Shorts - where does one get to see them? (1 Viewer)

[Holadem]

Title sayz it all.

Outside of the Pixar stuff and some college film festivals, I have never seen any shorts, in the theater or elsewhere.

--
H - Curious.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

You'll have to seek them out. Apollo Cinema does a touring circuit with all 10 nominees each year. Call them and they might find the nearest showings in your town.

~Edwin

 

[Seth Paxton]

Yes, typically they have hit Indy within a few weeks of the Oscars. I think last year it was the very next weekend. I haven't checked to see when they hit this year.

Of course for a some of these you can see them online. You can buy or rent a DVD quality download of Little Terrorist for example. Just do a Yahoo/Google on the titles.

IFilm used to carry a couple of them but it looks like that has ended.


edit - I just checked and the Oscar shorts package hits Indy on March 18th. Adjust your schedule accordingly, if you are someplace that is in front of or behind a place like Indy in the distribution chain (I think Cincy sometimes gets our prints).


We are also getting "Born into Brothels" next week and Sea Inside the week after that. So 3 weeks straight of Oscar winning work (coming to the Keystone for any Indy people - and The General plays a few weeks after that too).

 

[Dennis Pagoulatos]

Whoa! I think you're in the wrong forum, buddy...

-Dennis

 

[Brian W. Ralston]

Short films mostly have a life on the festival circuit. There are so many festivals...you would not believe. Of course people have heard of the big ones like Sundance, Cannes, Tribeca Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, but there are hundreds of others. The reason you do not see more shorts readily in theatres is that there is little to no financial incentive for someone to release a short in a theatre. A single 35mm "answer" print of a 20 minute film would cost around $5000+ to make. Probably a signifcant portion of a short film's budget. And this is just to get it back on film at the end...and then only one print would exist at that cost. The cost of showing a film in a theatre is just prohibitively expensive, especially if it is a short.

For a film (short or feature) to become Oscar eligible, there are essentially two ways to do it.

1. You win "Best Short" or "Best feature" at one of about 40 "Academy Of Motion Pictures approved" film festivals around the world.

2. You have your film screen at a list of approved theatres in LA (& possibly NY) for 3 screenings on 3 consecutive days. The theatre people will then fill out the proper paperwork and your film is "Oscar eligible." This way is easier, but tricky because having your film screen publically at a theatre will make you INELIGIBLE for certain festivals around the world (mostly the big ones) so the timing of how and when you want to release your film for festivals and for public screening is crucial to its success. Internet availability also usually constitutes a "public screening".

Once one of these two things have been done...a short film is "Oscar eligible" and then AMPAS members watch ALL of the eligible short films and narrow down the list through a series of votes to the final 5 Live and 5 animated shorts to be nominated.

Usually these shorts are then screening around the country after the oscars on a tour of sorts. A lot of these films will still show up at festivals around the country and world over the next year or so. Showing short films at a festival is really about a 2 year process.

So...if anyone is interested in seeing short films (or at least the best ones)...do research on film festivals in your area.

www.withoutabox.com is a good web site that lists most every film festival in the world. It is really a tool for filmmakers to use to submit their film, etc...But, it would also be a good place to search for film festivals in your area and to find out where you can go to see short films.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Here are the list of films and screenings for this year's tour circuit. They can only show the films to which the filmmakers have granted them permission to so sometimes not all will be included.

~Edwin

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Become a Board member of your local film festival organization and get on their Film Shorts committee. At the one I was involved in, we get inundated each year with film short submissions. Due to time concerns, I elected not to be part of the Film Shorts Committee because doing so would require watching hundreds of submissions each year to select the few that will be available for public screening.

~Edwin

 

[Pete-D]

If you are in Los Angeles, I know the ArcLight Cinerama Dome will run the Academy nominated short films together.

 

[Vickie_M]

For those in Chicago, the Gene Siskel Film Center is showing the Shorts package all this week. My husband and I went to see them on Friday night and I'm glad we did, since the winners of the Animation and Live Action shorts were among those shown. I was able to cheer the director of WASP since that's the one I wanted to win (my husband hated it though, and wanted 7:35 In The Morning to win). I kindof nodded off during the Animated short winner Ryan (no reflection on the film, just my tiredness) so I was rooting for Birthday Boy.

In my opinion, WASP is worth seeing because if the director can get some funding going, she's going to be a name to keep an eye on in the future. WASP was hard to watch, one of those what my husband calls "soul-destroying" films. It's a heavy drama, and I would put it on a shelf with movies like Ladybird Ladybird, Nil By Mouth, The War Zone and Ratcatcher. It's not quite as intense and depressing as those films, but it's pretty intense, because you don't know what's going to happen, you just know that it can't be anything good.

I love those kinds of films, but my husband can't stand them, which is why I'd (usually) go see movies like Dogville and The Ice Storm and November (the Swiss Luki Frieden film, not the Courtney Cox film) and Turtles Can Fly by myself and save the joint jaunts for movies like Chicago and The Life Aquatic. He did make the mistake of going to see Dogville with me because he wanted to see the unique set design, but he despised it, which is why while it was on my Best Of 2004 list, it was on his Worst Of 2004 list. Beware that WASP is one of those before you go. He's still trying to wipe the images out of his head, while I'm thrilling over its win and dying to see the director's next project.

Anyway, I liked them all, some more than others of course. The worst one I thought was Gopher Broke because it tried to be very funny but we didn't think it was that funny. Some of the problem came because I was so shocked that the copy we were shown looked WRETCHED, like a 4th generation VHS dub. It was digital animation, it should have looked AMAZING. If it had been shown properly, I might have liked it more ("That was very cute, and it looked GREAT!" instead of "That was barely ok, and it looked HORRIBLE")