Tips from a film festival programmer

I'm involved with Weird Film at the Winery (weirdfilmfest.blogspot.com), a short 'genre' film series. It's for horror, fantasy, sci-fi, or otherwise Weird film, geared to a general audience (sometimes children).  That doesn't mean cheery and squeaky-clean, but not it's not Saw.

Guidelines: http://filmfreeway.com/festival/WeirdFilmattheWinery

Many entries are outside the genre(s), way too long, or have poor sound quality. Help your chances thus:
- meet or stick close to the length limit
- submit something in the genre(s)
- provide a short synopsis; trailers are nice too
- plan production sound carefully - it's sad to turn down a good story because of uneven levels, poorly articulated dialog and unplanned echoey-ness
- have the rights to music in your film
- keep credits short 
- submit earlier rather than later (this is less important than the bits above)