We're all busy getting the festival together... and, for those of you who would still like to participate, I believe the 2-Minute 2-Step deadline has been extended. Check the link to your right.
So while we get all of our ducks in a row, I thought I'd bring you a guest blog from The Shumway Brothers. They are two times alumni of the festival and wrote to us recently about there experience here and how it helped them down the line.
Enjoy --
In June 2009 we finished our 5 year project called "Enigma." Now we had a decision to make: which festival should be our world premiere? We had premiered a previous film, “Over the Moon” at Dances with Films and the experience had been great – it even won “audience choice!” We decided that DWF was the best place to premiere Enigma. After a wonderful, problem free screening, we repeated history with another “Audience Choice” award!
Wow! Our world premiere had gone without a hitch! The festival was fun, and now we were excited to do this a bunch more times! Awesome! So we got accepted to more festivals, and were all ready to have the same experience we had at DWF... And then our eyes were opened.
We had been to “Dances” twice, and twice had a great experience. So we thought that all festivals would be like “Dances.” And then we discovered…not all film festivals are created equal!
Communication is key with film festivals. You have to know what’s going on to get the most out of the event. “Dances” takes this a step further with the orientation meeting. Here we got the chance to meet other filmmakers before the fest. At the meeting, the DWF staff told us what we should be doing to help promote our films and the fest. They covered postcards, posters, and they planted great ideas about S.W.A.G! (You know. $h!t we all get!). So we got our stuff and saw how well it worked and how much better it made the entire experience.
This meeting prepared us better than we realized. At many of our future festivals we took what we learned from DWF and applied it. We were quite lucky to have received this preparation at our first fest and not our last. At every fest we went we were more prepared and knew what and how to advertise our film and in turn we put more people in the seats.
"Enigma" has now been to 18 festivals, we have been awarded 20 festival awards and 16 nominations and it all started with Dances with Films
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The Shumway Brothers are:
Jason Shumway
Jason Shumway has been making movies since the young age of 14. After getting his first taste of video editing at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, Jason became an award winning filmmaker while studying in J. Everett Light Radio/Television program. For college Jason was lucky enough to be accepted to the prestigious University of Southern California. In this top rated film program Jason directed eight films and crew on many more. He has recently worked on shows for G4TV and NBC. Currently he is a staff editor at E! Entertainment Television. Jason produced the indie Feature Film “Bloomington” Premiering at Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco on June 23rd 2010.
Matt Shumway
Matt graduated with distinction from Art Center College of Design. There he created his award winning film “Over the Moon.” That film led him to Rhythm and Hues Studios where he works as an Animation Supervisor. His feature film credits include X2, Garfield 1 & 2, Chronicles of Narnia, A Night at the Museum, The Golden Compass, The Incredible Hulk, and Land of the Lost. Matt was nominated for and Annie Award in 2006 for his work on Aslan for Narnia. He is currently the Animation Supervisor for Cabin in the Woods, A Drew Goddard / Joss Whedon Film due out Jan 14th 2011.
www.enigmathemovie.com
www.frontier-studios.com
www.facebook.com/enigmathemovie
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