u/versafilms

Hey everyone!

I'm a former emo/scene kid from the mid2000s. Over the last 6 years I've been a music video director for bands like Spiritbox, Senses Fail, Lorna Shore and more, but have been dying to get into narrative filmmaking. Recently I made and released my first short film on youtube called, Our Last Day As Kids. It's a proof of concept for a feature film I'd love to one day make. It's an ode to those days of local shows and the friends I've made in the prairies of Saskatchewan. I think some of you here might connect with it, so I thought I'd share it here!

Let me know what you think! And if you enjoy it, please consider leaving a review on YT or letterboxd. It helps us a lot as we pitch producers to try to get the full feature off the ground!

Hi, my name is Dylan Hryciuk and I’m typically a music video director in the rock / metal space, but am slowly trying to make my way through the narrative space. 

Recently, I directed my first short film, Our Last Day As Kids, which is a proof of concept for a feature film I hope to one day get off the ground. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the 2000s alternative music scene I grew up in.

Like most filmmakers, I had the grandiose dream that some how I’d make my first short film, we’d put all this money into festivals entries and we’d get into a ton and someone would see something in what we’re trying to make, or our specific voice as a filmmaker. 

I submitted to about 50+ festivals, got into none of the big ones, and got into a total of about 10 smaller to medium festivals. I travelled from my small city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to places like Toronto, LA, New York to showcase my film, and although they were cool experiences, it really was just a way to show other likeminded filmmakers my work. From that experience, it felt like it kind of fizzled out and it felt like all that effort was for… well… nothing.

But I kept trying to put myself out there, I learned about what mistakes I made along the way, but also I learned what I could do in the meantime to try to find an audience. 

What I learned about the Festival experience:

1. Getting denied by festivals is a very normal process for 99% of filmmakers. Festivals get thousands of submissions, and can only approve so many. Getting denied doesn’t mean your film is bad, or that there’s no audience for it. There’s plenty of factors. Possibly there was another film with a story or tone like yours. Perhaps your brand of storytelling doesn’t fit the tone of the festival… Or the thing I heard the most… maybe your film is too long (for festivals). This was a big one for me. I kept hearing about how the shorter your film is, the better your chances. A film festival would rather package multiple shorter films into a block and give the chance to more filmmaking teams, than one longer film. If your film is 5 minutes long, you’re gonna have a good chance, if it’s over 10, still a good chance, but less-so. If you’re over 15, you get an Asterix and if you’re over 20, oh boy. And my film was 21 minutes… so I wasn’t doing myself a lot of favours, aside from making the thing I wanted to make. 
2. Most festivals are filled with likeminded filmmakers trying to get seen, trying to find producers. At least in my experience, these festivals weren’t full of people looking at filmmakers as people to invest in. It did have me pondering… then what’s the point. You’re gonna spend a lot of money to travel, to get the film to play properly at the festival, to show to other people like you. Not to say that there isn’t any merit to meeting other likeminded filmmakers, or potential future collaborators, but honestly you shouldn’t go to these festivals thinking you’re going to come home with trophies, accolades and a sweet producer helping you make your next thing. You should be taking it as an experience to watch an audience engaging with your work, live, on a big screen. It’s a powerful experience, and I wish I knew that was going to be my biggest take-away and been more in the moment for it. 
3. Your film's audience might not be at film festivals. Film festivals are rooms filled with filmmakers, with specific tastes. They’re looking at it from a cinematic lens, which is not a bad thing… but what if your film is for a specific audience, or worse... general audiences! There is nothing wrong with that, but you should recognize if your film is playing infront of the right audience. My film was a coming of age drama with a niche audience, and although it played well at festivals, I never saw people who were specifically my target audience at any of these festivals, aside from one person who saw a social media post and decided to go just for our project, and they were the one true connection I made through the festival experience. That clicked a lot for me.

 

You’re gonna hear a lot of advice, especially at festivals. Make your film shorter. Make it a genre film. Make it less about characters and story and more an event film. The most successful short films are short, straight to the point with a powerful “moment”. Think “Lights Out” or “Portrait of God”. Fantastic films! But there is a part of me that goes… well I don’t just want to make stuff to fit in a very specific box… so what do I do?

You should still enter festivals, because you never know, but better of all, you should put your film online.

Lots of people see their festival circuit as the defining moment for their film. It didn’t get into many festivals, so it’s not good, or there’s not an audience for it. None of that is true. I have plenty of friends who have made great little films and they've just let them sit on a hard drive, waiting for their next film to be their moment. And I’m not trying to say I made a masterpiece, I know I didn’t, but after putting it online, and putting some work in, I did find it an audience. 

What I learned about putting my film online: 

1. Going viral isn't a plan. Sure, it would be nice, but it isn't the defining factor to your film. We’d all love to go viral, just like we all want to win big at festivals, but this happens for a very few select filmmakers out there who strike gold, or who have built audiences hungry for their work. I put my film online, and it got a few thousand views and kind of fizzled out, because no one knew about it, it wasn't a "holy shit" you have to see this crazy moment sharable film, nor was it something that the algorithm picked up. 
2. All films are marketable, and it is your job to do so. Niche is good, especially online. It wasn’t until I was comfortable just trying and trying again online to see what could connect my film to my target demographic that things really started to connect. It was embarrassing, and vulnerable, but eventually it’s what gave me short film a life. I made project specific Instagram and TikTok accounts, and made tens, if not over a hundred reels  with similar content trying to find audiences, and through lots of trial and error, some stuck. Eventually a few pieces of content got hundreds of thousands of views. I think overall, my content as been seen over a million times, and thats just from trying to target some of my content, and not being scared of continuously putting it out there. 
3. Not all social media views will garner real views. This was a hard pill to swallow, but 1 million + views on tiktok and instagram did not garner my film 1 million views. If anything, I'd say about 1/10th of the views you get on social, if that, actually translate. But hey, my film went from a few thousand to over 100,000 views on YouTube in 6+ months. It's found a little audience. It's gotten thousands of likes, hundreds of comments and reviews, and collected 30,000 followers online who connected with the thing I made. Now, 100,000 isn’t some incredible game-changing number, but to me, it’s a significant start for my first short film. 
4. Focus on the audience that connect with your voice, your vision, your art. Putting yourself out there is scary. It's an uncomfortable process that I'm still getting used to, because it feels like people are judging you, and not just a piece of art out in the world. If you can look past the negative, you're gonna see the light. Take this for example. Steven Spielberg is one of the all time most successful directors of all time, and there's still people who shit on things he makes. For my film, beyond some hate, other people have really connected with it. It reminded me of why I made it. Don’t be scared to keep searching for those people, because eventually, the right audience will find it.

 

I know this is a lot of text, but I just wanted to encourage people to put themselves out there. It took me ten years to have the confidence to finally just make something for myself. It’s a very deflating process for that thing to not instantly be a smash hit, but the internet puts a lot of power in filmmakers hands, to connect your art to actual people. Specific people. So don’t be like me and wait so long. It’s okay to make a film and it not be the best. Don’t be scared to share it with as many people as possible. You’re gonna reach people who don’t like it, I know I did haha, but eventually it'll also find people who resonate with the way you create, and that's really worthwhile.

Got a few requests to see the short film, so sure, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgJJXscRZ4E