KOLDCAST TV TO SPONSOR CATEGORY AT FIRSTGLANCE FILM FESTS

Winners in web pilot category to premiere on KoldCast TV

Los Angeles, CA – July 29, 2010 – Web television network KoldCast TV will sponsor the webseries pilot category for the 2010-2011 FirstGlance Film Fests, a bicoastal film festival showcasing independent filmmakers from around the world. The winner of this category will receive distribution and marketing of their pilot as well as a meeting with the network.

“We’ve been fans of FirstGlance for some time,” says Marti Resteghini, VP of Programming and Licensing for KoldCast TV.  “With previous FirstGlance alumni like Palisades Pool Party, Life is Just a Game and Fissure already part of the KoldCast family, we felt it was only logical for us to partner with the festival in a more meaningful way. Together we aim to continue to provide opportunities for independent filmmakers worldwide.”

“We are honored to add KoldCast TV as a sponsor to our growing webseries pilot category,” says William Ostroff, Producer/Founder of FirstGlance Film Fests. “Over the past few years, we have realized that webseries now represent an entirely new genre of television which provide a major new opportunity for talented young filmmakers, actors and producers, and we expect the partnership to add accessibility and recognition to well-written and well-produced webseries.”

FirstGlance annually awards over $50,000 in cash, prizes and giveaways, accepting all formats from feature films to music videos. Call for entries for FirstGlance Hollywood open August 2010.  Call for entries for FirstGlance Philadelphia open January 2011.  For more information visit: http://www.firstglancefilms.com/

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About KOLDCAST TV

Launched in 2007, KoldCast TV is an on-demand next-generation television network, distribution and marketing company focused exclusively on high quality episodic, series-based programming created by independent producers.  KoldCast combines the most successful, time-tested strategies of traditional broadcast television with the incremental and exponential capabilities afforded by the internet, to market and introduce its product/service to an international online viewing audience via the KoldCast TV Network site, sister blog, and multitude of third-party distribution platforms.

For additional information, visit www.KoldCast.tv and blog.KoldCast.tv

About FIRSTGLANCE FILM FESTS

FirstGlance Film festivals began in 1996 in the basement of a small theater in Center City Philadelphia. It started as a small theatre company in Philadelphia that wanted to help fellow filmmakers get their projects shown in a public venue for others to enjoy. FirstGlance has produced twenty two festivals, shown over 1100 award winning films to over 30,000 attendees and has grown to 250 seat venues with state of the art projection capabilities. In addition to producing their award winning bi-coastal film festivals, FirstGlance has year round activities that include Feature & Short Screenplay Competitions, On-line Film Competitions, Show Us Your Shorts Screenings, Short Film Productions, and Online Distribution and Theatrical Distribution.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

KOLDCAST TV

Marti Resteghini (310) 820-4028 marti@koldcast.tv

FIRSTGLANCE FILM FESTS

Andrea DiFabio (AD Communications) (610) 604-9604 amdifabio@verizon.net

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April 9-11 2010 at Raleigh Studios Hollywood!

See this award winning feature film at FirstGlance Film Fest Hollywood 10 April 9-11 2010!Charlie Valentine was a gangster, a gunfighter, a womanizer and a pretty fine chef… He was also the most dangerous, irresponsible scoundrel you ever met. Cast: Raymond J Berry, Michael Weatherly, James Russo, Tom Berenger.

Hollywood, CA, March 12, 2010 – The 10^th annual FirstGlance Film Fest Hollywood opens on Friday,April 9^th and runs though Sunday, April 11^th, 2010 at Raleigh Studios Chaplin Theater, 5300 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, CA.  This independent, bi-coastal festival showcases award winning features, short narratives, documentaries and mini-docs, animation, music videos and student shorts from all genres.

With an online shorts contest, FirstGlance also brings indie shorts to audiences at home. Register for the contest in late March and vote online for 6 weeks at www.firstglancefilms.com. The winning short screens at FirstGlance Philadelphia and James Caan will view and review it.

