The “Awesome” Experiment in Film Festival Format

As innovation spawns further innovation, From Here to Awesome capitalizes on advances in technology to pioneer a different approach to film festivals.

For filmmakers: a guaranteed opportunity for a public screening. For film lovers: no long lines or fear of sold-out screenings, at least initially.

From Here to Awesome starts its run as a global online festival, providing festival-"goers" access to every film submitted. Viewers' votes determine which films will make it to Awesome's festival showcase, on- and off-line.

Lance Weiler, filmmaker and one of the three FHTA co-founders. Photo by Jack Bromiley.

Explains co-founder Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma), "From Here to Awesome is an experiment to connect filmmakers and audiences directly. The tools to make movies have become democratized, but there is a bottleneck when it comes to their distribution.

"People from different disciplines are picking up cameras and telling stories for the first time - there's a diversity of voices, and that's exciting." Getting their stories to an audience, Weiler continues, "is the largest obstacle filmmakers face."

Rejecting completely the idea of submission fees, Awesome accepted submissions from all interested filmmakers and posted the films on Web entertainment sites to bring them to viewers through just a mouse click or two. Fest founders Weiler, Arin Crumley (Four-Eyed Monsters) and M. dot Strange (We Are the Strange) signed up an extensive assortment of Web partners: Indieflix, Breakthrough Distribution, Blip.tv, Wonderland, YouTube, Independent Film Project, Miro, Withoutabox, MySpace, OurStage, Current, B-side, Heretic, PlaceVine, Spout, The Workbook Project, Indiegogo, Vudu, Tubemogul, Amazon Unbox, Power to the Pixel, DogWoof.

"We pulled away any exclusive nature to their participation and approached it with the idea of openness," says Weiler. "We said, ‘We're doing an experiment that will inform not just about how people discover films but how they distribute them. Would you like to take part?'"

Designed to be an experiment in exploring various methods for revenue generation as well as discovery and distribution, FHTA is trying out a variety of options - some of them tested, others perhaps revolutionary. Individual festival partners contribute and support the festival in different ways. For instance, CurrentTV will host events called "DIY Days" in San Francisco and Los Angeles in July and OurStage will return revenue directly to the winners of the festival. 

Viewers access films through whatever format they're most comfortable. Voting will begin in early April, once all the submission pages for the participating films are completed and launched in an updated festival site, and will continue for about a month. Through their votes of "this film seems awesome," viewers will determine winners for cash awards, sponsorship, further distribution opportunities and other prizes.

"Then," says Weiler, "we'll take time to get the movies ready for various outlets."

M. dot Strange, filmmaker and one of the three FHTA co-founders. Photo by M. dot Strange.

Moving into its screening and distribution phase, the festival showcase of the top ten shorts and features will kick off in June at Paris's Française Cinémathèque and continue through the summer to end in October in London. The movies will play all over the world, but not just as theatrical screenings. "People consume movies in different ways," Weiler notes, so screenings are being planned on a variety of platforms: mobile drive-ins, mobile devices, Web-based TV, cable TV.

Other screening venues may include auditoriums, bistros and even individuals' living rooms. In essence, the fans themselves may become distributors, with Awesome assistance available in this uncharted path.

Filmmakers, who retain all rights with their festival submission, will receive revenue directly from the various distribution platforms.

Crumley says this is just the beginning: "I see this making a big impact on the industry. I think From Here to Awesome can demonstrate the industry's huge potential for an awesome future where the creative doesn't have to get screwed. Simultaneously, we can also demonstrate the value of empowering movie theaters and other distributors by giving them a measuring stick to determine interest in a project, and then allow the distributors to monetize the film and give the revenue directly to the filmmakers without unnecessary middle men."

"Film festivals used to be the gate, but it has gotten more and more difficult to get into the festivals," observes Weiler. From Here to Awesome aims to stand that whole experience on its head.