by Shannonn Kelly

On the filmmaker boards these days, many filmmakers talk about winning awards.

There’s a difference between the merits of an award for your film and a rewarding film career at the same time- Sure every filmmaker wants an award whether it’s the Palme d’Or from Cannes or the Golden Bear from Berlin.

Awards are important addition to any filmmaker’s bio as long as the award means something to the people/film festival/reviewer/media person who’s writing about the film or interested in bringing the film to a film festival or considering it for distribution or broadcast.

Some awards carry relatively no weight; other awards carry a lot of weight. It depends upon the market for your film and the kind of exposure you’re looking for the film to garner. I know awards from ReelHeART International Film Festival (RHIFF) have helped some of our filmmakers get funding, distribution and into top tier film festivals and broadcast markets.

Let’s say you make a children’s film and Parent Magazine writes about the film and that creates buzz for parents and their kids to see as well as other ‘child’ related programmers, broadcasters, and distributors. You’ve not been given an award, but you’ve been rewarded for making a good film.

How do I go about "ensuring awards in festivals" as one filmmaker asked, is a tough row to hoe-

Your film or anyone’s film for that matter has to have the elements of a good or great film to get on that road to "ensuring awards in festivals".

Any award winning film has to have a central question that’s been asked and answered in the film. It has to hit all the right beams (poa, turning points, crisis, conclusion and climax) and be imaginative, evocative, unusual, well told, well filmed, well edited with a terrifically memorable cast of actors or actresses.

As a film festival director, I think it’s important for filmmakers to know that just any award is not necessarily a good use of those entry fees. And no , I cannot suggest which festivals are good and which are a waste of time. But suffice it to say there are a slew of bad festivals. And yes many good festivals.

I can tell you to steer clear of so-called ’film festivals’ that give awards to films that haven’t screened to an verified audience or that give awards to all films that have entered. That’s not a film festival. More often than not a person or persons cooked up an idea to get government funding for this "much needed film festival on the cultural landscape" and are laughing all the way to the bank with your entry fees and their government grant money.

That’s not a film festival. That’s a scam.

Your job as a ’serious filmmaker’ is to find film festivals big or small that your fellow filmmakers are talking about and are excited about. Do a lot of leg work and research on the types of festivals you’d consider entering and put a fairly healthy portion of your overall budget to festival entries. You often have to win at least one award at a recognizable film festival for your film to starting flipping the scale from rejections to acceptances.

(At ReelHeART, we’d prefer to be the ones to give you your first award!)

If you like the mission statement of a festival or a particular group of festivals and you want to visit the cities the festivals are in, then I say that festival award is worthwhile. It’s the complete festival experience that makes winning an award all that much sweeter.

Another important point to you need to appreciate is that your film has to be well received by an audience with a strong voice; because, in the film industry at the Hollywoord level or in the thriving Independent industry, as we all know that word-of-mouth is the most powerful tool there is.

G ood Luck with your filmmaking career and film festival entries. Now go and make a damn good (if not great) film…