The festival kicks off Friday, April 9^th when doors open at 7:30 p.m. for the 8:00 p.m. screening of:

LIZARD – World Premiere

SMALL COLLECTION

THE LIFTER UPPER – World Premiere
2095

ONCE FALLEN – World Premiere starring Taraji P Henson, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, and Peter Weller

The Saturday, April 10^th Matinee Screening at 3:30 p.m. features:

THE EXTRAORDINARY MONDAY OF HERMAN BRUMBY – World Premiere PEACEFUL MEASURES – Hollywood Premiere
SHOOTING BEAUTY

The Saturday, April 10^th Twilight Screening at 5:30 p.m. features:

LIGHTHEADED
ARTOIS THE GOAT – Hollywood Premiere

The Saturday, April 10^th Prime Time Screening at 8:00 p.m. features:

THINK TANK “ARCADIA” – World Premiere
CROSSING THE LINE – Hollywood Premiere starring Anne Ramsay and James Eckhouse
LEFT UNSPOKEN
HECTOR CORP – Hollywood Premiere
METH – World Premiere
IN MY POCKET – World Premiere starring Gregory  Smith,  Brendan Sexton III, Shantel VanSanten, Kaylee DeFer, and Zack Ward

The Sunday, April 11^th Matinee Screening at 3:30 p.m. features:

UNDER GOD – World Premiere
HEAD IN THE SAND – World Premiere
AS EVER, STAN
HALF KENNETH
BRUSHES WITH LIFE – World Premiere

The Sunday, April 11^th Twilight Screening at 5:30 features:

SKYLIGHT
RUN! – World Premiere
FLAT LOVE – Hollywood Premiere starring Isabella Rossellini
ABUELO – FirstGlance Philadelphia’s Best of the Fest Winner
DREAMS – World Premiere

The Sunday, April 11^th Closing Night Screening at 8:00 p.m. features:

THE GOD MOTHER

ALIENATED – World Premiere starring Vincent Pastore

CHARLIE VALENTINE starring Raymond J Berry, Michael Weatherly, James Russo,and Tom Berenger

“Filmmakers and audiences enjoy our festival because FirstGlance brings a number of indie premieres to the screen, audiences vote for the “Best of the Fest” creating a fun, competitive environment at each screening plus instant audience feedback for the filmmakers, and there are after parties ideal for Q & As and networking,” said Bill Ostroff, Festival Director.

Tickets on sale NOW at http://www.firstglancefilms.com/hollywood/schedule.

Matinee Screenings $8.00
First Night and Closing Night Screening $12.00
All Other Screenings $10.00
All Access Pass $50.00

Complete screening schedule available at http://firstglancefilms.com/hollywood/schedule.

Watch trailers for FirstGlance Hollywood 10 films at http://firstglancefilms.com/hollywood/trailers.

FirstGlance Films’ year round activities include: FirstGlance Film Fest Philadelphia and Hollywood, Feature & Short Screenplay Competitions, On-line Film Competition, Show Us Your Shorts Screenings, OctoberfestPhilly, and Short Film Productions.  In 2007, MOVIEMAKER Magazine named FirstGlance as “One of 40 Most Indie Friendly Businesses” and “One of 20 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee,” and in 2006, TIME Magazine named FirstGlance “One of the Top 10 Festivals for the Rest of Us.”

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Co-sponsored by Sony Software, Baseline Studio Systems, Glidecam, Showbiz Software, Gorilla Software, ReelLogix Software, Final Draft, Twisted Tracks, Moviemaker Magazine, Frame Forge 3D, Movies Unlimited, CMM Productions, ProductionHub, InkTip, Indiepix, Withoutabox, and the Greater Philadelphia Film Office.

