Unsollicited advice for submitting films to festivals (Pt. 2 in a series)

You will find that most of my unsollicited advice comes from seeing well-intentioned filmmakers not following directions.

Where Part 1 in the series concerned sending us only the format we've asked for, Part 2 is of a similar nature: until we've decided to accept your entry into our schedule, we really only need one copy of it. Perhaps other festivals want a VHS copy, a DVD copy, and a QuickTime version, (in addition to a cd-rom of your presskit) but for us -- a volunteer-driven organization -- we are really just looking for one copy that works consistently. It's certainly generous of you to submit multiple copies, but we didn't ask for that, so it's a bit of a waste of your resources, which we all know are limited.

When in doubt about what a festival wants, I advise you to ASK them. For us, we will always choose DVD over VHS, if given the option, and DVD over DVD-R (because not all DVD players will play discs intended for a computer, and not all of our screening volunteers have the latest players in their homes).

But at any rate, keep those entries coming. We couldn't do this without you.