Just something I’ve wondered: is it just generally assumed that most short films are never going to make their (usually small) budgets back?
The short films that are nominated at the Oscars include “Documentary- short subject”, “Short live action film”, and “Animated short film”. For documentaries I can see how PBS or cable might make a small budget back for them, but for others- are most of these written/produced with the notion they are never going to make money? Or is there a market? Are they usually funded with grants or private donations and thus it doesn’t matter if they make any money back?
This year, I saw all of the Oscar-nominated short films (showing in bunches at a local theater).
I remember noticing that all the short documentaries seemed to be funded by grants and the like.
One of the animated shorts (and the Oscar winner, I think) was a Disney production, though. No grants or donations there, I’m sure. Maybe they’ll package it with a full-length animated film. I don’t know.
Essentially, no. Most shorts only go through the festival circuit where the filmmakers usually has to pay to be considered (submission fees are standard practice). If they’re lucky, they may be featured on a PBS compilation or, if you’re a doc, many are preplanned (content, running time, etc.) to be sellable for various TV or online platforms. Festivals allow filmmakers to network, meet other creatives, and find new contacts for future filmmaking gigs, but the challenge of raising money is a perpetual one. Short filmmakers don’t get a percentage of any festival revenue, and half the time have to visit festivals on their own dime (not all fests can afford to fly them in the way they might with feature filmmakers). Grants, donations, kickstarter campaigns all finance these efforts, and maybe a tiny bit of revenue sharing occurs on a website like Fandor, but it would be minuscule. And sure, sometimes the shorts are calling cards where they can lobby for a shot at a feature gig, but most often, it’s just a medium that they love and work at when they can (often while moonlighting as production crews for commercials, news channels, or other paid industry work).
I’m a curator for a fairly prominent (say, second-tier) international film festival so I meet dozens of these artists every year. They all have their own war stories on how to get their film made. Income never really comes into it.
It was, Feast was attached to the release of Big Hero 6 last year (I think that’s probably why it won. I didn’t think it was close to best but did have the most people who’d seen it).
For Disney and Pixar (and other animation studios) shorts are often a means of playing with ideas or technology. Doing work on better rendering water? Do a short involving a lot of water. Trying some new lighting effects? Make a short that involves lamps.
A lot of shorts also come out of student programs and are funded that way as a means of educating the next generation.
It’s probably best to think of shorts as fulfilling two goals:
It’s practice for the people doing it. You don’t start off with a million-dollar production until you prove that you can handle a thousand-dollar production. (And many of these shorts are really, really cheap. The people often own their equipment, work for free and shoot in locations with no fees). While there are various alternatives to get this kind of experience, shorts are a common strategy.
It’s like advertising for the people involved. Think of it like high school sports and talent scouts. The people involved hope someone is watching a short who thinks “Wow… they solved a tricky lighting problem on a shoe-string budget” or “That actor is amazing despite a clearly incompetent director and writer.” Furthermore, a short would become part of the portfolio of work for the people involved.
Some people also think of their short as being like the pilot of a TV show. You produce a 10-minute version with the hopes that someone will like it enough to fund the 90-minute version. (I actually did the accounting and payroll on one project that saw itself as a pilot, with the specific intent of pitching it to SyFy. The money to produce that came from an inheritance.)
I don’t know if you chose a lamp on purpose but a lamp was featured in a short about 30 years ago when someone wanted to play with some new animation techniques and that’s what turned into Pixar as we know it today (hence the logo).
Martin McDonagh, who was nominated in 2008 for writing the movie In Bruges (he also directed, as well as writing and directing Seven Psychopaths) won an Oscar a few years earlier, in 2004, for his Live Action short film Six Shooter.
Two years ago Shawn Christensen won an Oscar with his Live Action short Curfew, and now he’s making a feature film with the same characters called Before I Disappear. I liked Curfew a lot so I’m looking forward to the feature length film.