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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Short films should cost $1

I think where they may spend a few bucks for a sort is in 4K UHD content. Sony is launching a service this year so UHD TV owners can buy and download shorts and features in 4K UHD. My understanding is they plan to charge about 4 bucks for a 4K short. We'll see if folks will pay for it.
 
as opposed to the Zero dollars that many short films are making, a dollar a film would be a huge improvement
 
This is sort of like over-the-air vs Premium Cable TV debate. Over-the-air, like YouTube relies on advertising for free content while Premium Cable or Satellite rely on subscription fees for paid content. I personally get more TV shows than I want just from over-the-air.
 
I miss the short-before-feature. It was common to get one, sometimes two shorts prior to the main feature here in the UK. This was while I was growing up during the 70's & 80's. It could sometimes be a mixed bag, but usually because it was mis-programmed with the main feature. There was a market in this and it provided good exposure and some cash to the film-makers. Probably not enough to live on, but few film-makers make a career of exclusively short film-making.

As advertising claimed an ever-greater proportion of the pre-feature time, last I checked the main feature starts about 30 minutes after the schedule film start time in most chain theatres now, this practice fell out of favour. Pay for additional content or be paid to show other content? Goliath wins. Virgin Media have brought this back with their national shorts competition in conjunction with Picture House cinemas. It's great. Even if you've seen the film online, it's more of an experience to see it in a cinema with an audience. At least it is for me.

The big ask of the online model and it's also the double-edged sword of the new model of distribution, is that there is no vetting of the material. You can put anything up for sale online, regardless of it's inherent quality. Festivals and traditional distribution channels, antiquated in some respects, offer a degree of vetting or at the very least, some kind of editorial of the material. Filmmakers successfully navigating this route, will generally find more long-term support for their work or craft.

I think Vimeo's tip jar is a good approach, you can pay what you feel it is worth after seeing it. I'm okay with that - given the sheer volume of material available and the complete lack of any vetting that takes place. Even the 'curated' channels have huge variance of quality within them, so guarantees are low.
 
It'd be nice to see an iTunes-esq approach to short film.. $1-$5 per short, downloadable into a library (for the sake of DRM). The main issue though is content-control. Most shorts don't come with a age-certificate, which would vary accross markets dependant on cultural-taste-of-the-month standards

But the biggest problem to overcome is that meme thats been floating around the 'tinter-web fo a while now:
Some people will pay £2.50 for a cup of coffee enjoyed over 10 minutes, but not 95p for a song enjoyed for the rest of their life
 
I guess it depends on the cost of the short, and the amount of viewers. Like people say here, most shorts are unwatchable.

On the other hand, I know filmmakers that spent on the 100k$ ballpark to make their shorts.

Very pretty shorts, but, you need a whole lot of viewers paying a dollar just to recoup your investment.

Also, there are other issues, like:

1. Did you pay your actors to do the short? If the answer is No or partially, see No. 2.
2. Are any of your actors SAG/AFTRA working on deferred agreements?

If the answer is yes, then profiting from the short might be a bad idea, since the deferred agreement makes it an obligation to the producers to pay the actors the moment you claim profit from the film.

You earned a dollar, now you have to run SAG payroll, revive your old Evidence Gs and pay a whole lot of money. Good luck with that.

Note that for SAG, all actors with a line are profesional actors, and deserve payment, even if they are not guild members, so, if you have ONE SAG actor, you have to pay everyone. That's part of how the other actors get their brownie points to eventually join the guild.

Another issue, shorts that are "online" and viewable, are usually ineligible for festivals.

If you ask me, I would rather have my short in Cannes or some prestigious festival, where I can use the project to find my way into producers with capital, or just use the short to get into any festival, and use the project to earn prices and official selections that "elevate my career" (at least from a PR perspective), rather than trying to get a dollar from some random person, with the diluted fantasy that I'll recoup my SAG payroll, and maybe one day recoup the cost of production.

I suppose that with all of that said, there are instances where paying a dollar for a short could make sense. Hey, just look at the Freddie Wong business model.
 
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Sony plans on ownable features in 4K starting at $30 per and 8 hour rentals at if I remember correctly $8 per.
 
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