Cucalorus Watch '08: Lessons Learned from Being a Programmer

It's official. The 14th annual Cucalorus Film Festival is one week away, and I am more than excited to see this year's films. This year, I was invited to be a programmer, and ended up watching over 50 feature-length films from every corner of the globe, from South Korea and Australia, to Germany and Austria. In the end, only four films I saw actually ended up in the festival, giving you a good example of how competitive it is (over 1,000 entries, shorts and features, were submitted this year, but only 145 will be screened). Coming away from the experience, I have amassed a list of do's and don'ts (mostly don'ts) for aspiring filmmakers, based on the majority of the films I had seen:

1. Avoid spelling things out. Take out blatant exposition and let the audience deduce things out on their own. They’re smart. They’ll figure it out.
   
2. Avoid “realistic” conversations if they don’t advance the plot. Quentin Tarantino wrote the “royale with cheese” bit, not you.
   
3. Make sure you record your dialogue well. It doesn’t matter how good the quality of the picture is. If the sound sucks, you’ve lost your audience.
   
4. Don't exploit a tragedy. If your lighthearted comedy can’t work without copious references to the ’92 L.A. race riots, then it can’t work.
   
5. Don't namedrop all your favorite movies into your characters’ dialogue. I don’t care how much you love Full Metal Jacket. Having your character recite the entire “This is my gun” speech isn’t going to help your movie.
   
6. Avoid having a character say the title of your movie unless it’s absolutely necessary to the script.
   
7. If you’re the director, don't put “a (your name) film” at the beginning. That privilege is reserved for people who actually have an Oscar nomination.
   
8. Don't insert a blooper reel into your end credits. You’d be surprised by how many people actually did this. Adding one is the same as saying “I know you hated my movie, but look at how much fun we had making it! Surely that must be worth something, right?”
   
9. Don't waste a lot of time and effort on the DVD sleeve. The best movies I saw came in unmarked slipcases and the discs had nothing but the title and the running time on them.
   
10. Don't use label-makers. Thick paper stickers make the discs hard to read in regular players and nigh on impossible in slot-loading players.
    
11. Finally, the goofy little shorts you made with your friends may have been a big hit on YouTube, but so was “2 Girls 1 Cup.” Neither have any place at a film festival.

Alright, that was the end of my ranting. I'll be posting a list of movies to see this year, so stay tuned.

Oh, and one more time for those who missed it: VOTE!