FFF5
LAUNCH IMMINNENT!!!
Here’s an email thats waaaaayyyy too long but I think has all the info you need! (also spin these email vibes)
Hey FFF Filmmaker! (Or if you aren’t one yet, go ahead and register you coward!!)
Thanks for being part of the fifth annual Failed Film Festival, uncontroversially regarded as the greatest film fest in the history of the earth. In 1,000 years, alien scientists picking over the ruins of our civilization and dead planet will marvel at the sheer audacity and creative ingenuity of the works we create before they get around to looking at the pyramids or broadway junction or whatever.
Only three days left until we get this party started in earnest. Here’s how it works:
If You Are Anywhere on Earth
At the stroke of midnight September 27th your local time, you have exactly 30 days to write, shoot, edit, and submit your ambitious film.
It can be any genre, any length, anything you can possibly imagine—the only thing it shouldn’t be is uninspired! All films submitted (that aren’t clearly evil) will be on the road to FFF superstardom. Here’s what you’ve gotta do;
Build Your Crew: Start by rallying an IRL team of local friends, neighbors, or smiling drifters. Anyone can also collaborate remotely or IRL by pitching an idea to our filmmaking team-finder app / jumping in to fill cast and crew roles on someone else’s project.
Make It Official: Every single participating filmmaker on your team must register at phac.xyz/fff to be part of FFF5!
Pay-What-You-Can Reality Check: Registration is pay-what-you-can, but real talk: pay-what-you-can does not cover the costs of this festival. We make zero money and run this purely for the love of the game. It was expensive just to reach you! If you have the means to throw in a few bucks, please do! It keeps this pirate ship afloat.
Submissions: We will release the official film submission form via email toward the tail end of the 30-day window. ALSO NOTE, If your film is not in English (Good!!! I’ve heard about enough english!), IT MUST CONTAIN HARD-CODED SUBTITLES (I.E. BURNED INTO THE IMAGE ON SCREEN). THAT'S IMPORTANT.
If You Are NYC Local (Kickoff Event!)
We’re launching the festival rain or shine this Saturday, September 27th at 3:00 PM sharp in Prospect Park.
We’ll be gathering under the old bandstand at these exact coordinates: (40.66205482299439, -73.96714538686659).
Come through to:
Get matched with a crew during our film team speed-dating game
Participate in our traditional First Film Shoot where we make something truly idiotic together to get the failure flowing.
Make friends, find co-conspirators, and grill us with any questions you have about the rules. (SPOILER ALERT: IF THERE ISN'T A RULE ABOUT IT—THERE ISN'T A RULE ABOUT IT!)
About FFF
FFF is a yearly invitation to attempt the creation of an ambitious picture with your friends, neighbors, and strangers (future friends). We celebrate trying, and we celebrate failing around these parts! We believe in aiming high and accepting low.
YOU DON'T NEED FANCY EQUIPMENT TO MAKE A MOVIE. THE MAN DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU CAN JUST MAKE ONE. NO PERMISSION. NO CAMERA. NO PROBLEM.
Most movies for FFF are shot on smartphones, and some are even EDITED on smartphones. Movies are also made by industry professionals, artists, teachers, accountants, and even kids. Zero budget, zero limits, zero experience encouraged!
How Do Screenings & Voting Work?
Once the clock runs out and submissions are locked into our library app, the showcase rolls out in three stages:
Community-Led Screenings & App Voting: The festival begins in your hands. Anyone can host a screening—whether that’s a backyard projector, a living room couch mob, or taking over a dive bar. Have one in the nude on your boat, you do you. Everyone uses the voting app to celebrate your fellow filmmakers projects, vote on some “awards”, and push their favorites up the leaderboard.
PHAC Pirate Cinema: Standout selections from the submission pool—chosen by the community and our Dark Council of Critical Film Wizards and by vote—will be showcased at a first-ever, pop-up PHAC Pirate Cinema somewhere in NYC (or maybe a real cinema like usual if you cheap bastards submit your registration fees)!
The 5th Annual FFF Gala: For the past four years, this has been our crown jewel—a dress-to-impress punk rock blowout somewhere in Brooklyn. We'll hand out awards, celebrate surviving production, and livestream the whole thing so remote teams across the globe can dial in, heckle, and toast with us.
Survival Tips
Films don’t make themselves! The 30 days will vanish faster than you can possible imagine, so get straight to it, be easy to schedule, and carve out time for your crew.
A realistic timeline to keep your sanity:
Week One: Brainstorm, outline, and write.
Week Two: Shoot!
Week Three: Shoot some more (and fix the audio you didn’t monitor in Week Two).
Week Four: Edit, color, score, and export with minutes to spare.
Remember: Your film doesn’t have to be good (at all)—it just has to be done(ish)! Just try your absolute best, and embrace the cringe / imperfection. Above all else, FFF is here to celebrate films with spirit that fail spectacularly. A chaotic, passionate disaster beats a safe, uninspired project every single time.
FINALLY: SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS! OR BETTER YET, CALL UP YOUR WEIRDEST FRIEND RIGHT NOW AND MEET UP FOR 20 BEERS ON SATURDAY TO WRITE A MASTERPIECE SCRIPT. YOU'RE PROBABLY LIKE, THE NEXT SPIELBERG I'M PRETTY SURE. OR AT LEAST THE NEXT NEIL BREEN.
Grab your crew, clear your calendar, and let’s make something wild.
See you at the bandstand (or in the cyberspace).
Unfailingly,
-H