This is for the benefit of those interested in making movies.

Directors’ Smorgasbord: Apply to 650 Festivals at Once

By JUSTIN PETERS
Published: November 19, 2006.

OMAR CHAVEZ JR.’S initial marketing plan for his debut short film, “Take Four,” was simple: Sundance or bust. But when the gatekeepers in Park City, Utah, said bust, this 29-year-old Miami filmmaker changed course.

With the help of an online database, he began researching other film festivals. “I got on there, and I started getting a little trigger happy,” Mr. Chavez said. Eventually he entered “Take Four” in 55 festivals, at a cost of about $3,300.

Mr. Chavez is one of thousands of independent filmmakers to have discovered Withoutabox (withoutabox.com), a six-year-old company in Los Angeles that has simplified the otherwise confusing world of festivals to the point where anyone with an Internet connection and a credit card can participate.

Withoutabox maintains a database of almost 3,000 festivals in 209 countries. Approximately 650 of them pay the company to manage and solicit their online entries. Withoutabox, in turn, promotes these affiliate festivals to its roughly 100,000 members.

Many in the film industry praise the company for introducing independent filmmakers to a robust, if not necessarily lucrative, alternative distribution system. But Withoutabox has also helped foster low-budget anarchy, contributing to rampant growth in the number of festivals — 181 new ones in the last year alone — and flooding the market with entries from novice filmmakers whose confidence is often matched only by their inexperience.

“It’s that whole quantity-versus-quality thing,” said Chrisstina Hamilton, former executive director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival. “Just because you get more submissions doesn’t mean there’s more good work.”

The advent of inexpensive digital cameras and desktop editing software has made it easy for aspiring auteurs to channel their inner Cassavetes. But figuring out what to do with the finished product usually proves more difficult.

The founders of Withoutabox, David Straus, 38, the chief executive, and Joe Neulight, 37, the president, “jumped into this because we were frustrated as filmmakers,” Mr. Straus said. “We saw the inefficiencies in how the system worked.”