Screenwriting : Festival Question by Patrick "PK" Koepke

Patrick "PK" Koepke

Festival Question

Is it common for festivals to regularly miss their "notification date"? As my first screenplay, The Sword of the Celestial Dragon, is making it through the festival circuit, so far two festival notification dates have occurred (one a few weeks ago and one yesterday) and in both cases they didn't notify me of the results on the day stated. 

Is this an industry thing, or more a hallmark of smaller festivals that maybe has limited staff or administrative resources? Is it a red flag, meaning does it also imply that maybe other parts of the festival operation is also less organized, like judging or promoting? Or am I reading too much into this? 

One thing I will be doing is taking notification date into consideration when applying to the next cycle with my second screenplay, and will most likely avoid the ones missing these deadlines, unless it really is just a common part of the industry.

Edit to add: I am actively checking their website, their social media, my Filmfreeway dashboard, and my inbox/spam folders in case it comes through.

Mark Deuce

I really wish you the best of luck and Congratulations for making that major big step Patrick "PK" Koepke

CJ Walley

Yeah, umm, festivals are a total wild west. They're notoriously badly run and many are complete shams. Certain platforms make a lot of money off these side-hustles and aren't incentivised at all to shut them down.

Truth be told, at an industry level, the awards carry no kudos anyway.

Writers have been warned about this for over ten years now, but for some reason screenwriting communities keep feeding the monster. Same with competitions.

Patrick "PK" Koepke

CJ Walley Thank you for the reply and the advice. It is very appreciated. I went in with eyes open (knowing the value of the festival laurels is measured by which festival/contest it is), so I've submitted to a mix of top festivals/contests (DIFF, Worldfest, Slamdance), mid festivals that fit my very niche genre, and low festivals that are cheap to enter and seem to have some value in terms of networking or industry presence. I agree there are many that aren't worth the entry fee.

For someone in my position, any positive momentum and independent validation of the quality of my work is worth the cost of admission in my specific case. Though I know this won't be true for everyone.

Pitching and things like Blacklist reviews, InkTip, and Stage 32 services will be next after I've seen how good/bad my screenplay has done.

Do you recommend any changes to my strategy? I need all the help I can get.

Mike Childress

Patrick "PK" Koepke the notification pushbacks are a known phenomenon, even Austin FF has suffered from them before. There was at least one incidence of Film Freeway suffering a data loss issue which affected competition notifications, and also sometimes runners seemingly accept TOO many submissions.

Other topics in Screenwriting:

register for stage 32 Register / Log In