This is a quick and to the point post about submitting your film into Film Festivals 
With the recent wins and official selections for my film Tabernacle 101, I believe that you can attract great success for your finished film by taking similar actions. Film Festivals are a great way to promote your film and get it out there to the world. Numerous famous filmmakers today made their name with an award winning short film in a major film festival.
Many people complete their short or feature film and then expect the world to chase them for the film. Other people feel exhausted by the filmmaking process and just want the film to take care of itself. The reality is this. You will have to make a big effort and put in work to get your film seen around the world. Film Festival strategy is a major part of how this works.
How does one go about entering film festivals?
Make sure you use the website Film Freeway which is hands down the number one site for entering film festivals in the world today. You will need to fill in a profile when joining and then upload your film. Please see the example of my profile and a heavy emphasis on Tabernacle 101. 
If you can make a short trailer, such as the tabernacle 101 trailer , upload it to the film freeway site. After doing this, the best approach is to pay Film Freeway for marketing services. This will highlight your film and place it at the top of the line.
I must emphasise that I do not have any affiliation or any contact with Film Freeway outside of entering my own film Tabernacle 101 this year and paying money to them for their marketing services. I paid in January and it took two months to find a slot. I was featured as trailer of the week. As a result about 100 film festivals offered me 50 – 80 % discount Many film festivals were free. I entered about 40 film festivals in total that had invited me.
At this point we have had six official selections and two Best Film Wins and are awaiting on 33 further film festivals to reply.
It is like winning lotto when you are officially selected and win at an international Film festival. The reason is that most film festivals get thousands of entries and then have to select 50 – 100 films and then only a handful win awards.
The Trailer is the first thing you need to promote your film. Once this is created and uploaded to Film Freeway and your profile is complete, find the marketing page on Film Freeway. It will be on your dashboard. 
It usually takes a couple of months before you are featured as trailer of the week or film of the week on Film Freeway.
Wait till then before entering film festivals. Once you get that exposure and it is published, all hell breaks loose. The film festivals see your amazing trailer and you will get offered cut throat rates to enter film festivals. Take advantage of these offers
Enter at least 30 – 40 film festivals. It cost me only about $300 to enter 40 Film Festivals and it took me one afternoon of my time to enter. It is so quick once your profile is created. At $300 it was bargain deal for me 40 Film Festivals for less than $10 per entry fee was tremendous value. Normally you would have to pay $50 – $100 per Festival.
Once you have entered a years worth of festivals, visualise success and you should see Official selections and Wins coming your way. It is very simple to do this process and the return to your film career and confidence will be well worth the expenditure.
Work smart. Follow what works, do the above and see your film transform into a film festival winner. The big Filmmakers making the hit movies today started with their own short or micro-budget feature film. They entered film festivals and won and this helped them gain creditability for their future career.
