SHORT FILM DISTRIBUTION

Short Film award festivals- UK & Global■ London Short Film Festival- The LSFF is now in its 13th year and is the

most recognised short film festival in the UK. In 2016, the festival has sold over 10’000 tickets to the public. 94% of the tickets have now sold out and the festival has had over 1500 UK & International submissions, with 450 of these being screened. The 2016 UK winner was Tamara by Sofia Safanova.

■ Festival de Cannes- The Cannes film festival is a short film festival that was created to express diversity in film & cinematographic art. All entries are only allowed to be 15 minutes in length or shorter. The first ever festival was held on September 20th 1946 and so is holding its 70th anniversary this year.

■ The Aesthetica Film Festival- The ASFF is a BAFTA recognised short film festival for UK Short Films.

Importance of Short film festivals

■ As with all the festivals stated before, short film festivals wish to promote creativity and innovation within amateur film production. This can exist through storyline or the production/edit of the film. These film festivals are used as a self promotion platform also, where these amateur film makers can promote their own talent to professional short/feature film companies.

■ An example of how festivals can branch out new career paths for amateur film makers is the director of ‘Alive in Joburg’, Neill Blomkamp. This short was successful enough to be recognised by the film industry, and Blomkamp went on to direct ‘District 9’, which grossed $200 million.

Online distribution of short films

The short film is traditionally shown at film festivals, however now that we have streaming sites, these short films can be distributed by them:■ Streaming sites such as Netflix & Amazon Prime do not have many short films

on their sites. This is due to the fact that film distributors must pay Netflix for their film to be available. Short films are traditionally made by independent producers who do not have the budget to utilise this.

■ Netflix also feel that short films are not popular with the wider user, so short films are not used so that bigger budget features can be streamed.

■ Specific short film streaming sites have therefore been created to counter-act this issue, with Vimeo also having a wide selection of short films to access. Short film streaming sites include sites such as FilmsShort.com & Indie Movies Online. YouTube is also available for short film streaming.

Award winning short films

■ BAFTA for British Short Film 2016 – ‘Operator’, Producer: Rebecca Morgan, Director/Writer: Caroline Bartleet

■ BAFTA for British Short Animation Film 2016 – ‘Edmond’, Producer: Emilie Jouffroy, Director/Writer: Nina Gantz

■ OSCAR winner for Best Short Film 2014 – ‘Helium’, Creator: Anders Walter

Short film – Feature Film

■ The BAFTA winning feature length film ‘Tyrannosaur’ began life as a short film named ‘Dog Altogether. The film included emotional performance from Peter Mullan and the short film went on to win a BAFTA also.

■ Director Stephen Fingleton created a feature length film called ‘The Survivalist’. Before this, Fingleton created a prequel short film of 17 minutes called ‘Magpie’.

■ ‘Lord of the Rings’ director discovered this next film that was meant to be an adaptation of the ‘Halo’. ‘District 9’ is a feature film that stemmed from the short film ‘Alive in Joburg’.