This New Site Lets You Know Which Films Are Generating the Most Buzz at Film Festivals
Hundreds of great films hit the major film festivals every year, and if you're a cinephile like -- pretty much everyone here, then you want to know which ones all of the festival-goers are talking about. That's where Film Fest Buzz comes in.
David Larkin and his team over at GoWatchIt and Letterboxd just launched a brand new experimental website (just in time for Sundance) that lists films shown at a number of popular film festivals, like AFI, Tribeca, and Fantastic Fest, and allows users to rate and review them via Letterboxd to let all of the poor souls back home know which films are worth seeing.
Here's a bit from FFB:
FilmFestBuzz.com highlights the best and most interesting films from leading film festivals. We want our audience of early adopters, festival-goers and film geeks to write reviews of the films they see on the festival circuit (the second they get out of the screenings!) with the hope that we can interest a wider audience in films they wouldn’t otherwise have known about. In short, we want you to know which films are generating the most film fest buzz.
Film Fest Buzz also acknowledges the one possible chink in the armor here -- yeah, you'll know which films are killing it at festivals, but by the time they're in theaters or on DVD or VOD, you could have forgotten all about them! But, FFB allows you to set up an alert that will notify you when the film you're interested in is available to watch on any platform.
This site isn't just good for moviegoers; it's good for indie filmmakers, too. Screening your film at a film festival is certainly an accomplishment and something to be proud of, but unless it gets people talking about it outside of the festival, you may not find the audience you're looking for. This site gives your ground floor audience a larger platform on which to spread the word about your film -- certainly larger than the tiny space between them and Jim from Milwaukee on their flight back home.
If you're into this and want to get started, head on over to Film Fest Buzz and take a look around. Also, if you want to leave your own ratings and reviews, you will need a Letterboxd membership -- but they're free, so it's cool. (You should have one anyway for two reasons: 1.) they make you complete film quote CAPTCHAs to prove that you're a human, and 2.) three words: film, diary, awesome.)
Source: Film Fest Buzz