2024 Lake County Film Festival: Filmmaker Acceptance Email

Hello Filmmaker!

My name is Nat Dykeman, I’m the founder and director of The Lake County Film Festival. I handle just about everything involved with the festival, which I founded in 2004. (I was on hiatus from 2012 – 2018, so this is only our 14th season).

If your Film Freeway profile included a phone number, we’ve probably already spoken, but if not, CONGRATS, we’d like to screen your film at the 2024 Lake County Film Festival. Hopefully, this page will give you all the information you need to participate in the festival, but feel free to send me an email asking for additional information. I may come back to this page and add additional information in the coming weeks.

Before I get into this information, one of the most important items is that you should please white-list lakecountyfilmfestival@gmail.com in your mail client! It seems like google doesn’t like us, and our messages are constantly shuffled off to spam folders.

I’m going to make this bullet points, for clarity

  1. The festival runs October 31 – November 3rd & November 8 – 11.
    That is Thursday – Sunday, and Friday – Monday. Everyone screening on those weekdays, should already know about it, and just given the number of screenings, it’s likely you’ll be screening on a Saturday & Sunday. (Basically every program screens at least twice, but I’ll get into that down below.)
  2. All film programs screen twice at the College Of Lake County in Grayslake, IL, which is about halfway between Chicago & Milwaukee. Because we generally have 4 screens running at a time, this gives our audience members more flexibility in choosing what to see. Additional screenings will be held at the Gorton Center in Lake Forest, IL, in a theater funded by the late writer/director John Hughes & his wife. Basically, they choose what to program out of what I’ve programmed. I likely won’t know those films until the beginning of October.
  3. We are actually still putting the final touches on things, but it looks like we will wind up with about two dozen features, and about 90 short films this year. You should know that one thing we do that’s different is that our short programs are about half-length, and generally have 40 – 50 minute runtimes. If a feature screens in one room, another room might have a 45 minute shorts program, followed by a Q&A, and then another shorts program. This allows some of these really interesting, and specific programs that we do.
  4. It seems weird to have to say a few of these things, but given the state of the industry, and the questions I get sometimes, here we are. The Lake County Film Festival has live screenings at the College Of Lake County. We do not have a streaming component. We ALWAYS leave time for filmmaker Q&A. This is the most important part of the festival to many of us. Attending films will receive two All-Access Passes, good for every screening during the festival. Please let us know by October 1st if you are attending, so we can make sure you get a fancy professional pass with your name on it.
  5. We are announcing the entire lineup on Friday, September 6th, during a pre-festival screening at the college. Last year, we had the schedule, lineup, website & ticket sales up the following Tuesday, and are hoping to follow suit this year. Please don’t announce your acceptance until Tuesday, September 10th. We will also have artwork that you can share on social media before that date. Please check https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mMeqZAdpvtgx2HhYjxqyZvs-lvqNHD4_ around September 1st, and you should have both square and horizontal artwork to share on social media. We also recommend using the hashtag #LCFF2024
  6. Website Information: We want to make sure everything is accurate, and spelled correctly on the website. You can see an example of our pages from last year here: https://2023.lakecountyfilmfestival.org/2024-films/quiet-moms-working
    If you can please fill out this form:

    https://bit.ly/2024LCFFFilmInfo
  7. Attendance / Hotels: Because we are across two weekends, and everything screens twice, scheduling can be a bit intricate, but I love it. It’s pure problem solving. We can run both screenings on the first weekend or the second weekend, depending on which weekend is better for you. Local films, and filmmakers not attending usually have one screening each weekend. Please fill out this form, as soon as possible, and let me know which weekend is better for you. I can usually handle changes as we get closer, but I’m very much itching to get started on a potential schedule.

    Also, last year we had a group rate at the Comfort Suites hotel, just a mile or so from the college. I believe our rate was $85, which is one of the cheapest rates in the county. I’d like to get an idea of how many nights we’ll need.

    https://bit.ly/2024LCFFAttendance
  8. Exhibition Copies: All the screening rooms at the College Of Lake County run on PC’s. We use VLC for all the projection, which can basically handle any format. 1080p is fine, none of the projectors are 4k.

    It is likely that Gorton Center will need DCP’s, but considering it’s rare that a feature doesn’t have a short attached, we will probably be creating DCP’s off of those same files.

    Please send all exhibition copies to: printtraffic@lakecountyfilmfestival.org
  9. Laurels: We’ve been talking about creating custom laurels this year, but we haven’t gotten there yet. Feel free to get FF’s cookie cutter ones here:

    https://filmfreeway.com/laurels/45073/TheLakeCountyFilmFestival
    Password: LCFF

    Hopefully we’ll post up some new ones as well before the festival.
  10. Social Media: Here are the links to our social media. I’ll try to follow everyone back as well. One note, we will not be using Twitter to promote this year’s festival. I’m going to pin a single post there about this year’s festival, with a link to our site.

    https://www.facebook.com/LakeCountyFilmFestival
    https://www.instagram.com/lakecountyfilmfestival
    https://www.threads.net/@lakecountyfilmfestival
    https://bsky.app/profile/lakecountyff.bsky.social
    https://www.linkedin.com/company/28469130
  11. Special Note on Student Films: A few years ago we starting offering our first cash prizes for student films, sponsored by the College. We simply took the highest scoring student films, at made them a program. This year we saw an explosion in student film submissions, and an even bigger explosion in quality.

    So, many of you are exhibiting in the main section of the festival, but you will still be in the student competition.

Hopefully that’s everything you need to know about this year’s Lake County Film Festival.

Thanks so much for submitting your films, I can’t wait to show them all to everyone!

Best,
Nat Dykeman
Director
Lake County Film Festival
www.lakecountyfilmfestival.org
lakecountyfilmfestival@gmail.com
224.544.9261