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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
QUESTION: Are you an online festval? Q: What do you accept? A: Everything submitted is given a fair shake because a good movie, is a good movie, is a good movie. Regardless of how much a movie cost to make, how long it took to make, or how passionate its makers were, any genre, style, or intent -- from anyone, anywhere -- that's what MMA accepts. Documentary or narrative, experimental or commercial, music videos or video art, live action or animated, underground or independent, "IndieWood" or foreign, Bollywood or Hollywood: we've seen it all and have awarded it all because we do not discriminate...we delineate. Q: My movie has known stars, big-time production value, has screened at one of the major film festivals, and/or has recently gone into distribution. Can I still submit? A: Yes! The MMA now accepts studio films and/or movies by major filmmakers. We only care if your movie is a good movie; we don't care where it came from, who financed it, how much it cost, or if it has screened elsewhere. Our opinion is that "good" has become a "maverick" characteristic for far too many Hollywood and "IndieWood" movies so if your big budget movie makes the grade, we consider you as maverick as any of our true independent and underground moviemakers. Q: Why should I submit my movie to the Maverick Movie Awards? A: And the top five answers are... A1) The Maverick Movie Awards exists to help deserving moviemakers achieve the recognition they deserve by giving forty-two (42) awards and anywhere between one-hundred-twenty-six (126) and four-hundred-twenty (420) nominations. So the odds are in your favor. See the "Long Answer" to the next question for more on this. A2) Face it, you're not going to run into any distribution reps or film financers anywhere other than the top ten domestic or international film festivals and getting your feature into distribution or your short noticed by financers (so you can make a feature) is generally the point. Clearly there is a huge value to any filmmaker's artistic growth to screen in front of a live audience but short of a precious few "smallish" festivals and, admittedly, most of the top festivals, the film festival circuit experience is, by and large, a letdown due to poor audience attendance caused by the apathy and ineptitudes of idiotic promoters who are running a festival for their greater glory, not yours. A3) Because you want to win an award or get a nomination to slap on your promo art and post at your website. But do these awards really mean anything to distributors? Well, check out the promotional materials of your peer's movies and you'll likely find that most of the film fest honors they're hyping are not from Cannes, Sundance, or Toronto; they're touting film fest screenings and awards from all the rest. And chances are you've never even heard of most of the film festivals or award designations you'll see plastered on any given movie's promotional materials so you can bet that your average movie-watcher hasn't heard of them either. Then why do distributors include those fancy little laurel wreath icons on everything from the trailer, poster, website, to the DVD/Blu-ray wraparound art? They do it for the same reason you use 'em to promote your own movies: because it sells the promise of quality and, in the case of movies without big stars, it serves to promote the movie's validity. A4) We award real prizes that you can actually use. A5) You'll get the bragging rights of being among some notable and even famous company. See our "Awesome Alumni" link. Q: How do you judge submissions? A: Unlike any other competition or film festival, which is to say, the right, just, and fair way. All of the pre-screening judges, qualifying judges, and final selection committee members are working Hollywood insiders and outsiders (not mere academics, critics, fans, or dabblers) with ages ranging from twenties to fifties. Our credentials? Everyone involved in our jury process has been a principal collaborator on a theatrically-released movie, a TV or video release, and/or a top-ten film festival Official Selection. So, judging starts with a double-blind viewing and if the submission makes it past even one of the two pre-screening judges, the submission then goes on to a qualifying judge who rates the submission from 1-to-10 in every applicable awards category. At this point it's a matter of math, people, as only the highest scoring submissions kick-up to the final selection committee who make the concluding awards decisions. Dare we suggest that it's as fair and impartial as anything like this ever can be? Yup, we dare. But if you think your movie's got a better shot making it past the first guard of major film festival interns who decide if your movie even gets seen by the actual decision-makers, then we have just one question for you: Where do you get your crack? Q: How come you're an awards foundation and not a film festival? A: The MMA was a thriving film festival until we realized that we were not serving the needs of moviemakers. After five years of holding very successful screening events, we came to the unavoidable conclusion that we had built a loyal following; however, seeing the same faces among the audiences every year, we concluded that we were preaching to the choir. Getting caught up in the warm fuzzies we helped to create by coordinating an event for so many cool, talented moviemakers to interface directly with intelligent, receptive audiences, it was easy to miss that we weren't really helping moviemakers gain wider exposure or commercial distribution. By shedding the festival, we are no longer constrained by the time limitations imposed by venues and screening schedules that forced us to choose one deserving movie over another. By reinventing ourselves as the Maverick Movie Awards we significantly increased the number of movies and moviemakers we can honor with an award or nomination, finally achieving our primary objective to help moviemakers gain exposure and distribution apart from the all too nepotistic and political film festival circuit. Q: And why no screening events? A: Since we no longer host movie screenings, we cannot and will not blow your premier status for the festivals that either officially or unofficially require the distinction of "breaking your movie." The fact is, many festivals will not select your movie if they cannot be the first to screen it. Not all festivals have an official rule that mandates a worldwide, national, or regional premiere requirement but many actually do. And the festivals that claim they don't factor premier status into their decision to select someone else's movie over yours are lying. Heck, we even did it when we were a festival so, to be fair, we can't vilify all film festivals with this written or unwritten policy. Many fests have to do it for the same reasons we did: if it was a choice between a great movie that had not screened anywhere and another great movie that had already screened somewhere else, chances are we'd pick the former over the latter in order to help a moviemaker whose film deserved to be seen that occasion. Sadly, many of the more high-profile film festivals require your premiere simply for bragging rights. Makes you wonder who these festivals exist to serve, doesn't it...the moviemakers or the festival founders and directors? Don't wonder! They're doing it to serve their needs, not yours. The other reason why we decided to shed our screening events is because the incredible amount of time spent coordinating staff, volunteers, sponsors, vendors, concessions, equipment, venues, as well as promoting the screenings locally to increase attendance is time that we deemed way better spent in pursuit of promoting your movies on a national and international level. See the "Long Answer" to the previous question for more on this. Q: Are you an online festival? A: No, we're not a festival of any kind. Repeat: we are NOT a film festival or screening event of any kind. Q: Are you a written screenplay or short film script competition? A: No, but we do give awards for screenwriting in both the features and shorts categories to screenwriters whose work we can watch. Q: Do you have a documentary category? A: Yes and no. Although our Best Chronicle and Best Performance awards are (generally) exclusive to documentaries, documentaries are eligible for nearly every other awards category (save Best Screenplay and the acting categories). In fact, documentaries have won Best Picture, Best Cinematography and, well, most of the other more coveted award categories, too. No, not "Best Documentary Picture" or "Best Documentary Cinematography" ... just plain old Best Picture and Best Cinematography. Animated, underground, and experimental movies have also snagged top awards at the MMA. In case we haven't belabored the point enough, it's a level playing field here. As stated above, we do not discriminate and, to this principal, the Maverick Movie Awards hold fast in avoiding unfair genre segregations that advocate unnecessary and unrealistic differentiations. And so, here we end where we began as this all comes full cirlce: a good movie is a good movie is a good movie, regardless of... |
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