Adding this thread to my festival prep folder. Bookmarked for every October from now on.

Press addition: if you are a journalist, save your interview questions for the interview. The Q&A belongs to the audience.

Congratulations! Regional festivals are the best rooms. The audience is locals who came on purpose. Bring postcards with your name and where to watch your work, and talk to the volunteers. They know everyone.

Festival midnight section: a man fell asleep and snored through a slow burn, then woke up exactly at the jump scare and screamed louder than anyone. Standing ovation from his row.

From the press side, the best midnight programmers pick films that play better with a crowd than alone. That is a different skill from picking the best film. It is picking the best room.

Open with something confident and short. Put the most divisive one in the middle. End on the one people will talk about on the walk to the car.

I have genuinely started glancing at CRYPT between screenings to see which buzz is real and which is just my group chat.

That is the best way to go. Pick by section, not title. Midnight sections for fun, shorts blocks for discovery. And always catch one film on the first morning that nobody is talking about yet.

Fall is here, which means my calendar is color coded and my sleep schedule is gone. Who is heading to festivals this season? I am doing two big genre weekends and a couple of smaller regional stops. Share your plans, your survival kits and …