Short Films/Shorts Are Selling Like Hotcakes
And, the U.S. is in an ideal position to take advantage of it. Just as cities like Chicago became Mecca’s of storefront theatre and improv comedy. Which is to say that if you’re a member of what Richard Florida calls the Creative Class, and a resident of the Urban Archipelago besides, I’ve got a message for you: It’s time to hop into the engineer’s seat of this particular train before it passes us by.
Last January, NPR’s Douglas Hopper did a Morning Edition story about an entertaining but penguins-at-the-zoo style report on the Cellflix Festival sponsored by upstate New York’s Ithaca College. On the surface the featured contest sounded like most university sponsored film festivals, open to high school and college students from around the world, a $5,000 grand prize. It even sported a built-in gimmick-to qualify, submissions had to be shot on a cell phone, have a running time of 30 seconds or less and include dialogue, music or other audio.
The “Cell Cinema” Angle Wasn’t A Gimmick. It Was the Tip of an Iceberg
According to Cellflix organizer and Dean of Itahca’s Park School of Communications Dianne Lynch, the festival was her way of asking a question that everyone in our business should be these days: What do filmmakers need to know to be successful in spite of the shifting and changing media landscape that’s confronting all of us?
The answer is so close at hand it’s about to be missed: Short films are selling agan! Until the 1950s, standard commercial cinema included not only the feature films, but newsreels, cartoons and live action short films as well. Television altered the entertainment landscape completely, introducing a new set of market imperatives and consigning short film producers like Hal Roach and Mack Sennett to financial obsolescence. Now, after decades of film school/festival exile, the short as product is back.
Hoping to boost sales, Sony is sponsoring a series of short films designed for its PSP (PlayStation Portable). Verizon and Fox Entertainment Group have launched three “mobisode” series specifically for cell phone screens. Sprint actually beat Verizon and Fox to the punch with its cell phone drama The Spot.AndCBS spent the latter half of 2005 inking deals to deliver programming, including it’s own “micro-series” TheCourier, through every available medium-the net, cell phones and iPods.
Sony, Fox, Sprint and CBS aren’t charting new territory; they’re playing catch-up, desperately trying to carve out a niche for their brand in one of the few filmed entertainment venues whose market-share is actually growing rather than shrinking.
Television, Internet and Mobile Device Markets hungry for shorts
International television markets in Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe are literally starved for American-made short films. Canada’s Movieola Channel, for instance only shows shorts, and Canal Plus, Channel 4, and the German pay TV channel Premiere have made them an everyday feature of their lineup. US-based cable outlets from Showtime and Bravo to the Independent Film Channel and the Sundance Channel are following suit. Similarly, web-based short film specialists like AtomFilms,IceBox.com, and Big Film Shorts are gobbling up independently produced short subjects. The 60-second mobile device short may be new to the U.S., but Indian and Chinese teenagers are downloading them to their cell phones and iPods by the hundreds.
According to distributors, any place where people wait for more than a few minutes has become a venue for shorts. Both Air Canada and Delta Airlines have gotten into the business of buying shorts, and airports in general along with cruise ships are widely considered to be quickly developing markets for. Amtrak buys short films for its overseas lines.
For years advertisers have struggled to find ways to chase consumers into new markets. So, short subjects are also generating additional revenue through product placement the same way that producer Mark “Survivor” Burnett’s reality shows do. Companies like Miller Brewing, Ford, and AT&T have placed their products in the films themselves or run ads attached to the film’s online runs.
The Revenge of Hal Roach
If you’re an ambitious filmmaker looking to get in on the action, you shouldn’t let the big boys in marketplace discourage you. The profit to cost ratio that makes for a short film success doesn’t fit the way giant media conglomerates operate. Just as the micro production studios of Mack Sennett and Hal Roach were once able to dominate the short subject market in spite of the major studios best efforts; today’s short film entrepreneurs will be able stay in front in a market that today’s majors are still wary of.
”I don’t think it’s a wise idea to throw everything at the wall.” Fox entertainment’s president, Peter Liguori, said in a recent interview. ”We’re taking a more measured approach to what works and what may not work.”
He means that the profit margin on a 60-second short subject, doesn’t exactly make it worth the time of one of 24 or The Shield’s Emmy award winning writers. My time on the other hand, comes considerably cheaper. Considering that the average locally produced short costs between $1,000 and $2,000 and can be licensed to an international television or online distributor for between $5,000 and $50,000, its easy to see how a boutique production company boasting a slate comparable to AtomFilm Studio’s two to four dozen projects per year, could turn a healthy profit.
Until now, short films have been considered little more than expensive “business cards” for US-based filmmakers, but even the international theatrical market is open to them these days. According to shorts distributor Apollo Cinema’s president and founder Carol Crowe, “The majority of overseas territories are purchasing shorts by the minute. A 30-minute short has the potential to make $30,000 plus.”
Typical of online short subject distributors, AtomFilms pays as little as $500 per film, up front. But Atom also offers filmmakers a cut of the advertising revenue generated by their films. According to Atom Entertainment CEO Mika Salmi, popular shorts have made more than $200,000.
The Challenge for the Creative Class
You don’t take my word for it, there’s a whole school of “Third Wave” economists (most notably Chris Anderson’s Long Tail), whose niche market entertainment theories and business models can back me up.
Or you could just do the math.
The question isn’t “can” short films be profitable. The question is: Where will the shorts that feed these burgeoning markets be produced? The overwhelming consensus among distributors is that there is a built-in bias favoring both comedies and American made films (comedies are among the international market’s biggest sellers). But that advantage has been largely ignored and the door won’t stay open forever.
This is a tremendous opportunity and boutique production companies should be the result.
Ever since the Tarantino Generation hit film-schools en masse back in the 90s, most large urban areas have suffered from an over-abundance of both comic and filmmaking talent. Fortunately for them, those same areas are also rife with investors on the look out for new opportunities. After all, Tom Friedman’s popular Flat World theory goes both ways. We’re sitting on the cusp of an opportunity that only vision can exploit.
Creating short-form filmed entertainment for a changing world.
The films will be produced somewhere. If we decide to make it here, it will definitely bring much needed revenue and film financing dollars into our cities. Last year, Dallas-Fort Worth’s “new media” community brought a staggering $800 million in revenue-with only a fraction of even Miami or Boston’s creative resources. This time, being late for a party won’t be a good thing, or good enough.
