I'm contemplating putting on a Film Festival at my High School...It would be fundraiser for my school's Video Journalism because we need equipment badly. The idea is that we put out a call for local short films made by the students that would be judged (possibly by the student body but that's still being decided) and something like the top 3 would win prizes. Then either all or like the top however many would be premiered at a film festival that we put on...And the top three would also be shown on RMTV(the show that our Video Journalism classes produces)

Any thoughts or suggestions? I know that it will be a very large pain in the a** but any other comments that might be useful? Like more on the best way to do it or anything else I should add?

Thanks

P.S. Anyone know anything about getting people to donate stuff (video equiptment) to my school? Like who to talk to?

Oh and just to clarify; This WILL NOT be a reality show or anything like it...All that would be shown is their film. End of story.

i run a film festival among all of the high schools in the county - its called the Howard County Student Film Festival. This is the third year, and heres basically whats happening...

1. we started out at the beginning of the school year with some money left over from last year and took it from there
2. when the school year started this year we started fishing for money from different places and for committee members (kids from county high schools) to run the festival.
3. we sent publicity stuff to all of the high school art, film/media, and english teachers around the county to get kids to participate - whether through actual submission or through committee (organizational) work.
4. we set parameters for the submissions and a deadline (which is mid march this year)
5. we met with the committee once a month for a while, until about now, when we meet twice a month (our festival is in april)
6. we have 2 rounds of judging - judges are film professionals
7. we decide on prizes, tshirts, stuff to hand out/sell
8. we send out promotional material for submissions of films in december/january
9. in early april, we'll start promoting the festival itself
10. we hit up local businesses for money and donations - its good for us and free publicity for them. selling ad space at the actual festival is a possibility as well.
11. the festival will be at a community college, so we can't charge admission unless we want to pay an exhausting space rental fee but we can sell souvenirs and we can collect donations. we're gonna show the top 3-4 films and give them prizes, get directors to comment, get judges to comment, that sort of thing.

this is pretty much all of it. check out our website and let me know if you have any more questions. good luck

Thanks a lot red...The website was really helpful and I'll keep your comments in mind...

Hey Im running James River High School's first ever film festival and we need submissions from anywhere can you help us out. Just email at benhanc@gmail.com

Hey Ben, I recently mailed out my films to your festival... They should be there by next Monday (Apr.2) i think, hope you enjoy them..

peace

www.poplarparkfilms.tk