So What Is Bright Wall/Dark Room?
Thanks for asking! We’re an online journal devoted to long-form critical discussion of the intersection between movies and the business of being alive. The magazine was founded in 2013 with a goal of pushing the boundaries of typical online film writing—we look for essays not just from critics and film scholars but from poets, playwrights, novelists, comedians, and creative types of all stripes interested in experimenting with what film analysis can be.
For the first 50 issues, we operated as a monthly magazine, but in 2017 we switched to our current model: publishing 2-3 essays per week, centering around a monthly theme. Typically announced the second week of the month on our submissions page and Twitter with a three-week submission window, these themes range from the hyper-specific (Elaine May; Los Angeles) to the more abstract (Resilience; Home) to the high-concept (Second Time Around; Survival Kit). We also publish a few “Extras” per month, including off-theme essays, festival coverage, and interviews (more on those last two in the next section).
What Kind of Stuff Do You Publish?
We know, everyone says it—and who has the time to read through every site on the internet, honestly—but given how we value idiosyncrasy, we do strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with the sort of work we publish. To make things convenient, here are some examples emblematic of the range of what “a Bright Wall/Dark Room essay” might look like:
The Grace of Keanu Reeves by Angelica Jade Bastién
Xenomorph: Alien (1979) by Sara Eliza Johnson
The Color of Money: Himself, on Purpose by Veronica Fitzpatrick
Life Is Short: Stunt It – The Refined Nothing of Hot Rod by Frank Falisi
We Do What We Can to Endure: A Ghost Story (2017) by Chad Perman
Slashed Beauty: On Female Masks in The Skin I Live In, Eyes Without a Face, and Under the Skin by Kelsey Ford
Andante, Andante: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again by Fran Hoepfner
Only I Know the Secrets: Breaking Down Under the Silver Lake by Ethan Warren
And That’s How It Happens: Life, Death, and Big Fish by Katherine Webb
Does It Ever End? The Sweet Heartbreak of Inherent Vice by Travis Woods
We also publish interviews with high-profile artists—to name a few: Guillermo del Toro, Agnes Varda, Kenneth Lonergan, Bo Burnham & Elsie Fisher, Liv Ullmann—but it’s relatively rare, so we’re unlikely to be the right outlet for your interview with the cinematographer of an obscure indie (though we’re sure they’re talented and fascinating, and we’ll be reading!).
We do publish coverage from some major film festivals, but typically only by writers we already have a strong working relationship with, so reaching out in hopes of citing us in your accreditation application is not likely to be a good use of your time.
OK, What Kind of Stuff Don’t You Publish?
– Traditional reviews (typical criticism is an art, and one we love, but as we publish only 8-12 pieces per month, we just don’t have space)
– Traditional features (i.e. this is not the place for your 1,200-word 20th-anniversary retrospective on Meet the Parents—again, those are often valuable and a lot of fun, but see above re: limited space)
– Hit pieces (i.e. this is not the place to shred a movie that infuriated you. We certainly appreciate a thoughtful exploration of a movie’s flaws, but we’d like it to demonstrate generosity of spirit rather than bitterness)
– Fiction or poetry (except in the case of lyric essays, e.g. Xenomorph or Jenny Hollowell’s The End of the End: An Evolution of Faith, in Five Films)
Great, I Want In
(Updated June 2021) Fantastic! We post open calls for submissions via our Submissions page and on Twitter on or around the 15th of every month, typically with a three-week submission window. Given the fact that we only publish 8 – 12 essays per month, and to level the playing field between emerging and established voices, we do rely primarily on Submittable, where we ask for full first drafts for consideration. This is likely the best way to get on our radar, and tends to be the route through which we establish long-term collaborations.
