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Melancholia Imaginativa

TeN

New Member
TeN submitted a new film:

Melancholia Imaginativa

I first shot this film in Fall 2014. It was the first narrative short I had shot since graduating from undergrad film school 4 years prior, and I scrambled to write and shoot it quickly because I knew I needed new work in order to apply to MFA programs (and felt my undergrad shorts didn't best represent my abilities or the work I wanted to be making). I planned to submit it to a round of MFA applications that Winter, but life got in the way and I decided to wait a year to apply. Finished a fine cut and basic color correction and sound mix in the Winter of 2015 in time to submit to 7 MFA programs. Got accepted to 4 of those and decided to attend CalArts, where I continued to tweak the sound, color, titles, etc through January 2017.

There's a character limit here, so I'll go into more detail about my experience with submitting it to schools & fests in a comment below...

FINAL_w_text.jpg

Read more about this film here...
 
Okay, so a bit more about my experience submitting this to schools and festivals...

Obviously a film/portfolio submission isn't the only factor in acceptance to or rejection from a school, but I hope this is useful to some people who are planning on applying to one or several of the programs I did.

If you're planning on making new work with an eye toward using it as a portfolio submission, my advice would be not to try to tailor a film to what you think schools "want to see." Instead, think about the kinds of films you want to be making (what kinds of stories, characters, aesthetics, themes, etc), and try to strive toward some version or sketch of that with whatever means you have available. If you make work that's true to your vision and you get rejected, there's a decent chance that program wasn't a good fit for you anyway (or you just weren't ready for it yet). Initially I was dead set on going to UT Austin, but I realize now that it was definitely not the school for me. The same might have been true for Temple. (I'm also glad I waited a few years after undergrad before entering an MFA program)

Another interesting observation: at the same time I was submitting this short to schools, I was also sending it to festivals (my first real attempt at festival submission). I'm disappointed to say that as of now it has about 70 rejections and counting, and zero acceptances. I learned a few things from this. For one, fests and schools are looking for different things and have different criteria: schools are looking for potential and thinking less about the specific work than about the artist who made it, whereas festivals are looking for something that can fit into a program/schedule, so the focus is more on the film itself (factors like length and polish become more important). The applicant pool for fests is often typically much larger (especially for the better known fests) so just statistically your chances are worse (not to mention that many film school acceptances get turned down, whereas almost every film offered a spot at a fest takes that spot).

Watching it now, I realize what I should have done differently with this film: its biggest issue is pacing/repetition/length, and I think this could have been solved by spending more time revising the script before shooting. This is always good advice!

I also don't recommend doing what I did and dropping a ton of money on fest submissions, especially if its your first time. Make a submission budget so you're not tempted to continue applying for forever - it adds up!

I will say though that the experience of so many rejections has had the positive effect of numbing me to the pain of rejection. Every couple weeks I get an email in my inbox from a fest. I always assume it's a rejection and so far I've always been right. This is something all creative people who want to share their work with the world have to go through. Don't be too precious about your work. I'm bummed this film probably won't be screening "on the big screen" anywhere, but it did help me get into a film school I'm now very glad I'm attending, and has been a great learning experience.

Hope you enjoy the film! Let me know what you think (constructive critique is welcome)

And let me know if you have any questions about it, about the fest submission process, about CalArts or any of the schools I applied to, or whatever else. This forum was a big help and confidence booster when I was first looking into applying to school, so I want to return the favor.
 
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