What's The Future of Short Films?

A couple of days ago I was asked by a few of my fellow members over at Stopmotionanimation.com to give my two cents worth on the topic of how to make money selling your stop-motion animated short. And as I wrote, I got to thinking about short films in general and the role they have played throughout the history of film. And a huge role they have played indeed: they have been produced by artists as an alternate medium for expressing themselves; made by inspiring filmmakers to build up their portfolios (myself included); used by TV stations to fill up leftover space in a time slot; commissioned by governments and institutes as a form a promotion or propaganda; as well as may other reasons too. But with only a few exceptions, there has never really been much of a reliable, commercial market for short film. No one would pay $10.00 to go sit in a theater only to watch one ten minute film. And most TV stations are only interested in buying feature films and TV series because, unlike short films, these offer plenty of space for the evil networks to insert their sponsors commercials.

But now, thanks to modern technologies such as the internet and portable video devices, there is the potential of a massive market for short films right around the corner. And, with the right business model, short film companies could stand to make a healthy profit indeed. It only makes sense that with today's lifestyle (busy humans always on the go) that more and more people are spending less time watching their TV screen and more time watching their portable video device screen while they sit in the waiting room at the doctors office, or ride to work on the bus, or when they find something neat on the internet and want to take it with them to show their friends. We are moving very quickly into a full-time portable world and we need the content to go with it. Plus, the shorter the content, the smaller the files sizes, making it much easier to encode higher quality video and faster for the end user to download. So, does this mean that a short film revolution is on the horizon? Personally, I don't think feature films will ever die - they are great in their own way and I love them a lot - but I do feel as though the playing field will level out quite a bit in the near future and that there will be a definite increase in demand for short films.

But until this happens, us short film creators will just have to fend for ourselves and do what we can to sell our content on our own. If you would like to read more about how we are attempting to do this, you can check out this discussion forum at stopmotionanimation.com where my fellow animators and I discuss the issue of self-marketing and distribution.