What makes this series different from other screening series:

• Filmmakers don’t  pay four walling fees, or rent the theater.
• FirstGlance and The Franklin Institute will offer the theater to filmmakers on a revenue share, based on ticket price and sales through the filmmaker’s fanbase and local following.
  
• Advanced ticket sales driven by the filmmakers marketing and promotions, as well as the FirstGlance Films and Franklin Institute newsletters will assist in the promotion of the film.

We will book a limited number of films in 2010, as a pilot program.

We are looking for feature films with a large social networking fan base and those that have a Philadelphia following that can help promote the film and boost ticket sales.

The filmmaker will profit from the ticket sales dependent on amount of tickets sold and the revenue share percentage which will be determined by the agreement.

We think this is a great opportunity to be seen in a large venue in the heart of Center City Philadelphia, without having to pay exorbitant fees to rent a theater space.

We look forward to offering features, documentaries and short programs throughout the year.

If you have a film that you would like to screen, please get in touch and we will get back to you with further details.

We are launching the series on April 17-18th with a Pennsylvania area feature documentary, Takedowns and Falls, about the high school wrestling phenomenon in Eastern Pennsylvania. We look forward to a great weekend for the filmmaker, and hope his success will enable us to present more “truly indie” feature films to the community! Support Indie filmmaking and we’ll be able to support you!

After a successful inaugural weekend, we are currently searching for more indie films with strong social network followings and fan base!

We are looking for documentarys and narrative features to program in

June, Sept, October, November, December 2010.

Get your film see at a state of the art 250 seat theater and make money!

Thank you

FirstGlance Film Fests

FIRSTGLANCE FILM FEST PHILADELPHIA 2010

CALL FOR ENTRIES

OPENS February 13 2010

Our 13th annual FirstGlance Film Fest Philly is open to professional, first time, graduate and undergraduate filmmakers from down the street and across the globe. FirstGlance showcases the best indie filmmaking from around the world and celebrates Philadelphia filmmakers with a festival described as, “one of the most entertaining festivals out there” and “Philadelphia’s answer to Sundance”

In our continuing effort to bring additional opportunities and audiences to filmmakers we have partnered with The Franklin Institute to launch the first ever KidFest Philly to our October event. KidFest is open to child and family friendly shorts, animation and feature length narrative and documentaries. The chosen films will be offered special screenings at the museum.

Selected FirstGlance Official Selections will be invited to premiere at the Bram Stoker Film Festival in the UK in 2011. Bram Stoker is one of Europe’s premiere horror, sci-fi, thriller festivals.

All Official Selections are eligible for our revenue share, no-cost, non-exclusive online distribution with iPod compatible and streaming rental downloads. (link to download page).

Named, “one of the best film festival investments” and “One of the top 40 indie film friendly businesses in the world”. FirstGlance continues to champion indie filmmakers from around the world, making FirstGlance Film Fest, the longest running and most notable independent film fest in Philadelphia!!

SHOT IN PHILLY celebrates the best in filmmaking by Philadelphia filmmakers.

FirstGlance awards over 50,000 in cash, prizes and giveaways yearly

In 2010, we continue our sliding scale cash prizes, for every 1000 entries we receive, $5000.00 in USD CASH will be awarded to the Grand Prize BEST OF THE FEST winner and for every category that receives 200 entries or more, $1,000 in Cash will be awarded to the highest rated film in that category!

FirstGlance Sponsors and Prizes

Entry Fee:
Starting at $25.00 for early submissions. Entries must be submitted on NTSC Region 0 or 1 DVD.

Filmmaker Incentives

All FirstGlance Official Selections will be eligible to take part in this program, and we have many opportunities already on our website.

All Official Selections receive an awards package valued at over $200.00.

SCREENING SHARE- Any filmmaker who sells more than 50 tickets to their screening, will receive (a dollar per ticket from 51-99), and any filmmaker who sells more than 100 tickets will receive two dollars per ticket. Online Sales only! As this is the only way we can track sales with a survey from all buyers before they purchase their tickets! Payments will be made after the event by PAYPAL.

