For filmmakers, there is no greater joy than getting the chance to see their movie on the big screen at a film festival. Of course, any filmmaker who has submitted to a film festival will tell you that the road to get to that joyous moment is filled with bumps, rejections, and a plethora of dead ends. However, filmmakers don’t need to go down that road alone. Katie Bignell and the team at Festival Formula are there to help develop the best plan so that this labor of love can make its way to the big screen.

Katie Bignell sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to discuss her expertise in the field, the power of the critic in the lifecycle of a short film, and the specific plan Festival Formula created for a recent SXSW premiere. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Beyond the Cinerama Dome: I want to start off with your personal history, how you fell in love with film, and how that led you to the path you're on now.

Katie Bignell: Yeah, it's really unique. I always hate when people say, oh, I fell into this thing, but I actually did. I was training to be an actor, and at the very last minute changed my university degree to writing. I wanted to go down the scriptwriting route, and I ended up being accepted to Bournemouth University in the UK. At that point, this was a very long time ago, it was the only pure screenwriting degree available. I didn't necessarily find it that interesting, which I like to point out because everyone always thinks that further education is the be-all and end-all.

Whilst I didn't necessarily enjoy all of my degree, one of the tasks that I had to do in my final year was find work experience. I don't live in London, I live in Hertfordshire, which is a bit farther out, so I wanted to find something closer to me that wasn't going to cost me a lot in commuting.

I just found online these two brothers who lived about 15 minutes’ drive away from my house called Ben and Chris Blaine. They weren’t film trained at university or film school, but were making movies. One of the first tasks they gave me when I turned up was the company credit card and all of their short comedy films. They were like, can you put this into film festivals now?

I didn't know anything, but I knew I was spending someone else's money, so I was poring over rules and regulations. That was 20 years ago. A lot has changed in the landscape. We had fewer film festivals back then. A lot more premiere stipulations. Also, it's very expensive to submit to festivals. Even then, you had to be very cautious about what was spent, where, and in what order. It was also a time when you had to fill in forms by hand. A lot of people don't realize how easy they have it nowadays. Back in the day, to submit your film to a festival, you would pay online, hand-fill the form, and then you would have to send a physical version of your film to be considered. We had to send VHS tapes and DVDs through the post.

I started getting traction for this filmmaking duo and a lot of fellow filmmakers were like, how are you finding time to do this? I ended up kind of being touted around for quite a long time, doing it word of mouth. Then there was a point when I ended up going into playwriting, which doesn't give you a lot of money to live on.

I was still doing both, and I realized that I really enjoyed being able to help filmmakers understand where their film fit in. Also, I just had this very bizarre, encyclopedic knowledge of all these festivals that had accrued over the years where I could say like, oh yeah, this festival really loves comedy or, oh, they really like heartwarming stories.

About ten years ago, we launched as a brand, Festival Formula. The team has grown since then. We’re a motley crew from creative backgrounds. I think the reason my job is quite stressful is because I'm having to deal with filmmakers, film festivals, and lots of deadlines.

What's worth it is when you see a film reach an audience and you kind of go, yeah, that's why we backed that film. When you see a filmmaker who perhaps doesn't have the confidence in their work, and we're the ones being the cheerleader going, no, you've made something really great, let's share this.

I think my background in writing does help me when I'm discussing with filmmakers, because the whole team that considers the films for our slate are trained to write very simple script reports. The one thing that's been consistent since we started doing this is filmmakers going, you understand my film and I can tell you've watched it because you've understood it or you've given a different perspective or you picked up on something that I'm really glad you did. Filmmakers often ask if they can use the synopsis that we've written because it's from a different perspective and they've said, oh, you've written better than I could.

As someone who does some programming on the side, going through FilmFreeway can be a nightmare. What are some absolute red flags that filmmakers should look for? Especially with newer festivals and deciding if you want to take a chance on them or not.

That's a really great question that I kind of wish more filmmakers would ask. My role is to manage expectations. A lot of the time we're helping a filmmaker figure out the level their film can go to. Not too high, not too small, and also in what order that makes sense. If you're looking for a particular premiere at festivals, they have a stipulated status. It has to be a US premiere, so you have to figure out where you're submitting to retain that. It's quite a minefield that you can be prepared for.

The main red flags for us is if a festival has an insane amount of categories. I'm talking about really bizarre categories like best grip, best child actor…really hyper-specific categories. Also if they have a catchall where it says you can submit to all categories for $350 and we're like, whoa, that's kind of crazy money.

Also, festivals that perhaps don't advertise that they’re going to take place physically with a live event. Festivals can often surf on the idea that they've got a known city in the name and then people can get confused. This isn't the Cannes Film Festival, it's something else that happens in Cannes.

My rule of thumb is you should only ever really submit to a festival if you're going to be super ecstatic when you get selected. That sounds so simple and like common sense, but the amount of filmmakers that we talk to where they go, oh, I've been selected for this festival, but it doesn't look great. We'll kind of go, well, why did you submit that? Generally it’s because they got a phishing email with a 40% discount code or a final-deadline-coming-up email.

We understand why filmmakers can be tricked by these emails because they're looking for validation for their work. The process for film festivals is very slow, especially because submission windows are getting longer now. If you're going to spend hard-earned cash, just make sure it's for a festival that you've done your research on.

I will say, though, that you're completely right. There are always going to be festivals in their year one. Every festival that's now long-standing had a year one. Sometimes we find it hard to gauge when we don't know their flavor because they haven't got a past edition we can look back at. You can glean a little bit in their write-up.

Are they looking for particular films? Do they have particular categories you can lean into? That might be the country of production, genre, if it's an LGBT community film, or if it's Black or Asian-directed, etc. We want to know what they want and what they don't need.

Also just asking around. Filmmakers are very honest. You'd have to take everything with a pinch of salt because everyone's experience is very different. I think just researching and understanding why you’re submitting somewhere before you click submit is always hugely beneficial. Not only to your budget and your bank balance, but also to your own mental health because you don't want to kick yourself when you're down. You do hear “no” a lot on the festival circuit, but when you finally get a selection selection notice, only to realize it's not a great festival, is not a pleasant feeling at all.

What we're here to do is stop people from doing that. Giving a little bit more kudos to their work, nudging them in the right direction. Say, your audience isn't here, let's find somewhere where they are and increase that potential selection.

I think a huge part of the marketing aspect of a film is once they get into a festival, what do they do now? I think film critics and writers are a huge part of that. I know you primarily work with filmmakers, but for the critics' side of things, what advice do you have to them about covering these short films that usually don't get the same glitz-and-glamour review as something with Nicole Kidman, you know?

Oh, definitely. I feel like we're all chomping at the bit to kind of get more coverage for short films because some of them are amazing voices from unique experiences. Or a voice that's not necessarily heard from a territory. What I always suggest filmmakers do from their PR side is that sometimes a festival will have somebody doing PR for the festival as a whole, so you have that opportunity. They might have a press list to go through.

I would say to critics, that if you offer to do coverage for any festival for short films, it gives you the opportunity to flex your muscles because you can turn things around a bit quicker. A short film can be up to 30 or 40 minutes. It's not a 2.5 hour epic film that you're having to watch, imbibe, ingest, and then kind of regain your thoughts.

Any critic who’s wanting to flex that muscle a bit more should approach any festival…or don't wait for the festival to invite you. You can still attend. I always say that to filmmakers. You don't need to be invited to a festival to go to a festival. Even if you're not screening, you're still an audience member and you should be going to see what people are talking about now, or what films are out there on the circuit competitively.

Same for a critic. Trust me, filmmakers love it when they suddenly find their short films being reviewed for them. They're like, oh, amazing, I can utilize this. Obviously, as long as it's constructive, they can use quotes from it.

I wish there was more coverage of short films. I really wish there was. I think that should be a trickle-down effect, like the bigger festivals that are more prolific give extra coverage to shorts and therefore others will follow suit. But yeah, write more about short films, please!

One of the short films I covered out of SXSW actually worked with you. Bear Damen’s Synthesize Me. Can you talk a little bit about the plan that you created for that specific film?

That was a really unique one that came to us via the sales agent, who'd been recommended to us by another sales agent we worked with. When we met Bear, he was so open to getting this film out there. We kind of talked about the level of the film, and with a film that’s a very poignant story like this one, and there are certain assets that kind of stuck out to us.

It was a foreign language film, which a lot of North American festivals are craving. They’re literally asking us, do you have any foreign language films because we want to share it with our audience? It's a youth narrative as well. It's a story about grief and adolescence being muddled together. It's a female narrative too. All of these assets together gave us a lot of options, but always at the forefront of our mind was that this is a really strong film. This can be aiming for the higher part of the circuit.

The timing worked and we were like, SXSW makes sense because it doesn't require a premiere, but it's a very big, well-known, prolific festival. We were like, if we get into this, then we can still have a plan, but it now means that we can factor in that people will request the film because they're going to be looking for films that played at SXSW.

Synthesize Me has just been the gift that keeps on giving because it is a really beautiful piece. It's not a loud piece, it's something quite gentle and quiet. Film festivals are telling us they want that. They're not looking for those high-energy, octane stories all the time. They're looking for those contemplative pieces. Synthesize Me is just a perfect example of it, because it’s so beautiful. It's very slight, there's not a whole lot of dialogue in it. The performances are internal, but scream grief so loudly. It’s a universal story too. So we were thrilled when that came to us. We really wanted to take this film on because it's going to be such an exciting journey.

The editing of that last bit when they cut between the synthesizer and the heart monitor. I still think about it.

Yeah, it makes me go cold because it's one of those moments where you're like, grief is such a universal thing, but it's also such an individual thing. That last shot where the father is in the doorway and all the lights come back on…there's an almost magical realism to it. It's only ever so slightly, just a slight nuance, but it elevates the film.

That's what you want. You want these films that stick around and linger, that you still think about. Especially from a short film, because if you put it into a programming block, you know that people will be talking about it in the audience when they're kind of filtering out. I always try to catch people talking about it, so I can give that feedback to the filmmaker and be like, oh, this person said the most amazing thing about your film.

Thank you so much, Katie. Thank you for your time.We have a very similar ideology about uplifting films, so I love that.

Thank you so much for having me. It's nice to meet someone else who just shows that same affection for sure.

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