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How does FilmFreeway work?


Patrick Cooper

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I'm noticing that a lot of film festivals allow people to submit their films via something called FilmFreeway. How does it actually work? I assume it's some sort of online delivery system. Ive tried looking online and there's not a lot of information on how it works. Even FilmFreeway's own website is quite vague when it comes to explanations. I have heard that it can be used in conjunction with Vimeo links. How is this done exactly?

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I've dealt with these submission websites a lot,

and they all seem to support Vimeo links with a password.

You attach the Vimeo link and the password for submission.

The purpose of these websites, including filmfreeway,

withoutabox, and shortfilmdepot, is to simplify the submission

process across multiple festivals. For instance, I submitted

my short film to Slamdance, Seattle, San Francisco, cinequest

film festivals, among many others, all through withoutabox

and I only had to upload the video once to Vimeo and fill out

one form for all the submissions. It's very helpful.

 

 

Only one of the websites I've dealt with actually required you

to upload the video on to their website (not vimeo) which can

take along time and is prone to errors. I believe that site was

shortfilmdepot, and that was only for European festivals.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you are uploading a copy of the film to Vimeo and then giving out links to festivals, I would highly recommend uploading the film to Vimeo each time for each festival submission. Then you can label them on your end which clip is which submission. Track your statistics and see if anyone actually watches the films by seeing if the film was ever viewed.

 

If a particular film festival gets back to you saying that it is in consideration and then you're rejected by them and the film was never even clicked on once (which you can track on your end), you'll know that the festival is lying and you can request a refund cause nobody ever watched it.

 

This sounds sketchy but believe me 99% of festivals out there are bullshit. They already know what they're programming and most of the submissions are just to fund the venue and the organizers. If you don't believe me, upload 90 minutes of colorbars and see if any of them even contact you to say there was a glitch. I guarantee you none of them will bother. They got your money and that's all that matters. To most of them anyway.

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Thankyou both of you. Michael, wow that's quite an eye opener. Yea I could see how some festivals would be like that - only interested in the submission fees to keep the festival running. By the way, only after Ive uploaded and submitted my film through FilmFreeway (with Vimeo links) did I discover a fault. There's a little bit of shakiness in a time lapse shot likely due to using a cheap light weight tripod. Strangely, Ive never noticed it before while watching the film and Ive viewed it heaps of times. I would like to fix the issue and reupload the film. Replacing the link in the main form on FilmFreeway seems quite straight forward. However, the link has also been added to a cover letter within FilmFreeway and I don't know how I can get access to that and edit that. Ive contacted FF - asking how to do this. Hopefully they'll get back to me soon.

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Reupload the movie by replacing the video file in your vimeo interface under settings. Just reupload a new version but under the same vimeo #. This has nothing to do with replacing the link you sent them. Just double check that the Thumbnail you selected is the same. Sometimes replacing the video file will result in getting a different thumbnail image.

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Ah cool. So you can keep the same url? I'll have to give that a try. There's another copy of the film (with a different link) that Ive submitted to two other film festivals - one in the UK and one in Canada. Though I'm finding the stats on Vimeo a bit puzzling. Supposedly, there have been three views of my film in the UK (which might be a good sign) but 0 loads. Strange how a video can be played without loading the video playback page and to do that three times as well. It's also indicating a number of loads in the US instead of Canada but 0 plays. I note that there were 9 loads in the US in a single day and one load the day after. Seems strange that someone (or alternatively a group of people) would load the video playback page 9 times in the same day but not play the actual video. Or perhaps they just had technical problems. Nevertheless, it's early days anyway. It hasn't been online for very long.

Edited by Patrick Cooper
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You'd have to check with Vimeo but I believe the stats count any page load including when you, the poster go to the page the clip is on. But the stats don't count your own views of the clip as "views". Only other I.P. addresses will count as views. I've had mysterious loads of password protected pages before that are puzzling. But actual views stats are usually pretty accurate.

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I realise now that I misinterpreted the stats. I thought all those loads and views were for one particular video but apparently, there for all of my videos. I'm finding the stats for individual videos on Vimeo really limiting. For example, whereas I can see the nationalities of people who have loaded and / or viewed my videos hollistically, I cannot find the same specific stats on individual videos.....not much more than the number of views. I would like to know which country has viewed which video.

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  • 1 month later...

By the way, one of the festivals has accepted my film for screening. I found this out via e-mail. Yet on the Submissions page in Filmfreeway, it still indicates 'in consideration' and 'undecided' next to the very same festival. I guess they're slack and haven't updated the status.

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