Sliding Scale Cash Prize- Beginning with our Call For Entries for FirstGlance Film Fest Philadelphia TwentyTen, we will be offering a sliding scale cash prize to the winning BEST OF THE FEST filmmaker. Every 1000 entries we receive we will award a $5000.00 cash prize in addition to the tens of thousands in prizes we award to the winner and if any single category reaches over 200 entries, the highest rated audience favorite in that category will win $500.00.

FirstGlance’s Short Online Contest- Enabling us to offer many more short films the opportunity to be a part of the FirstGlance Film Fests. This one month online secured virtual theater experience, offers filmmakers the opportunity to show their film to their network of friends, family, cast and crew and social network and compete for over $2000 in prizes and a spot in our closing night screening.

VOD/DOWNLOAD (Day and Date) For those filmmakers interested in offering their films during the festival, we can offer you our own VOD/Download Platform, so you can sell your short or feature during the festival weekend and make some extra money on your film! As well as offering those fans who can’t make it to our event can rent or buy your film..and feel free to keep your film on our platform and sell it at every festival during your run! It doesn’t cost you a dime and you can make 50% on every sale. You’ll be able to embed the sales player on your site, blog and facebook to drive sales.

Oscar eligibility- We are currently looking into offering select short films from both festivals the opportunity to play in a four-wall campaign in Los Angeles to make your titles Oscar eligible.

Sales Agent- We are currently in negotiations with a local Hollywood IFTA feature film sales company to bring a new opportunity to our feature filmmakers, Each year our highest rated Feature Film will be offered the opportunity to be taken to Cannes or the AFM film market.

Sister Festivals- We have teamed up with the Bram Stoker Film Festival in the UK to offer selected films the opportunity to premiere at what has been called one of the UK’s best genre festivals.

Additional goals include: A yearly film fund based on revenues from our festivals to be offered to indie filmmakers to assist in finishing their films.

We are actively pursuing some of the largest Cable companies in North America to offer a FirstGlance Pay Per View weekend for those who can’t come out to the event they can watch it on there TV.

Our philosophy has always been that there can be no film festivals without the filmmakers, and we look forward to finding new and inventive ways to reward our filmmakers.

Thank you for supporting truly indie film festivals.

Kid Fest will run throughout October and in conjunction with FirstGlance Film Fest Philly TwentyTen on October 14-17 2010.

Our new relationship with The Franklin Institute and the newly remodeled Franklin Theater, which we had the pleasure of screening in last year, has graciously agreed to a proposed idea to the marketing dept to assist them in getting new audiences into the theater during museum hours.

Since the venue is considered a family museum and people travel from across the US and world to come to The Franklin Institute, our normal festival fare is not always fitting, as those of you that have taken part, either as audience or filmmakers are aware. So we decided to open new categories for kid and family friendly films and animation for the first time in our 13 year history.

The venue has agreed to show the films we choose from the entries  during museum hours throughout the month of October and market to there many hundred thousands of members.

We believe this is an amazing opportunity to give filmmakers who create family friendly films, both short and features the visibility from audiences you wouldn’t normally find at FirstGlance Film Fest Philly or at most film festivals around the country!

We are excited about the possibility of becoming a potential curator of truly indie films and locally produced films. With the ability to schedule special screenings and  offer opportunities for truly indie filmmakers to screen in a beautiful theater in the heart of Center City Philly. We look forward to creating a go to venue for indies in Philadelphia, without having to fourwall a major theater chain!

FirstGlance Film Fest Philly TwentyTen

Submit your film HERE!

We look forward to an amazing year in Philly.

Thank you for your continuing support of truly indie films and FirstGlance Philadelphia’s Independent Film Festival since 1996

Marketing and promoting your film to audiences

In speaking with many filmmakers, marketing and publicity professionals and others who have already taken their films through the festival circuit and are now distributing, it is important to have a marketing plan before you embark on your short or feature film.

