The Pigeon: Impossible Blog

Well, I’m on my way to LA Shorts tomorrow. The screening is at 5:30 on Saturday if you’re in the LA area. I’ve already seen several of the shorts in the program so I have no question that its going to be a really strong showing.

I also just listened to an awesome podcast between Chris Jones and Sheri Candler about short film marketing. Coincidentally, Sheri is handling all the press for LA Shorts so I can’t wait to meet her in person this weekend.

I’ll be posting more thoughts as the festival circuit continues, but I’m reminded of one big thing that I learned at Palm Springs: do your research. More specifically, know the names and titles of the key people working at the festival. There’s usually 3-7 people ranging from print traffickers, to the festival director, programmers, and media coordinators. If you don’t get something from the festival introducing these people beforehand, they’ll definitely be in the printed program. Be sure to glance over those names so that when you run into them at a party, you’re able to put a face to the name and say thank you for all their hard work. As a side note, it goes without saying that these are good people to know. They’re very busy so don’t corner them and bogart their time, but try to get to know them and find out what they do. You’ll probably find that a lot of people, especially programmers will often work at multiple festivals throughout the year so you never know when and where you might see them again.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Festivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.