I am very very well aware that I’m just straight-up procrastinating now, but come on, this is marginally useful!

I have just under eight weeks left till I fly out to New Mexico, so, obviously (obviously!) I spent today researching all the interesting film festivals (in North America and beyond) that have either no submission fee at all, or just $5 or less.

Once you filter out all the blatant scams, possible scams, the locals-only festivals, and the youth-only festivals (ye gods, that made me feel old), what you’re left with is a rather eclectic mix. I ended up sending off 13 free submissions and 20 dirt-cheap submissions, which cost me $93.36 USD. That’s an excellent deal, considering the really big film festivals I plan to apply for in April will charge $40 a pop. (I’m setting aside a special budget to deal with the one-time expense of applying to high-level festivals. Afterwards, the alumni waivers should take care of the costs in future years.)

The film festivals I’ve ended up submitting to are wild and fun and diverse. There’s one that’s just a county fair in California, presumably with a side room where they’ll project the films for the 120,000 or so attendees. There’s an adorable community-based festival in rural Japan. There are several brand new festivals that are doing this for the first time. There was a rather exciting call for sci-fi short films from this year’s Worldcon. (You know, the biggest annual sci-fi convention?) Looks like they wanted to add some pizzazz to their programming (which is mostly about books), which is why they’re soliciting any and all sci-fi short films for the low, low entry fee of $6. There won’t be any prizes, but maybe, just maaaaybe, if my film gets accepted, and screened, and noticed by someone in the industry… Considering I’d gotten into this hobby as a side-quest while waiting to hear back from literary agents (still waiting!), if this actually gets their attention, then that’ll be the single most roundabout way of doing this.

(I won’t be able to attend in any case, since I’ll be hiking somewhere in Wyoming when the Worldcon takes place in Seattle. Ho hum.)

One of the brand new $5 festivals actually included an automated message saying they’ll gladly provide free lodging at a volunteer’s home if the selected filmmakers choose to attend. That’s just over-the-top wholesomeness, and also makes me feel a little bit like a villain, since my very carefully curated schedule of big-name festivals will have something during that exact three-day slot. Sorry, guys.

This is all a giant fun side quest – a lot of these little festivals will take place during my CDT thru-hike, and I probably won’t be able to attend any of them, even if I do get picked, which is never a guarantee. Still, that’s 33 new mini-adventures that I’ve just set in motion. Who knows, maybe my quaint little sci-fi film will find true fans at one of those friendly and enthusiastic festivals. Maybe new friendships will be forged. Maybe one of the foreign festivals (there’s a really fun one in Germany!) will get intrigued enough to fly me out for a future event. I know, I’m getting way too carried away here, but there’s no harm in dreaming, eh?

If nothing else, my life is gonna get a lot more fun and random: in addition to the notifications from 10 or so big film festivals I’ll focus on, I’ll keep getting random notifications from the 33 festivals I’ve just joined. There’s pretty much no way to keep track of something like that, so every single week will be an exercise in randomness, with unexpected “thumbs up / thumbs down” messages dropping into ye olde inbox.

And hey, maybe my film will actually win an award of some sort! It’s an honour just to have it screened in front of live audience (twice so far), but if I do actually win something, somewhere… I have many many plans for that sort of eventuality.

What a weird little hobby.