Film Fests and Brick Walls

Well, we've hit that point: We've got a lot to do and very little time to do it, and everyone is asking, "Is it worth it?"

Our goal is to enter the film in the Seattle International Film Festival, and the deadline is February 2nd--one week from today. At this point we have four minutes of film edited, ten pages of script left to shoot, half the film to storyboard, and three more sets to build. Whoa.

To complicate things, there is no back-up festival. I thought IFP's LA film fest might work, but it's deadline is only four days after SIFF! Four days doesn't buy us much, especially since we can hand deliver (I think...) to SIFF but need to mail to LA. Realistically, we should enter or scratch them both. But... what big festivals have deadlines after SIFF?

None. Waiting for the next festivals adds three to four months to our release. Ugh. So if we don't do SIFF, we might as well just release to the web early--but that means no festival premiere. What to do?

I read an interesting quote a week or two ago that said the brick walls are there to make sure we really want what we are after. And if that's true, I'd say it's time for us to start climbing.