On Monday, the film festival invitations for Serpentine began to arrive. If you are a part of the independent film world, you’ve probably heard of the film festival platform FilmFreeway. It is the primary portal through which short and feature films, along with screenplays, are submitted to festivals for consideration. Prior to FilmFreeway, the leading portal for submitting to film festivals was Withoutabox. The IMDb-owned Withoutabox was a terrible platform on numerous fronts, from poor customer service to technical glitches. FilmFreeway revolutionized the process with a smooth interface and innovative marketing programs.

It’s FilmFreeway’s targeted marketing programs that benefit both film festivals and filmmakers. For filmmakers, FilmFreeway offers marketing programs you can join to promote your work. Twice a week, they send out a newsletter to member festivals titled “Script of the Week.” The newsletter highlights a specific screenplay available for submission. If a film festival is interested, they invite you to submit your screenplay. These invitations often come with a generous discount on the submission fee. I plan to submit to certain screenplay festivals, but instead of searching the entire database for potential fits, I wait for film festivals to invite my projects after they’ve seen my logline and artwork. They also have similar programs for completed short and feature films.

Even with the discounted submission rates, the invitations always go beyond my film festival budget. What’s encouraging is seeing festivals that have previously accepted my work invite me to submit my latest project for review. It’s also rewarding to see new festivals discover my latest screenplay or film. Whether it’s an invitation or acceptance from a festival, it’s all about getting the word out. With over 14,000 film festivals and screenplay contests, the marketing investment is definitely worthwhile.

As you can imagine, I subscribe to a variety of marketing-related newsletters, including 8 Above with Jon Reiss. His latest newsletter outlined 15 essential marketing points everyone should follow. He stated that making a film is only 50% of the process, with the other 50% being finding an audience. This couldn’t be more accurate. While First Signal was in post-production, I used those months to develop a complete plan for how to find and market my latest film to its intended audience.

The newsletter also argued for starting this process at the script stage. I’m not entirely convinced on this point, but I’m open to hearing arguments. It’s like writing a novel. Many advise against writing to chase the latest market trends, but just to write. I believe the same principle applies to screenwriting. Yes, you should ask yourself as you write, “Who is my story going to appeal to?” You need a clear answer to that, because eventually you’ll have to develop and follow a marketing plan (unless you’re lucky enough to have a major production company or publisher take on your work).

Another point the newsletter emphasized was to establish a marketing and distribution budget early on. It can’t be an afterthought after you’ve made your film. You need to allocate some funds for film festivals, general marketing, screenings, etc. If you don’t, you might find yourself sitting on a great piece of art that nobody will see unless they happen to discover it among the 20,000+ films on Amazon and 300,000+ films on Tubi.

While Serpentine navigates the film festival circuit, it will soon be time to choose who will edit SOS United States for publication. I’m eager to see this project come together before year’s end. One thing is clear in book publishing: the process is as lengthy and demanding as filmmaking. But whether it’s the printed page or a moving image, neither should be rushed.

Projects.