A Working Actor's Lament (Chapter 31)

Whistler While I Work

Upon packing up at my desk to head home, Robin walked up to my cubicle with news about the Whistler Film Festival. She was checking emails and read one from a random employee up in Whistler, Canada letting us know that we did not get accepted into their film festival. I am bummed but not surprised anymore.

I was talking to my one of my acting teachers, who, coincidentally, has a short film that he has been submitting to film festivals around the world. I told him that, at the time, we had made it into the Los Angeles Shorts Festival but were turned away from the Palm Springs one. He told me that we were doing pretty good at 50%. He then continued to inform me that we were pretty much on par with what he read in a magazine: if you are submitting to festivals, assume you are only going to get into 4% of them. This coming from a man who, also, did not get into Palm Springs but did get into L.A. Shorts. And his film, "The Wishing Well", was nominated for Best of Fest at Syracuse Intl. FF (2006), Winner at the Houston FF (2006), Best Animated Film at the Boston Intl. FF (2006), and was an Official Selection at the San Francisco FF (2006). If my math is correct, that puts him submitting to at least 100 Film Festivals.

By the end of my submissions, if 4% is the norm, I should make it into at least one more Film Festival. But, I am hoping for at least two.