As part of your film festival experience, there’s a good chance you’ll be interviewed on camera. Don’t shy away from this! It’s a great way to advertise your work and you can share footage of you looking professional and cool on a red carpet.
To make the whole thing seem less awkward, before you head out to the festival, prepare/rehearse good answers to the following questions:
1. Hi! How are you doing? Are you having a great time?
This is a really typical start to a red carpet interview. Take a deep breath and SMILE even if you are having a giant attack of shyness and have forgotten everything you practiced! Keep smiling — it’s been proven that just smiling when you speak improves your own mood and calms you.
You want to sound enthusiastic about where you are and the event, say your own name and your film’s name and genre. Make the interview’s editor happy and do not mumble your name or your film’s name. Say what you did on the film. If you are a student or first time filmmaker, you should include that too.
Hi! I’m [name] and I’m at [festival name] with my new [short or feature] [genre] film [film name]!
Hi! I’m Amy, and I’m so happy to be at Huge Fest with my feature documentary All About Things!
Hi! I’m George, and I’m a film student at New York Film Academy. I’m here at Huge Fest showing my debut short horror film Everyone Gets Killed!
Hi! I’m Alex, and I’m here from Paris with the comedy short Funny Things, which I wrote, produced and starred in.
2. Tell me about your film?
Do not just recite your logline here. Similar to your synopsis, you want to make your film sound like the most interesting film ever made, and your passion for having created it should come through. You should have 2-3 good sentences that you can recite with passion on a red carpet, and another maybe two minutes you can say during a sit-down interview. What about the story or characters will be most interesting to someone who knows nothing about your film? Where was it shot?
This is also a good time to name check any brands you relied upon — camera, lens, software, venues, products. You can always tag these brands when the interview is posted and you might get a share. “Half of my film was shot underwater, so we used ABC Camera to shoot and it came out incredible!”
3. Why did you make this film?
Making a film is an enormous labor of love; why were you willing to go through all that for this particular story? What sort of hardships did you have to go through to get the film made?
4. What are you working on now?
This is a good opportunity to build some interest in your next work. If you have nothing solid, just say that you have a new project in the works and give a website or social media address for more information.
5. Do you have any advice for other filmmakers?
Always a good idea to come up with something inspiring here, since everyone loves to show clips like this. Follow your dream! Find a great team! Don’t give up!
6. Other answers to have ready to go
Did anything weird, crazy or funny happen while making the film?
How/why did you choose your cast?
How did you get funding to make your film?
How long did it take from start-to-finish to make your film?
What was the biggest challenge making your film?
More general advice
Practice, practice, practice. It can be scary to have someone jam a microphone in your face and expect you to sparkle on demand. Knowing in advance what to say will really help.
No matter what, do not bad-mouth anyone, even if your producer was a scammer, your lead actor was drunk, your lead actress was the worst person on earth to work with and the Festival isn’t what you were hoping. Don’t whine if you didn’t get an award. This just makes you look hard to work with and isn’t appropriate for this setting.
