Withoutabox.com - For Your Festival Submission Sanity

Did I mention my new short Chief, Your Butt's on Fire this week?   We're in festival submission mode around here, and just as film has gone digital, so has the submission process.  Thankfully, my wife discovered withoutabox.com.

This is going to sound like a big freaking commercial, but if you are an indie filmmaker, this could really help you.  On the Withoutabox site, you fill out a form about your film, then upload a web-quality Quicktime file.  When you find a festival you like, you click "qualify" and see if your form jives with that festival's submission form.   You make whatever adjustments you need to make, then click "submit" and it's done.  No making umpteen copies of your film,  no writing umpteen descriptions of you film.

Done!


Anyone who has ever gone the film festival route knows the form process is a major arse-ache.  Every festival has their own form, with mostly the same information.  You fill out this same information over and over and over and over.   Withoutabox is not only a major streamlining tool for festival submissions, but a huge resource for finding festivals.

The one danger of the streamlining process is that it allows you to submit to a lot more festivals than you would have taken the time for previously.  How is this dangerous?  Submission fees!  They add up; fifty dollars here, sixty dollars there.   And Witoutabox takes $2.25 per submission.  There's package deals for big festival junkies.  For an independent filmmaker, the submission fees have to be the great paradox of festivals - you need to get your work seen to make career inroads, but you don't have the disposable income to throw at a lot of submission fees.   Withoutthebucks.com, where are you?

-Steve