Presentation

What I love about the festival is that people are so image conscious. It’s the only film event I know where what you wear is more important than who you are at first. It’s a game!

French people are known for their pride in the way they look(beautiful women, very few overweight people, fashion sense and so on). It is therefore in your best interest to look your best when you have the world’s richest and most famous people walking down the Croisette (Im not saying you need to wear a million dollar suit) Don’t underestimate your chances of bumping into someone famous! Impress them. If you have a star mentality, you will be treated like one. What you wear can give you a higher confidence!

Also, you will find it easier to get into events when you are more presentable (party crashing in other words) More on that later.

Make sure you bring a suit with you, and if you can a tuxedo for the red carpet. You can get tickets with your badge if your early at the machines, and even from people who don’t want to see the movie.

Networking

In all honesty, this is down to you to be able to chit-chat and get along with other filmmakers but I will give you some advice that is definitely going to help you:

1. Going to the tents

Youll find out when you get there that you can check out the different pavilions (film tents of different nations) At first you think, oh great, I can sit down and have a drink on the beach and then ill go watch a film in the palais, but if you look around, you may not know it, but you are surrounded by some of the elitists in your industry.

Take part in seminars as there are useful tips depending on what you want out of your visit. If its filmmaking advice, funding and so on, youll get a lot of that.

Special events. Youll always get a chance to check out celebrities talking about their new movie, and if your clever enough, you can go up to them and have a chat. PRICELESS.

2. The press conferences

In the Palais, every day you have a press conference that takes place. In the morning you can get the daily schedule (its on the 3rd floor) and find out who’s being interviewed. Now at first, you will discover a jungle of reporters trying to get a picture, and people queing up to see the stars (which you do get to meet if you wait at least 30 mins) but you will have an opportunity to get ‘insider’ information.

Feel free to chat to reporters, find out what they are covering. Some people are very open to chit chat, and you may learn something really useful, and also make good contacts

3. Meetups

This is something I started this year, but by doing it, I met some fantastic people. Use the social networks and email lists of contacts provided by the cinando website (affiliate of Cannes, an online list of people) and organise a meetup.

Meetups are useful, informal ways of getting to know people and also, you can target the people you want to meet through social networks. The advantage of this is that you can choose your location and be the boss!





My friend Yonathan. I met him at the festival, a very talented filmmaker!

The Short film corner (selling your film)

This year was interesting because I had a film in the short film corner ‘Joyeux Noel’, which gave me another insight into how filmmakers network to show their films.

The short film corner is an interesting concept which is fairly new at the festival and every year it has expanded exponentially. This year alone there were over 1000 films, so the competition was tough but in the end it was worth it.

We got our own small projection room, so people could go and check it out, including the all important distributors who I talked to when I was there to go check it out.

Some advice on what they are looking for


- Films that are less than 15 mins long (the best timing is between 7 to 10 mins for TV networks)
- Films that appeal to a broad audience, and talk about something that is universal, i.e people can relate to it wherever they are
- Comedy and drama are the most common of genres. There is a lack of Comedy, particularly in the European short market, so that’s a good one to go for

Advantages

The fee is around 80 euros but you get in! All access badge to professional events/ screenings etc. In my opinion, its worth several thousand euros, because the contacts you make are priceless!

Joyeux Noel (Cannes Short film corner 2007) Directed by my friend Ben Adler and written by me: