Short Film Context - Part 8

The Short Film Context Part 8

Distribution and Exhibition

I think that the difference between shorts making money conventional and those that don’t is diminutive for a good reason. That being I believe that the market for people buying shorts is incredibly small, for one thing most of the time shorts are viewed by a very niche market anyway at film festivals or independent cinemas but most people in the industry know shorts as a breakthrough piece it wasn’t made to make money itself, it was created to open the door to make another piece that will make more money.

Cinema 16 collected it’s shorts according to country or area of the world it was released in, The BFI collected their shorts together for an educational purpose, where as future shorts don’t have a collection they just distribute their films to other companies who put together these anthologies. Furthermore Raindance is selling two DVDs a film they screened that was acclaimed at the festival but never gained a deal because of it’s tense subject matter of child abduction so they are now retailing it plus they are also selling an anthology of their best films from the 16th Raindance festival for entertainment which is the same as shooting people who have two anthology videos online of the world’s most major award winning films of their respective years.

So some shorts have been collected for entertainment and some have been collected for educational purposes.

It is possible to find other short anthologies but they are mainly animation based plus they are very difficult to locate because they have only been advertised in specialist magazines or specialist sites so yet again it’s a very niche market.

For example I found a collection of 30 shorts from stash magazine, but they mainly focus on animations and visual effects: http://www.stashmedia.tv/collections/SF1.htm