I was honored to be asked by the Woods Hole Film Festival to participate in a recent discussion with some of this year’s filmmakers about the current state of filmmaking during this pandemic, including the importance of film festivals.
This week, we’ll be looking at what makes film festivals so essential, and what you need to know about them!
Part Four: Film Festivals in 2020 - Going Digital
In case you hadn’t noticed, summer 2020 is turning out a little differently than planned…
As much as we’d all like to be attending film festival premieres this summer, it’s unfortunately not been possible, and, in the US at least, it looks unlikely to happen again in the immediate future.
Cancel Or Adapt
As the pandemic has gripped the world, some festivals have simply had no option but to cancel, including huge names in the industry such as South By Southwest and Cannes, which were left with no time to create a viable Plan B.
Some of the bigger festivals later in the year are still planning to go ahead, including the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, both of which have taken the past few months to figure out how to offer a safe experience, albeit with a somewhat pared-down event and program compared to recent years.
But for the majority of film festivals scheduled for this busy summer season, the choice quickly became clear: either go digital, or cancel.
Cancelling certainly would have been the easy option for many of these festivals, which don’t generally have huge funding war chests, and are more likely to be run by film lovers than tech whizzes. But it’s a testament to the dedication of these festival directors that, within a matter of weeks or months, so many of them had managed to pivot from a physical festival to an online version with great success.
A Tough Summer
Still, it’s hard not to miss the festivals that we all love attending so much. It’s bad enough for audiences who aren’t able to enjoy these celebrations of film and creativity in their local communities. But for filmmakers, this is especially heartbreaking.
There are many producers, investors, directors, actors, and screenwriters who had poured time, money, and passion into their films over the last year or two, and were banking on a successful festival run this summer. As we’ve covered in a previous post, festivals can be vital for a film to garner positive reviews, strong word-of-mouth, great publicity and, most importantly, distribution opportunities.
Providing a platform for sales agents and distributors to sit down in a theater and watch a movie while surrounded by an enthusiastic audience is one of the most essential roles that a festival plays in the life cycle of an independent film. For the filmmakers that had worked so hard to achieve that, the events of this summer feel like a setback.
And for any filmmaker, that sensation of sitting in a theater, surrounded by a crowd of eager viewers and watching the results of all your hard work on the big screen is incredibly thrilling. I’ve been there and done it, and it’s extremely addictive. For many, it’s what drives us on to our next project.
Being denied that opportunity is a bummer for filmmakers, particularly for the creators of some of those lower-budget titles that are unlikely to achieve any kind of significant theatrical rollout. For these talented filmmakers, a festival screening might have realistically been the only chance that they would get to see their film in this kind of environment.
It sucks. And no words of sympathy or comfort from me can replace that feeling.
Looking For The Positives
But, when we look at the bigger picture, I see a few positives that we can take from this situation.
Under normal circumstances, it’s very tough for distributors and sales agents to attend even a fraction of these hundreds of film festivals all over the world. Consequently, they usually miss out on seeing the vast majority of the thousands of festival films that play throughout any given summer. Many distribution companies, particularly those in the arthouse sector that are scouting these festivals so carefully, aren’t large companies and have very limited budgets to travel around the world to attend festivals.
Not in 2020 though! From what I can tell, most sales agents and distributors have managed to “attend” more festivals and view more films so far this summer than ever before - and all from the comfort of their own homes. No travel costs, no time away from the office, no getting lost trying to find the screening room.
Whereas before they may have had to choose five festivals to attend all summer, now they can attend fifty, particularly given that most people don’t have a whole lot of distractions available to them right now.
And because of the recent lull in production, some distributors are a little concerned about having enough product to fill all their slots over the next twelve to eighteen months (assuming that the cinemas are back open by then). So, many of them have been eagerly looking for content that is already in the can.
And what better place to find these completed titles than at film festivals? Now more than ever, they seem willing to take a shot on something that they might not have looked at previously. Within the next year, we could see a number of breakout hits - some of which might never have received any exposure pre-pandemic - being released and enjoying success.
Believe it or not, this could actually prove to be a huge boost for independent film!
A Trend That Had Already Begun
However, while 2020 might seem like a seismic shift for the digitization of film festivals, this is not an entirely new phenomenon.
Over the past few years, more and more festivals had already started adding an online element to their programs. This was done specifically to make their content more available to wider audiences across the world who couldn’t attend the festival in person.
This trend came about because festival directors felt that not enough people - including both audiences and distributors - were getting the opportunity to view their content. By moving parts of their programming online, these festivals were able to increase the exposure and distribution opportunities that they could offer to filmmakers, thereby increasing - rather than diminishing - their prestige and importance.
It was these festivals that found the conversion to a fully digital event this summer a slightly less intimidating process, both from a technical and a marketing point of view. It’s a direction in which they had already been traveling.
Whisper it quietly, but… could it be that online festivals are, in fact, the future, and the 2020 pandemic has simply expedited this process?
There are even some potential financial benefits for the festival: increased reach means potentially larger audiences and greater revenues from ticket sales. Of course, there will be some costs to take a festival online, but there are also costs to putting on a physical film festival, including theater rentals, event venues, and additional staff hires, all of which would be dramatically reduced.
Finding The Right Balance
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that we’re better off taking festivals entirely online, and that we should do away with physical festivals altogether. Personally, I can’t wait to see audiences flocking back to their local film festivals and enjoying all that they have to offer!
Additionally, if festivals were to switch online and expand internationally too rapidly, they could risk alienating the very communities that they were set up to promote and inspire, and the people that have made these film festivals a success may no longer feel that sense of local pride that made their hometown festival feel like something that belonged to them.
In short, these film festivals could risk losing their soul, their identity. Audiences are the lifeblood of a film festival. They will need to find the right balance.
Embracing A Digital Future
But for now, in this strangest of festival seasons, it's important to focus on some important signposts for the future.
After all, in the past few years, we have seen the entire industry shift towards the digital. Streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime have brought a whole new wave of opportunities to filmmakers and their projects, which might not otherwise have been made or offered distribution.
Some people feared that streaming platforms would be the death of film. In fact, they’ve made it stronger. And we, as a filmmaking community, have embraced that journey into a bright digital future.
So, why not film festivals too?
The digitization of the production and distribution of content has led to the democratization of cinema. By embracing this change, festivals too can now connect with new audiences across the world, and expand their reach and significance manyfold while still retaining the local flavor that makes them so unique.
Moving Forward
Moving forward, film festivals will need to perform a careful juggling act. Their ability to offer incredible exposure to filmmakers via premieres and in-person events, as well as a wonderful experience for the local communities that are their lifeblood, must be balanced with the hugely extended access and convenience that an online festival affords to worldwide audiences, including distribution companies and sales agents.
But already, certain festivals have proved that you can have both, and one doesn’t need to cancel out the other.
After 2020, online festivals may just be here to stay, even if, at the same time, we can still welcome back the crowds for an in-person experience as well.
But where does all this leave YOU, the filmmaker, who might be confused as to whether participation in an online festival this summer is a good idea or not? We’ll discuss that in more detail in our next post…
In Part Five, we’ll look at the decisions that filmmakers have had to make this summer, and weigh up some of the pros and cons of participating in an online film festival.
Ricky Margolis is a producer and financier with over twenty years’ experience in the entertainment industry.
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