John Q. Phats Entertainment

I went on a bit of a writing binge last night.  For some reason a script I had an idea for has been popping in to my head a lot.  So, I sat down and started writing it last night.  The whole entire thing has sort of a smart ass tone to it.  I meant for it to be a series, but it’s kind of shaping up in to a movie.  It’s called Dead Girl and it’s kind of fun to write because I haven’t planned anything.  I just sort of sit down and write what ever comes to mind.  I’m not putting any pressure on myself to make it spectacular.  I’m just writing it.  It would be nice to have a full on movie script.  If I were a script writer, I would submit scripts to festivals like crazy.  Printing a script out costs you maybe a dollar.  In fact, I think a lot of festivals will accept an E-Mailed PDF.  Which is no shipping cost, no printing cost, and more importantly no production cost.  Plus, I can’t think of a better way to get a script out there.  If I finish Dead Girl, I’ll send it out to every script writing competition I can find.  Why not, right?
Censored was rejected from the Gangrene Film Festival yesterday.  This is only it’s 2nd rejection and it really only brought me down for roughly 20 seconds.  Mainly because there are about a million festivals out there and if I really wanted to, I could probably get in to another 4 by next month.  However, my focus is on Do Nice Guys Finish Last right now, which honestly, will probably have a much higher rejection rate then Censored.  So, it’s probably a good thing to be developing this tough skin at this stage.  The first rejection letter I got, really got to me.  I was upset about it for like a week.  This time it was 20 seconds.  Maybe next time, I won’t feel a thing.  It’s not that I don’t think Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be great when it’s done, it’s just that it’s sort of fighting an uphill battle.  It’s 15 minutes long and very offensive.  That’s pretty long for a short film and I’m guessing that film festivals want to appeal to a wider audience, so they kind of attempt to stay in the PG-13 area.  It doesn’t really matter to me though.  We made the film that we set out to make.  Worst case scenario?  I have a short film that I’m proud of to post on my web site.  Plus, I still have the SoCal Film Festival to look forward to.
By the way, Gabe just threw (literally) me edit six of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I think this might be our final cut.  We’ll see.  I’ll have to check it out tonight.  I really want it to be our final cut.  The last edit had very minor changes in it.  So, I’m pretty sure it’s almost there.

So, I’ve decided to submit short films to 5 festivals a month.  I sent off 2 copies of Censored this morning.  One of the festivals would add Censored and everyone in it to IMDB.  Which would be pretty cool.  I’ve set up a form where I enter all of the information in to Excel as I send them out.  I couldn’t deal with just sending them out blindly.  As for my success rate?  So far, I’m 1 for 2.  I’ve been rejected from 1 and accepted to another.  I’m absolutely expecting rejection letters and E-Mails.  That just seems to be the nature of the beast.  When I finish editing Nice Guys Finish Last, I’ll start sending that one out.  That one is a tough sell though.  It’s probably going to run about 15 minutes and a short film that long is harder to get in to film festivals.  O well.  When I’m finished with Nice Guys Finish Last, I’ll probably concentrate on sending that out and see how it goes for a month or so.  If it doesn’t work out, I’ll start sending Censored out again.
The only thing that sucks about film festivals is the fees.  I mean, it makes sense, it just kind of sucks that your fee is kept regardless of weather you show at the festival or not.  Couldn’t they at least send me a poster or something?  Maybe a key chain that says “Rejected” on it?  Or a T-Shirt that says “I paid $35 to submit to Blah Blah Film Festival and all I got was this shitty t-shirt?”  I would rock that shit.