Having an 'unofficial premiere'...?

I'd use the term 'private screening'. I think that almost all festivals expect that the film will've been screened for cast, crew and family before hand, so don't worry too much about it. I just wouldn't publicly use the term 'premiere'.

I agree. Call it a "cast and crew screening".

I also did some looking into this for my non-premiere premiere. If you open the doors to the public, then you could likely lose "premiere" status. But if it's for cast/crew/friends/family, you should be fine.

To be safe, I believe it best to make it invite-only. If you want to charge admissions, you could say that admission is free, but donations are appreciated (most people will donate).

Film festivals get it. The cast/crew deserves to see the darn movie. The fests I looked into do NOT consider a cast/crew screening to be an official "premiere". You should be fine.

Congrats, and have fun!

Most festivals define what they mean by "premiere". You can
check out the first five to ten festivals you will be entering to
make sure you stay within their guidelines. All festivals allow
for a cast and crew screening - even if you rent a theater.

Thanks one and all for your advice.

I'm going to have an 'Advanced screening, by invite only' night for my cast, crew, friends and family.

Will probably do the donations things to help cover costs.

One other thing -- I don't think there should be any problem in allowing people to ask for invites to the "private" event.

For my first non-premiere, I was dumb, and decided to just throw caution to the wind. I made it a public event, because I wanted as many people there as possible. I figured, hey, what are the odds that a prospective film fest would actually investigate? It turned out to be a non-issue, because the fests that care about premiere status all rejected our film anyway.

However, for the next non-premiere, I've decided this is how I'll do it:

I still want to pack the theater, as much as possible, cuz that's just plain fun, for myself and the cast/crew. So, I'm going to essentially open the doors to the public, except technically they will have to be "invited" to a "private" event. So, I'll get some local publicity from papers, etc., but I plan to make sure that the person writing the article states that it is a private event, but that invites can be made available to those people who contact me. And then I'll have someone collecting donations in the lobby.

I can't say for certain that that strategy would work, but it seems like a fairly safe way of having one's cake and eating it, no?













On a sidenote -- I never understood that stupid phrase. Why else would you want to have your cake, if not to eat it?!

Cracker Funk said:

On a sidenote -- I never understood that stupid phrase. Why else would you want to have your cake, if not to eat it?!

Click to expand...

No, no, no. You're right, it's not worth having cake unless you can eat it. But once you eat your cake, you don't have it anymore. Hence, having your cake and eating it too. Make sense?

Not that it really matters, everyone knows what the phrase means anyway, which is 'to have it both ways.'

No no no, the reason you want to have your cake is to TAUNT OTHERS! MWAHAHA! ALL THE CAKE IS MINE!!!!!

I mean....