FAQ

FilmFest is a platform for short films submissions to festivals. This tool was carried out by the institutions of the industry (SRF - Film Directors Society, SPI – Independent Producers Union, Carrefour des Festivals and L’Agence du court métrage) with the aim of standardizing festival submission procedures and simplifying short film distribution.

·      If you have an account, you can sign in using the “ sign in” button in the upper right corner then choose “I am a director/producer” or “I am a festival”.

·      If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one by clicking on the “create an account” button in the upper right corner of the homepage. Remember to fill out all the mandatory fields (marked with an asterisk). 

If you can’t remember your password you need to click on the “sign in” button in the upper right corner then click on “Forgot your password?”.  You will receive a reset email and be able to sign into your account again.

Before submitting to a festival, the film’s form must be “Complete” and the video file “Encoded”. In order to reach the “Complete” status, all the mandatory fields of the film’s registration form must be filled out (marked with an asterisk).

A video file of the film must imperatively be uploaded. To do so, you need to click on the “Video” tab of the registration form and add a file. Remember to respect the format and size recommendations:

·      Google Chrome browser is recommended

·      Maximum size of file: 4 Go

·      File formats accepted: mp4, avi, m4v, wmv, mkv, mov

·      Simplify the name of your file as much as possible (avoid special characters)

When the form’s status is “complete” and your video file is “Encoded”, the “Submit” button is no longer grayed out, it is black and active. Your film can be submitted to festivals.

To submit, you need to click on the “Submit” button of your film. The list of open festivals appears on the screen. If your film matches the festivals selection criteria, the “Submit” button is clickable. After having clicked on “Submit”, you can choose the festival’s section (if there are more than one) and validate your registration at the bottom of the page.

The festival can ask for submission fees when submitting a film. These fees are directly paid to the Festival unlike credits, which are received by the platform.

To submit to a festival, the status of the form must be “Complete” and the uploading status must be “Validated”. If one of these conditions isn’t met, the “Submit” button is grayed out and inactive.

If the form appears to be “Incomplete” it means that all the mandatory fields (marked with an asterisk) of the online form are not filled out. When all the mandatory fields are filled out the form’s status switches to “Complete”.

It means that no file of this film has been uploaded and/or encoded. . Remember to respect the format and size recommendations:

·      Google Chrome browser is recommended

·      Maximum size of file: 4 Go

·      File formats accepted: mp4, avi, m4v, wmv, mkv, mov

·      Simplify the name of your file as much as possible (avoid special characters)

Once the upload is over, the transcoding won’t take more than 15 minutes.

If after several upload attempts (with the right format and size recommendations), the upload or the encoding won’t go through, you can send your file, using Wetransfer among others, to the contact address: registration@filmfestplatform.com Don’t forget to mention the title of the film and the account ID (email) and we will upload it for you.

For the director’s age criterion, the filter is made on the information available on the director “person” registered for this film. If the system blocks the submission to the festival on this criterion, it means the birthdate information isn’t available for the director or the birthdate is incompatible with the age required by this specific festival. You can add or modify the birthdate by modifying your film factfile.

When you submit a film to a festival, a payment in the shape of credits is asked to the rights holder. This payment is for making the film available to the festival.

This payment is received by FilmFest to finance the hosting of films. The festival doesn’t receive this payment.

Each festival is free to request a film submission fee. These fees are received by the festival, not by FilmFest.

In order to submit your film to a festival that requires a submission fee, you will need to pay a credit (payment received by FilmFest) as well as a submission fee (amount received by the festival).

The amount of these fees is reviewed and approved by the FilmFest team.

The provision of films to festivals is paid for using credits. These credits finance the general operation of the platform, including the hosting of films. Your account must have enough credits to submit to these festivals.

You can buy credits online:

·      By clicking on your name to the right, then heading “Credits and Invoices”.

·      By clicking on your dashboard and clicking on “Purchase Credits”.

With 1 credit, you can submit up to 10 films to the same festival. Basically, upon the submission of the first film to a festival’s edition, 1 credit is debited from your account. The submissions of the following films up to the 10th to this same festival will be free and no credits will be debited. The 11th film submitted will be charged and the 9 following will be free, and so on.

You can change the information related to a film at any time, such as the director for example. To do so, you simply need to click on the “small pencil” icon on the upper right of your film factfile and modify the necessary information. These modifications will automatically be updated in your account and in all your past submissions. For example, if you change the video file of your film, it will be changed for the past and future festivals you want to submit it to.

You can change your video file at any time. To do so, you simply need to upload your new file which will automatically replace the old one. For your information, once the upload is complete, the festivals to which you have sent a submission will be notified that you have changed the video file. They will immediately have access to the new file from their space.

The “Submissions” tab allows you to keep track of your submissions. As soon as a film is registered to a festival, it appears as “Submitted”. The status will switch to “Selected” or “Not Selected” once the festival has locked its edition.

For festivals that won’t have locked their edition in time (even though it’s mandatory), the system will automatically proceed to a locking and the status of the films submitted to this festival will appear as “ Not Available”. 

