RIVER BEND FILM FESTIVAL 2012 CALL FOR ENTRIES
Website: www.riverbendfilmfest.org
We are now accepting entries for the 4th Annual River Bend Film Festival, which will be held April 6 & 7, 2012 at the Century Center in downtown South Bend, Indiana.
The festival is an excellent opportunity for Midwest filmmakers and beyond to screen their shorts and features and to network with other filmmakers. We’ve screened hundreds of shorts and features from across the U.S. and from around the world. This year we are excited to feature a unique event called 3-Fest during our festival, which show cases 3-minute short films by adults and students.
We accept entries by students and filmmakers of all ages. Early and regular submission fees range from $15 to $30, and include student discounts of $5 off any entry. All entries go through Withoutabox.com:
Early Bird Deadline
October 1st
($20 for non-WAB, $15 for WAB).
Regular Deadline
November 1st
($25 for non-WAB), $20 for WAB)
Late Deadline
December 1st
($40 for non-WAB, $35 for WAB)
Students subtract $5 for all categories.
We are sponsored by the non-for-profit Mid America Filmmakers (www.midamericafilmmakers.org) and Downtown South Bend (www.downtownsouthbend.com). We have received an Indiana Arts Grant for our 2012 festival.
Fantastic 2011 Fest!
Another fantastic fest has come and gone, and I’m always happy to say it was our best one yet! So many great things about it, but I’ll touch on some of the highlights. We’ll also be uploading videos and photos soon.
#1 Films & Filmmakers – Everyone commented on how great the films were this year – the quality and variety. Many local filmmakers attended of course, but we were excited to see many others from across the country, including New York and California. They all enjoyed talking about their films during Q&A’s and said they really loved the intimate nature of a festival our size.
#2 Stephen Susco & The Pitch Workshop – Stephen is a good friend, very generous, and a super smart guy. His film High School was very well received, but the best part was his movie script idea pitch workshop where attendees got to tell him their movie idea, and he gave feedback. Winning idea gets personal mentoring from him on it. Original scheduled to run 2 hours, attendees couldn’t get enough so we had to move them to another venue to continue their discussion for another 2 hours! Incredible.
#3 Glass City Films (Head Shots, workshops & their movie!) – I can only saw wow and thank you, guys. We awarded them our Friends of the Fest award for their incredible contribution to the quality of the festival. Actor head shots were a smashing success, keeping the photographer Cole and the makeup artist super busy. John and Mike’s cinematographer and editing workshops were hugely beneficial, and their new film Happily After really wowed the audience.
#4 Acting Workshops – Scot’s interactive acting for the camera workshop and Ed and Rodney’s Acting in the Midwest & LA workshop really gave local actors a lot of awesome tips and techniques for working in film locally and beyond. I appreciate Rodney flying in from LA to bring us his experiences.
#5 Other Fun Stuff – Kessler Crane had a fantastic display of camera support equipment, including too large jibs to hold up out entrance banner. Fun F/X gave away prizes and gift certificates and decorated the whole hall with their movie character stand-ups. All the filmmaking booths had really outstanding displays. Attendees really enjoyed all the cool stuff to look at and interact with.
#6 Festival Awards – We handed out a number of awards (soon to be listed here), including the Local Gem award which went to Carl Obremski and his TV pilot Fresh Fruit Pie. As a prize, he will have film aired on our local SBT2 station.
#7 Our Sponsors & Press – A major thank you to all our incredible sponsors and coverage we got from local TV stations, magazines and newspapers. We are especially thankful to Notre College of Arts and Letters, Downtown South Bend, the Century Center, SBT2, Mid America Filmmakers, WNDU, Duley
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2009 FILM FEST SUCCESS!
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped make the First Annual River Bend Film Festival an amazing success.
The films, the panels, the speakers (especially producer Jack Olesker on Friday night) were all outstanding and all the independent filmmakers learned a lot and shared a lot about experiences in creating films. We had many local filmmakers there as well filmmakers and actors from California, Oklahoma, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Indianapolis and Toronto.
Our key note speaker, Grudge screenwriter Stephen Susco (who couldn’t make it in person) was able to introduce his film Red and do an hour long Q&A about the movie and screenwriting via Skype with his webcam. He also offered to personally call any attendees who had planned on coming to his script pitching workshop and work with them on their ideas.
Again, thanks to Century Century, Mid America Filmmakers, DTSB and all our sponsors, and especially a huge thank you to all our festival staff and volunteers who worked incredibly hard to make this incredible event happen. We also greatly appreciate the wonderful efforts of the local media to help get the word out.
