Nashville Film Fest

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brandonstephensfilms

Just a little info:
I accidentally submitted a film to the Nashville Film Fest on WithoutaBox, but never paid the fee or sent the film in...but I just received this:

Dear Brandon,

Unfortunately, your film *&*&****, has not been selected for the 2012 Nashville Film Festival.

We received more than 2,900 entries this year and the decision process was a difficult one. Our process allows for each film to be seen a minimum of two times, some film are seen up to five times prior to rejection or acceptance.

If you have questions regarding our decision, please email filmmakers@nashvillefilmfestival.org and we will get back to you as soon as we possibly can. We ask that you email and do not call as we are still in the notification process.

If you are curious to see which films made the selection, we will begin public announcements on February 29, continuing through the end of March.

We wish you the best of luck in the future and thank you for submitting.

Sincerely,
Wm. Brian Owens
Artistic Director

Love the "seen at least twice" part.
 
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Niiiiiice.

Since the debate routinely rages raw over whether festival submission review boards actually do watch ALL submitted films in their ENTIRETY I don't suppose we could appreciatingly impose upon you to locate an actual named member of the Nashville Film Fest (whom I otherwise would have previously held in high regard as one of the better festivals) submission review board to follow up with some hard questions about how this was possible.
Not once, but TWICE!

Thank you.


Ray
 
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I am still waiting to hear from them, so your "no" may be a good sign for me. My guess is that an employee/volunteer was told to go on WAB and send a form rejection to everybody EXCEPT a list of people still in contention, then used WAB functionality to send that blast email. You were still in the WAB database as having submitted.
 
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I know people who have volunteered as screeners for them. From what I know the system works as they say it does. Every film is given to at least two volunteer screeners. If either one of them says "yes" then the film moves on to being screened by the festival staff. If both say "no" it goes in file 13.
 
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Gonzo:
I agree that's how they say it works, and since you know people from there you have confirmation.
Except in my case, it/the screener wasn't given to anyone, because it WASN'T THERE!
Somebody should have said, "Uh, I don't think we actually ever watched this film..."
 
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I agree it looks weird, but I bet my original response is what happened. Some staffer was told "Go un-check the box by these films, then send this form rejection to everybody that's left. With several thousand entries that would also HAVE to be what they were doing. I'd say it's almost a bigger fail by WAB for not cleaning people off when the deadline passes and their fee isn't paid.

Was yours a short?
 
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Hmmm....just wanted to update that after posting my initial post, my status in withoutabox suddenly changed to the nashville film fest receiving my film TODAY but I never sent it in and I never paid a fee...

screen capture here
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e134/lestcasey/2-23-20129-25-16PM-1.png
2-23-20129-25-16PM-1.png
 
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Gonzo, I hope you do get in!
Check it out, they seem to have noticed my posts around the web. I received this email:


Hi Brandon,



We caught wind of you being upset about receiving our rejection email and I wanted to write to you to apologize.



Your entry, having not been received, was supposed to be deleted instead of “yellowed”. My assistant Sara has been out this week due to a death in the family and I’ve been working with an intern, and she misunderstood some of the WAB instructions and miscategorized your entry. As a result, you accidentally received the wrong email through the WithoutABox messaging system.



Again, my apologies for the inconvenience.



Sincerely,

Wm. Brian Owens

Artistic Director
 
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That seems a satisfactory answer.
We all know there are wacky things that go on behind closed doors at any organization.
That one will likely do.
Once. ;)
 
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It may be an answer, but I wouldn't consider it a satisfactory one.
As filmmakers, we are led to believe that film fests have a system or checklist of who watched what and who rejected what before it moves on the next round or doesn't and then they send a message. We know it's an automated message, but where were the checks!?
 
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Dreadylocks said:
Oh come on. Mistakes happen.
Click to expand...

Yep, per my initial guess, festivals use automated stuff provided by WAB. His "never received" submission didn't get properly separated from the "rejected" submissions. It should have, but humans make mistakes, and even before the explanation I could see how easy that one would be to make.

After having dealt with festivals who were so disorganized i had to find out I was ACCEPTED by seeing it on their website, this is a pretty minor screw up.
 
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So you guys are saying this is perfectly acceptable?
That even the fest itself or the panel of viewers doesn't need to know who actually watched the film and rejected it?
So when you get your rejection letter from other places, you have 100 percent faith that it was actually watched and judged accordingly?
 
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No. Not perfectly acceptable.
Within the realm of plausible.

Wrong people get convicted and put in jail, released years later.
Wrong arms and legs get cut off by surgeons.
Wrong houses get demolished by demo crews.
Friendlies get fired on by countrymen.
Sh!t happens.
And it's going to happen again despite sincere best efforts to NOT let it happen, yet...

Plausible.


Once.
 
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Brandon, you act like it's one big conspiracy to take money and not watch films.

If it bothers you that all you have to assure you that your film is being watched is the word of the film festival, then don't submit to them. But you've got to trust some people some time.
 
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