Writer and director · Duluth, MN · Between films. Reading commissions for the winter.
A writer and director in Duluth. Every filmmaker’s site shows the laurels; this one shows the denominator — the complete submission ledger for one short film, including the entry fees and the twenty-nine festivals that said no.
Hollow Ice · 12 min · March 2025 – May 2026
A 15% acceptance rate, 4 festivals that never replied at all, and 2 entries withdrawn after I had already paid.
Nobody publishes this. The laurel wall on every other site in this trade is the same list with thirty-five rows deleted — which is not dishonest exactly, but it does mean a first-time filmmaker looking at six laurels has no way to know whether that took six submissions or forty-one. It took forty-one. That is normal, and finding it out from a page rather than from fourteen months of your own money is the entire reason this table is here.
What the run was actually for
A producer in the audience at Greatlakes commissioned a six-minute piece four months later. She had not seen the laurel, the website or the trailer — she was in the room. Everything else the run produced was for me, not for anyone hiring.
The Quarry Lake note was three paragraphs about why the second act does not work, and it was right. A relationship with somebody who will read your next film honestly is the rarest thing a submission fee can buy, and it is not what the fee is advertised as buying.
Thirty-five rejections and four withdrawals cost a real amount of money and produced no measurable outcome. I would spend it again, and I want to be precise about what it did and did not do rather than imply the laurels are a career.
The most useful thing the run produced
“The second act does not work — you cut away from her three times in ninety seconds and every one of them is you flinching. Everything either side of it is confident. Send me the next one.”
Programmer’s note, Quarry Lake Cinema, August 2025 — quoted with permission
Three paragraphs from a programmer at a festival with a $20 entry fee, and it was right. That email is on this page because it is worth more than four of the 6 selections and because printing your own bad review is the only way anyone can tell you are not curating.
Four films since 2018
A shipping-lane pilot spends her last winter learning the ice will not hold.
Shot over nine days on Superior in January and February. The ledger above is this film. The second act still does not work and I am no longer going to re-cut it.
Played: Rivermouth, Greatlakes New Voices, Iron Range, Portage, Quarry Lake, Silt River
Two brothers drive a body four hundred miles because neither will say why.
Made for $1,900, most of it fuel. Nine festivals, two selections, and the first thing I made that somebody outside my own circle asked to programme.
Played: Rivermouth, Bittern Bay
A forestry survey crew disagrees about what they found.
The only thing I have shot on film. It cost four times what it should have and taught me more than the three digital shorts combined, which is an argument for doing it once and not twice.
Played: Tallgrass, Fen & Field, Copperline
A dock guard talks to nobody for seven minutes.
First film. Two people, one location, no money, and it is on this page because pretending you started somewhere better than you did is not useful to anybody reading.
Played: North Shore Shorts
2 of the 4 have a frame here. The other two do not, because the stills I have from them are not good and putting up a bad frame to fill a grid is how a portfolio starts arguing against itself.
What Hollow Ice cost
Two totals, because the $1,590 of entry fees is the line almost every “how I made my short” post leaves out — and leaving it out is how a $8,960 film gets described as a $7,370 one.
Funded by two years of commercial directing work, a $2,000 regional arts grant, and no crowdfunding. I mention the last one because a budget page that quietly leaves out where the money came from is as incomplete as one that leaves out the fees.
Commissioned work
From $9,500
Writing, directing and delivery. Crew and kit are quoted separately and shown to you as a real budget, not folded into one number.
$1,100/day
Plus prep. I will tell you in the first call if I think somebody else is a better fit for the material.
$350
A written response inside a week. Frequently the cheapest useful thing I do for anybody.
$600
Treatment, lookbook and budget in the format a regional arts council actually asks for.
Common questions
Because the alternative is a laurel wall, which is the same list with thirty-five rows deleted. Somebody making their first short and looking at six laurels has no way to know whether that took six submissions or forty-one. It took forty-one. Knowing that from a page is cheaper than finding it out from fourteen months of your own money.
Once, in my case, and it was a person in a room rather than a laurel on a website. I would still do it, but I would not describe it as a business development strategy, and I would be suspicious of anyone who does.
No. The shape of the record is real; the names are invented. Publishing a rejection record against named real festivals would be a different and much less defensible kind of honesty.
Tiers, waivers and premiere status, in that order — and getting the third one wrong is what the two withdrawals in the ledger are. There is a longer method than fits in an answer here.
Yes, as a paid read, and you will get a written response inside a week rather than a coffee that never gets scheduled. If it is not for me I will say so in the first paragraph rather than the last.
Yes, and it paid for two of the four films on this page. I do not treat it as the thing I do while waiting to make films; it is how the films get made, which is a more honest framing than most directors offer.
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