Is it a Ponzi Scheme? 🤔

Does money for film grants and contests come from the submission fees themselves? ASKING FOR A...ME.

YOU GUYS! I am starting a Filmmaker Grant to give $10,000 away to a talented young filmmaker to make their short film!!

And — it’s only $50 apply and just requires a finished script, budget, artist statement, project description, a work sample, and information about relevant cast & crew.

Early Deadline: May 20, $50

Deadline: June 8, $60

Late Deadline: July 1, $75

Submissions will be capped at 200 so get your projects in stat!!

*Quietly calculating behind the scenes…*

…$50 x 200 = $10,000…bada-bing!

Thank you so much to all the applicants for funding this grant. Leftover money will go to me for my time and labor spent reading the applications and deciding who gets the application money — oops, I mean grant money. Mwahahaha.

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Whoever wins that money, I’m sure that’s really nice for them!

But this is my discussion on how insanely rare it is to “win” any film grant/fellowship/lab/festival, and how much money you will spend and others will make in your pursuit of winning any of them.

I find many these prey on young, hopeful filmmakers (🙋🏼‍♀️) who have been told “great work just breaks through!” when I mean, sure… .06% of that great work breaks through.

Maybe we can spend that time and money otherwise?

I was TICKLED to see that as I was writing this draft, Hudson Phillips shared an amazing post called I Thought Getting Picked Would Fix Everything, about his experience applying to things like this when he was young and how it takes a while to shake off the learned need for outside validation for our work.

He writes:

There is an entire industry that makes money off of this model. Screenwriting competitions, Pitchfests. Conventions. If everyone who wanted to make a movie just went and made their movie, this industry would no longer exist. They need us to want to make a movie and never actually make one. Even though they are selling something that, at best, doesn’t actually exist and, at worst, is harmful and exploitative.

Some quick examples for you:

Hollyshorts Screenplay Competition has a prize for a Female Short Screenplay of….$1000! For the low submission price of POTENTIALLY $75. That’s almost 10% of the prize money.

This is just predatory. Just don’t apply and use that $75 towards your budget.

Film Freeway reports an estimated submission number of 1200 for their entire Screenplay Competition!!! That’s…$84,000 of submission fees, as a low estimate.

This is also really alarming — a minimum $70 for notes given by who-the-hell-knows?

As Hudson writes, this is:

A model that feeds on the desire of artists to be seen.

Here’s another one: The Jackson Wild Media Awards

Okay, so it costs between $180 - $240 to apply (late deadlines are around $225 - 275). There is seemingly no monetary prize given to winners. Plus it looks like National Geographic and Disneynature won a bunch of them last year.

So say the average applicant spends $225 on fees. And there were over 500 films entered, say 515. $225 x 515 = $115,875 made on submission fees, as an average estimation.

WOW!

In their FAQ’s it says they never give out fee waivers but recommend you apply early to take advantage of their “low costs.” This is a lie, two Film Fatales members can get a 100% discount LOL. This is also a lie because $180 is not a low cost LOL.

They even put a call out for judges, and in exchange for being a judge you get to go to the awards ceremony? They’re not even paying the people to watch the material?

I know there is a whole industry that exists to give agencies/production companies awards and clout, that’s all they do (D&AD, Cleos, Webby Awards). But when there’s over 500 films applying you know there are so many applicants who never had a chance — so many young broke filmmakers who thinks this could be a big break for them. I’ve only won D&AD and Young Director Awards because the company I was rep’ed with paid for them. It’s not equal access by any means, it’s not supposed to be.

I think this is from a video game?

Here are some numbers on Sundance that I’ve always found fascinating:

16,201 submissions — 4,255 feature-length films and 470 episodic projects. 11,476 shorts

Official deadline, short = $75 … $860,700

Official deadline, feature = $100 … $425,500

Official deadline, episodic = average $88 … $41,360

$1,327,560 in submission fees, not bad!! Your chances of being selected are less than 1%.

This is part of the Golden Elevator myth, the Chose One myth that indie film props up:

If you’re a director or producer, it’s “Get financing. Get into Sundance. Sell it to a major studio. Direct a Marvel movie.”

It’s a compelling story. Who doesn’t want to be Cinderella? Who doesn’t want to be chosen? Who doesn’t want to be the exception to the rule? - Hudson

Last year I applied to the Black List’s NRDC Climate Fellowship, and I recently came across these stats: 3 winners out of 500 applicants. That is an acceptance rate of .6%…less than 1%. What?? Why did I even bother?

Again, I’m not saying that the fellows for this don’t have amazing projects or don’t deserve the support.

I’m saying that I’m over trying to win the lottery! I’m also done spending $150 for a program with a 1% acceptance fee that gives you a “semifinalist” label to make you feel like maybe you have a shot next year, so that you apply again and help to contribute to the $60,000 pot of cash they’re making on submissions (NO! I’m NOT going to do that! NO, Square Peg, NO!).

It’s simply too expensive!

This is where NonDē filmmaking comes in. Where we see the value of making a film for the resources we have. Of not waiting to be chosen from some faceless group or some “Accepted” check mark on Film Freeway. To know that the real meaning is in the MAKING of the art, not in who pats you on the back for it.

I think I would have save thousands of dollars over the years if I had not applied to so many film programs. But whatever, I’ve learned, and now I’m ranting to you all about it! Aren’t you lucky!?!

Oh! Maybe this is that video game about people who run screenplay competitions?

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‼️ FOR MY NEXT RESEARCH PROJECT, let me know if y’all think this would be interesting:

How many original feature programming slots are available at the mid-level film festivals? For example, at Chicago International Film Festival, how many films are playing there that haven’t already played somewhere else (like at Cannes, Berlin, etc)? I’m curious how many slots are available for World Premieres, what the shots are for films without Top-5 festival premieres.

I think this would give us better insight/data into our festival strategies, where it makes sense to apply, and how to construct alternate distribution plans as well.

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Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to head over to Ryan Dickie’s Substack ChefBoi NonDē to follow along with our summer feature project that he’s writing/directing, Face the World with No Regrets.

K lovE ya, byE!