A Festival Journey by filmmaker Frank Hall Green

The Post-Festival process.  Is there one?  My movie Wildlike came out September 25th, in about two dozen markets in North America, and On-Demand, a day and date release.  But I just checked my calendar and Wildlike is also slated to play nine film festivals this weekend.  And then it played fourteen (14!) on the weekend of September 25th, the commercial release.  So Wildlike was actually on nearly 40 screens opening weekend.  The hope was that all those people might potentially tell their friends to go see it or buy it OnDemand.  Thank God for film festivals great and small.  And for big-audience festivals that help follow-up, like Dances With Films.

My understanding of an effective “post-festival strategy” is that there should not be a “post” festival period at all.  For the past four months, I have been planning our commercial release with Amplify Releasing and Level Film, creating new marketing materials, booking theaters, working with PR, doing outreach and promoting the film.  It has been time consuming.  I have been almost full-time on Wildlike since our debut festival in October 2014, eleven months ago.  After Dances With Films in June, our Los Angeles festival premiere, we signed a deal with our distributors.  Wildlike had been to dozens of film festivals, was going to dozens more, and the film received many wonderful reviews.  The next key part was a real commercial release for Wildlike, something our sales agents Kevin Iwashina and Marc Bortz had been working on since November.  As we sifted through the few distribution offers we had, and shrugged off the dozens of rejections, it became clear to me that this would be a grassroots effort in every way.  I spoke to other filmmaker friends whose movies had Sundance debuts, bigger distributors and larger releases, whose films had gotten industry attention.  Even those films, the darlings of the festivals, were struggling to be recognized, marketed and garner audience’s attention. Each movie would be released, in one or two or even 25 or 125 theaters, and then a week later, all would be over and done, with the film making room for the next small indie to crowd in.  The newspapers and trades confirmed as much with the biggest Sundance hits with the strongest marketing power performing poorly last Spring and over the Summer.  How would Wildlike be any different?

The only way I have been able to make Wildlike stand apart is by being fanatical about all aspects of Wildlike’s outreach, marketing, exposure and attention.  As we began to be accepted to several festivals early on, I had the notion: why wouldn’t more festivals (more exposure), be better?  Why not do all we can to expand the audiences of Wildlike, and hopefully the word-of-mouth for the film?  So we contacted all festivals and have been accepted to over 150 thus far.  In turn, we collected a newsletter list and contacts, emails of fans, friendly festival programmers and press contacts who wanted to help the film.  We built out our social media prior to the festival debut, and then expanded it, and stayed diligent about updates and posts.  With festival help in budgets and submission fees, we tried to attend as many screenings as possible.  We proactively contacted local press in every area that Wildlike played.  We connected to local film, Arts and culture groups via social media.  We put up posters and placed postcards in festival towns.  As the festival count and number of awards began to build, we had something more to talk about – success.

So we have been building a small but exponentially increasing network.  Now, here in “post-festival” mode, the distributors are planning the release and we are working in tandem with them to continue to apply to festivals, attend festivals, post on social media, collect email address and reach out to all those who have seen or helped Wildlike to date.  The 150 film festivals we have been accepted to will contact their affiliates and audiences to promote the release.  Festivals continue to take Wildlike post-release, because seeing it on the big screen is unique.  Audience members that attend a festival screening after the release are even more valuable.  Festivals can promote the film as available OnDemand, and fans can immediately tell their friends to rent or buy it OnDemand.  Future festivals only promote further sales.  I am hoping Wildlike might rise beyond the standard indie film release, that it might just stretch a little further around the country, following the network we have built.

We want Wildlike to play and play until the festivals won’t play it anymore.  Until they ask “how old is this movie?” or better yet, “this movie has been all over the world already.”  With all festivals and special screenings combined, we estimate that about 20,000 people have already seen Wildlike.  Our newsletter list has 8,000 names.  I will ask them to be ambassadors for the release on September 25th.  In Dances With Films fashion, we are doing all we can to turn the once small, unheard-of indie film into a heard-of indie film.  After we’ve exhausted the festival run, I will have time to sit down, and start again with the writing of feature number two.