We have decided to add resources to our website and that includes pointers to get the most out of your festival run as well as learning how to grassroots market your film and create the audience you need to sustain your film once it gets to the distribution market in whatever form or format.

To begin your journey, once you have a name for your film, buy the URL or something close to it from a site like GoDaddy, which offers cheap registration, hosting, website creation, email marketing etc.

Find someone to create a nice looking clean website or do it yourself. It doesn’t have to be flashy, or have the latest technologies, but it should have a hook, whether it be a tagline, or pictures or a logo for your film or film company. If the page is only a placeholder until you get more assets, be sure to include somewhere that visitors can join the site, so you can start collecting emails.

While creating your website, you should  start a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter and Youtube account. Take advantage of some of the largest sites on the web to drive interest and traffic to your brand(film).

Invite the friends you already have and begin the “Snowball” effect! You can then link your facebook updates to Twitter and you can start building followers. The more active you are on these sites the more will follow and be sure to link up to groups and individuals on these sites with similar interests.

Once you start shooting, Youtube is great for onset videos, trailers, teases and other video assets to create a buzz, you can link your Youtube videos to Facebook and tweet them to your followers.

When you are in production, be sure to have someone take production stills, behind the scenes (EPK) video, even take those little USB video cameras and shoot a couple little vignettes from set and upload them. Do anything you can to create an interactive aspect for your film. The more you involve your followers, users, the more they will look forward to seeing your completed film.

As you build your brand, you should keep your website up to date, add Twitter, Facebook, Youtube links, if you enjoy writing from set, or taking photos on set, put them up, or blog on your site! Keep it active and updated often!

Actors are a great marketing tool as well!! The actors in your film are just as excited about seeing the final product…most of them will also tweet, facebook and youtube about the project, and never forget to invite them to any festival screenings. I have spoken with actors who had never known that a film they were in played at a festival, until after the event.

The great thing about a collaborative effort is that everyone involved wants to see it through and cast and crew should not be forgotten as some of them may already have a huge following, especially if you are using SAG or AFTRA actors.

Before you launch your films festival journey, be sure to have a strong trailer, great Key Art, and production stills and a short synopses with major cast. Most festivals are fine with digital assets, so no need to send out lots of paper.

Think about ancillary markets…Create T-shirts, posters, postcards, if your film has a genre specific theme, you may be able to create other promotional items.

Once you embark on your festival journey, start thinking about distribution. A feature film has a better chance of distribution. However some festivals offer shorts distribution, be careful not to end up in a clearinghouse, which basically collects films and never really distributes them to the public.

We are aware filmmakers tend to be wary of distribution deals, as many have been burned before and are gunshy, but if you feel you have a great product you may want to make it available during the festival run, as a download, so when audience comes out of the screening and ask you how they can get your film, you don’t have to spend money bringing DVD’s, creating artwork, lugging them from city to city. If they can download it on there computer or Ipod, or Iphone, you are already making money back!

Find what’s right for you, as many distribution models are no-cost, revenue share with non-exclusive deals. Think of it as a vanity press for your personal use, it’s not truly distribution, and most film festivals don’t really care if your film is available online, this is mostly true for short content. Feature film is another story. Very few features will ever see there money back when going through a middleman, maybe you want to DIY!!

From our experiences, we know many filmmakers are not marketers, and we also think investing the time  creating it yourself or hiring a indie film marketing pro could be a good thing to get audiences to your screening and visibility for your film.

Be aware, marketing is a time intensive process and not a one day thing, build a good following from the beginning and they become invested in you. You don’t necessarily need to hire anyone to market, but if you have the extra money or can get a free consultation with one, it’s not a bad idea to pick the brain of a professional, or someone who’s been through the process and come out successful on the other side!

This is part one of an on-going series, how many, who knows…

Please feel free to comment and add suggestions We want this to be as thorough and informative as possible.