Help me submit my short film to festivals!

Hi, I'm Alex, and I am a university student hoping to pursue my passion in filmmaking by submitting my 18-minute animated short film to film festivals!

This film is the realization of a dream I had when I was 11 years old to become the first person to write, direct, and compose the music for a Pixar Animation Studios film. Though it is not Pixar, I am extremely proud of this film and the strides I have made artistically and musically to bring it to life, as I was able to animate, produce, edit, and compose the orchestral score for this film all by myself. Apart from co-writing it with my talented friend Madi Alvarez, everything was done by me in my spare time on my Macbook.

I come to the world of filmmaking as an avid film buff from a very non-traditional background, but I could not be more thankful for it. My double major in Computer Science and Music Composition each provide me with half of the abstract requirements one must have to be an effective filmmaker: the creative skills to build great stories and ensure innovation; and the technical skills to bring it to life.

I could not be more proud of this project, as I started with no practical filmmaking skills — and built them up to have a fully-fledged 18-minute animated short. My greatest hope for it is that it inspires others to pursue their dreams, regardless of what skills they think they have or where they have chosen to take their life path.

This is my first ever short film, and it's my first time submitting to any sort of film festival (so any advice is GREATLY appreciated!). After going through the process of writing, developing, modeling, animating, editing, and producing this film on 0 budget, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that every notable film festival I could submit to had a $20-$100 submission fee. As a college student working multiple jobs to afford groceries, submitting to more than a couple of film festivals really isn't feasible.

If I want to get this film out there and potentially make my dreams of being a filmmaker more than dreams, all signs point to this being the next step: submitting to film festivals and playing my chances at getting a start in this career.

For more information and the behind-the-scenes process of the creation of this film, please go to my website!

Anything raised from this GoFundMe will be directly put to paying for the application fees for film festivals. If there are funds leftover after applying to a certain number of festivals, I'll use them exclusively to fund traveling and attendance to any festival I am lucky enough to get accepted into (and if I don't get into any, I'll apply to more!). Any amount of support — big or small — does really go so far, but please only give if you are in a sound financial position. If you're reading this, thank you for making it here, and I hope you'll consider helping me reach my dreams!