My Spoon Is Too Big

Don Hertzfeld's Rejected cartoons are on YouTube.



I saw these for the first time 7 or 8 years ago as part of Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Animation Festival, and I can still crack myself up by announcing that "I am a banana!" in a high-pitched voice.

In interesting sociological developments, last night my roommate + a date watched these online. They've also been watching Dr. Horrible together. Not sitting in the living room and watching the TV, but sitting next to the computer watching things on YouTube. On a date. Television as an art form is very much alive (as I count down the days to The Office premiere), but television as form of delivering content is dead or dying. This is what the writer's strike was all about.

Portable Film Festival/Building an Audience

My students and I are always debating - Send your short film to festivals, where you pay a fee, and maybe they pick you, and maybe a couple hundred people show up to the screening...or release on a platform like Vimeo or YouTube and maybe thousands of people can see your film. The first way has the advantage of built-in marketing and promotion, and the opportunity for you to meet other filmmakers, distributors, pitch your scripts, make friends, etc. It also offers you the very distinct pleasure of seeing your film in a dark room with people who have paid to be there - always nerve-wracking, but still exciting. "Mom, I made a REAL MOVIE." Plus those Official Selection laurels look really nice on the DVD, right?

The second way has the potential for unlimited audiences, and it's also extremely convenient - You can email a link or post it on TwitBookSpace and theoretically everyone can watch it in the way that's most convenient for them.

In both circumstances, it's on you to build an audience for your film. Festivals are curated, so audiences know going in that these are the cream of some crop. Online distribution is not necessarily curated - you have to wade through a lot of crap to find the really good stuff. Entities like the YouTube Screening Room help narrow it down, but you'll still have to promote the film to get people to see it.

What I'm seeing some filmmakers do is start on the Festival circuit, try to get some good buzz, and then distribute online. Sean Jourdan's excellent dramatic short, The Beekeeper, screened at Cannes and built some audiences through MTV's Best Filmmaker on Campus contest and found a distributor in Shorts International and will be available for download on iTunes. Jeremy Kipp Walker & J. Anderson Mitchell struck big with their film, Super Powers, at Tribeca and then posted the film on YouTube, where it has almost 900,000 views. Not bad for a six minute film.



Combined Festival/Traditionl/Online distribution is going to be the future of what we do. Those face-to-face contacts and in-person screenings found at festivals will not go away or lose their magic for industry people and true film lovers, but most audiences are going to see your short films online. Having a strategy for building your online audience is a necessary part of marketing your film.

This is good news for people who make shorts. Everyone is still learning how to make money from online distribution, but I know I can watch 2-3 short films on my GPhone on my morning commute, vs. getting invested in a feature film. What if we could start programming groups of shorts specifically for cellphone media? "Three films to watch if you are stuck in an airport." "Short films to watch while waiting for your blind date to show up at the Starbucks." "Short films to watch when winter has gone on about three weeks too long." "Pretty music videos by pretty people." "Short films about bank tellers and the Registry of Motor Vehicles." Use the iTunes model, charge $1 or $2 per program, and let people buy their way into entertainment for a little while.

Recently, I read about the Portable Film Festival, via the excellent Women & Hollywood blog. The festival is curated (which means you get Official Selection laurels, woo!), and allows viewers to watch online or on their mobile devices and leave audience feedback. I'll be clicking around in there all day, but for right now I'll show you The Market, a stop-motion/time lapse documentary about a Farmer's Market in Zagreb, by Ana Husman.

The Portable Film Festival is now accepting submissions.

What happens to imaginary friends when we outgrow them?

I love the mix of home movie footage and animation. Discovered via the YouTube Screening Room. Directed, edited, and voiced by Steve Baker. The V.O. performance can be a bit uneven (what accent is that?), but the editing and visuals convey comedy and real emotion and the timing is outstanding.

The Raftman's Razor

One of my favorite shorts is The Raftman's Razor, directed by Keith Bearden and written by Bearden and Joel Haskard. It breaks almost all the rules of short filmmaking that I was taught in school - Who is the protagonist? Why are we relying so much on voice-over? Where is the plot? - and it is "useless, but completely delightful" like the Raftman comic featured within. The narration by John L. Bader is wonderfully performed.



I don't think Bearden and Haskard's latest film, Train Town, has distribution yet since it's still playing at festivals. A buttoned-up conservative and a freewheeling hippie conduct a culture war using the model train set and village at the store where they both work. Trailer here:



See it if you get the chance!

Death is My Co-Pilot

Sometimes Death is a real pain in the ass.



I also enjoy their other work, Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager. Premise: Darth Vader's younger brother, Chad, manages a grocery store. Poorly.

Kiwi!

Dony Permedi's master's thesis from the School of Visual Arts. I think the sound design really makes this one - the footsteps and climbing sounds are great, as is the original music by Tim Cassell.