The CAN! Film Festival at UCF has now started taking submissions, and what’s great is that the festival is open to any and all students at UCF, no matter the major! Here’s everything you need to know about the festival.
The Film Marketing and Exhibition class is hosting the festival by working in three different groups so that it can run smoothly. There’s the marketing team, the PR team and the logistics team. The marketing team takes care of the marketing strategy and the festival branding. They do a lot of logo-making and setting up the different aspects of the website to make sure it looks good. They set up the other graphics that the PR team will post to various social media accounts. The PR team overlooks the social media accounts and makes sure that the captions and posts are published on schedule and created to fit the festival’s theme. The PR team makes sure that the social media are all synced and are the same (the most that they can be anyway) across each and every platform. The logistics team takes care of the Discord and answers any general questions students have about the festival. Their work exists more internally within the festival to make sure things run smoothly, such as the submission forms and getting all of the entries together and organized well for the screening that comes later on next year.
CAN! is a great opportunity for any student also to get networking opportunities! They can see what a raw audience reaction to their film will be and see if there’s anything that might be done to improve or do differently in the future. Students may also find different undergrads/grads that want to help on future projects or even inspire them to work on projects of their own as well! Students will select these films; no teachers or faculty will choose these films to show them at the festival and consider them for the awards. Three awards can be won through the festival: the Jury Award, the Audience Award, and the Most Innovative, Creative, and Unique award.
Submitting to this festival is completely free, so there is nothing to lose either when it comes to the festival! Submitting the films and having them screened for free fun is just what any filmmaker would want to see. Submissions started on October 1, 2021 and they will still be accepting submissions through November 1, 2021. After that, the films will be reviewed for the festival. The red carpet screening will take place on February 4, 2022.
The website can be found here, along with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Discord, so that you can keep up with the updates that come with submissions and the eventual red carpet date. From school to screen, start living your dream at the CAN! Film Festival!