Winning Ain’t Easy—A Hundred to One Shot

canadaI often wondered what were the odds of getting accepted into a film festival. We are not talking winning here just acceptance.

Well today I got my answer from Madeline and River, Creative Co-Directors of the Traveling Shorts Film Festival Screening Committee. First of all River, your parents gave you a really cool name.

Here is what they said, “With over 1,400 films submitted, our acceptance rate turned out to be just 1%!”

For all the non-math geniuses who read this blog that means 14 films were accepted.

I think I had a better chance of getting accepted to Harvard or Yale. Only kidding, I had zero chance of getting into those two schools.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about the Traveling Shorts Festival it is in its sixth year and it is based in Vancouver, Canada.

You may ask, why is he mentioning our neighbor to the North. Well, it is because the Canadians are a bunch of Martin-Buber-agape-loving people. They know how to write rejection letters. They know how to let people down Proud Mary style “nice and easy.”

I attach my TSFF rejection letter as an example of their kindness. To my American audience, especially those American film festivals who write one sentence kiss-offs. Here is a Katy Perry paraphrase, “This is how you do it.”

Dear Mort Laitner,

Thank you for submitting your project to the 2016 Traveling Shorts Film Festival. This year we received a tremendous number of submissions from over 106 countries around the world.

Unfortunately, we are not able to include your film in our program this year. Please know that your project was carefully considered by our programming team, and the decision was incredibly difficult to say the least. Unfortunately, not all of the wonderful projects we consider can be included, and we are forced to make many difficult decisions each year, especially with a program that runs only one day for 90 minutes. With over 1400 films submitted, our acceptance rate turned out to be just 1%!

Thank you again for sharing your project with us. We wish you the best of luck, and we hope to have the opportunity to view your work in the future. The 6th annual Traveling Shorts Film Festival will take place in Vancouver, Canada in 2017. Keep us on your radar!

Sincerely,

Madeline and River, Creative Co-Directors
Traveling Shorts Film Festival Screening Committee
travelingshorts.tgs.org

 

 

 

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May 24, 2016