Be ready with your pitch.
Know that your kindness, smile, intelligence, courtesy, and social grace will help you wherever you go, and that you may meet these same people again. The second time, you will be even more prepared, and they might be even more willing to talk to you.
Good luck!
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