That said, we completely understand that for many professional writers, writing on spec is too much of an expenditure of time and energy for an uncertain result. For that reason, we’re happy to accept e-mailed pitches via editors@brightwalldarkroom. Please include a rundown of the idea, a projected word count (we usually publish work between 2,000 and 4,000 words), a sense of what makes it a great fit for BW/DR (usually some distinctive form or offbeat focus that would set it apart from outlets more focused on news and reviews), and a few links to pieces published at outlets with editorial oversight. On pitches, we will offer a solid yes or no, and a rejection may represent a range of reasons unrelated to the quality of your work—given our roster of frequent contributors and our desire to save a few slots each month for Submittable discoveries, pitching is, for better or worse, a fairly competitive prospect!
If you don’t hear back on your pitch within a week, please feel free to send a courteous follow-up—we’re a small group and we receive a high volume of interest, so some messages do slip through the cracks, and if yours is one of them, please accept our sincere apologies.
What we look for in a submission:
– A confident voice that’s willing to risk vulnerability
– A strong command of craft—clear sentence structure, lack of grammatical errors/typos, etc.
– A robust exploration of the topic (i.e. unless every word is gold, we rarely accept pieces running three pages or under)
– Ambitious and unusual forms
What we prefer not to see in a submission:
– An abundance of summary
– An excessively dry or academic tone
– An excessive focus on the specifics of your viewing circumstances unless it’s thematically essential to the piece
– Excessive snark, sarcasm, or eye-rolling without an accompanying sense of playful self-awareness
Though we would love to be able to provide individualized feedback after writers put their time and energy into a piece, we’re unfortunately not able to offer that at this time.
What Should I Put in My Cover Letter?
We get this one a lot, and the answer is: don’t overthink it! Just briefly introduce yourself and give us a sense of whose voice we’re about to experience. Courteous brevity is certainly appreciated, and trying too hard to be clever might backfire. Imagine meeting us in person and handing us a paper copy of your piece—you don’t want to shove it at us silently and storm away, but excessive flair and cuteness might raise an eyebrow.
What Can I Expect If I’m Accepted?
We believe in a collaborative editing process to ensure everyone feels comfortable with what ends up on the site. These notes can range from a few simple line edits to multiple rounds of energetic revision, and we ask that our writers be up for collaborating in this way. Our dual commitment to ambitious work and publishing emerging voices means sometimes accepting pieces in which we see room for improvement, and we believe in the writer’s right to make those changes and improvements themselves (though we do reserve the right to make minor cosmetic tweaks between editing and posting). For the most part, writers seem to enjoy the process as much as we do, and we frequently hear that the experience was significant to the development of their craft, which makes us very happy!
What Do You Pay?
We pay $50-200 per essay, and always state the current rate for accepted essays in each month’s Submittable announcement. If your essay is accepted for publication, we will send you a copy of our freelance contract prior to beginning the editorial process. Provided the contract has been signed, payment will be remitted via PayPal within two weeks of publication. If you don’t receive payment within two weeks, we encourage you to send a courteous nudge to editors@brightwalldarkroom.com. We’re only human, and our best-laid plans can go awry.
We believe strongly in paying writers what they’re worth, so we’re always working to raise our rates closer to industry standards. As we’re reader-supported (no ads now, no ads ever) the best way to help raise our rates is to help spread the word about the site!
Anything Else I Should Know?
We have a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech or discrimination against any group. We believe in all individuals’ right to live and express themselves freely (to the point that it doesn’t violate that first policy), and work by any writer who openly questions or supports efforts to suppress that freedom—either in their submission or elsewhere—will not be considered. In the past few years we have used our platform to raise money for organizations supporting trans rights, abortion access, reuniting families separated at the border, bail funding, justice system reformation, anti-racism, Black Lives Matter, and more. If you don’t believe these pursuits are worthwhile, we encourage you to take your work elsewhere.
Our editor-in-chief only tried a croissant for the first time a couple of years ago and came to us very excited about the discovery only to realize we were all basically familiar with the ubiquitous pastry. That’s not really something you need to know, just a palate cleanser to balance out the seriousness of that last item.
Happy watching, happy writing, and we look forward to your pitches and submissions!