When you create a new edition to open a call for entries, the system deactivates all your members as the amount of members authorized depends on the plan you have subscribed to. Once your new edition is online, you simply need to reactivate the members who must participate to this edition (within the limits of your plan). The members who get reactivated keep the same IDs and passwords. 

Depending on your plan, there is a maximum number of films received. Once this limit has been reached, your call for entries is automatically closed. You can reopen it through an upgrade, by clicking on the “Plans and Invoices” tab of your account.

Depending on your plan, there is a maximum number of programmers. Once this limit has been reached, you can’t activate new programmers accounts. However, you can upgrade your plan by clicking on the “Plans and Invoices” tab of your account in order to add more members.

You can switch plans at any time if it’s an upgrade. You simply need to click on your Name and first name in the upper right corner, then “Plans and Invoices”.  You simply need to open the drop-down menu of your current plan and click on the plan you want to choose. You will be redirected to the payment page to pay the difference with your previous plan.

Yes, it’s now possible to add submission fees. You can add different amounts for each section of your call for entries. FilmFest doesn’t take any commission on these fees. 

Before setting up a submission fee, you must configure the method to receive payments in your edition’s form. We use Stripe as a payment method to receive submission fees.

The payment method made available to receive submission fees is Stripe. It is one of the most used online platforms in the world. Thanks to this safe and secure payment gateway, submitters will be able to pay submission fees on FilmFest with a debit card. You will directly receive the payments on your Stripe account with no additional intervention from us.

The set up of submission fees requires to have a Stripe account and to sync it to FilmFest. This procedure is done in the edition’s form. 

If you have subscribed to a basic or premium plan, you can invite films registered on FilmFest to submit to your Festival.

You can search the films listed on FilmFest via the “Films” page by clicking on the “Search” button in the banner at the top of the page. You can view the different films listed using filters if you wish, then invite the ones you might be interested in to submit. They will receive an email letting them know that you wish to receive their submission. They will be able to study your request and decide whether they want to submit their film to your festival or not.

“FF Play” is a native MultiOs application (Mac/PC/IOS/Android) available for free for all festivals using FilmFest.com.

Here are some of its features:

·      Screening films offline after downloading the videos

·      Inserting an intertitle in the playlist to create a screening program ready to use

The application can be downloaded in its different versions from the “The Application” tab in the upper right corner of your screen.

It’s very easy to use. Playlists created on the site are automatically synchronized in the application. You can download the playlists and their content (you need to be connected to the internet for this procedure) in order to watch them later in offline mode (without internet connection).

In addition to the screening of films offline for all your programmers, it can be used to prepare your “ready to use” screening programs not only to reorganize your playlist but also to add intertitles at the beginning of the show or between films. Once your program is ready, you can directly plug your computer to the projector and play your program in your theater.

It is very important that you lock your edition once you are done with your selection in order to let rights holders know whether they have been selected or not.

Before locking your edition, please mark as “Selected” all the films that you have selected. You can then check the list of selected films by searching on the “selected” status.

When you are sure that you have modified the status of all selected films, you can lock your edition using the “Lock my edition” button (top of the page).

Locking the edition freezes the selection, automatically switches the status of unselected films to “Not selected”, updates the status in the submission tracking of the rights holders’ account and sends an automated email to all rights holders informing them of the change of status of their submission.

You have two options:

·      Export the films information in an Excel file directly from the films page.

·      Connect to our API (for Premium members only). You can access it from your account in the “API Access” heading. On this page, you will find your “X-Access-Token” key and be able to connect to the online resources.

Festivals that have subscribed to a Basic or Premium plan can download the files of the films they have selected to their festival. This function is available after the edition has been locked and the choice of the selected films is final. You will be able to get the files from the films page by following these steps:

·      Clicking on the “Generate a Zip file of the selected films” button will allow our system to compile all of the films into a single Zip file. This procedure can take a few minutes and you will be notified on the FilmFest interface once the file is available.

·      When the Zip file is available you can download it to your computer by clicking on the same button which by then will have changed to “Download all selected films”. Once the Zip file is generated it is available for 48 hours.

When you subscribe to a basic or premium plan you can keep the archives of your edition for the upcoming years. However, if you subscribe to a free plan for an edition, it won’t be saved and won’t be available once the edition is over.

For example, if you choose a basic plan in 2022, at the end of your edition you will have unlimited access to this edition in your archives. If in 2023 you choose a free plan, at the end of your 2023 edition, you will still have access to the 2022 archive but no access to the 2023 archive.

Moreover, if you switch from a free to a paid plan, you will be able to retrieve your archives the following years.

When you subscribe to a basic or premium plan, you are given a membership to L’Agence du court métrage. This yearly membership will start on the opening day of your call for entries and will run for the current calendar year.

For example: if your call for entries opens on June 15th, your membership to L’Agence du court métrage will start on June 15th and end on December 31st. If your call for entries starts on December 20th, the membership will also end on December 31st.

This membership lets you:

·      Elect your representatives who will sit in the Board of Administration.

·      Benefit from an expertise for all your short film programming projects.

·      Watch the short films from L’Agence du court métrage’s catalog online at www.agencecm.com

·      Have access to the Jacques-Tati screening room with a discount (link to acm site)

·      Benefit from a special subscription to the Brefcinema VOD platform (20% discount).