Short films: A five-year life
Clear your rights or you’ll limit your potential, says Bronwyn Kidd, executive director of Academy Award and BAFTA-accredited festival Flickerfest – which now includes a national tour and the television series Flickerfest on Extra.
Sometimes people become enthusiastic about the creative part and they don’t think about the fact that their short might have a life of five years, and they need to figure out how to gain the most out of their film – both financially and in terms of press that’s going to boost their careers and perhaps even attract investors for a feature film. That’s how short filmmakers should always think.
They should have a strategy from the beginning and think about where they hope their film will be seen. They must realise that there’s a market – commercially and on a cultural level – out there for shorts apart from screening at festivals; there are distributors of shorts as well.
Festivals are being approached by content providers, by people looking to take it beyond the 10-day physical festival and into other platforms. It is essential that they think of the legal aspects so that their short can go on and have a life, but if they don’t have the right to screen it outside of Australia because they didn’t clear the actors or the music, it’s going to limit the potential.
The other mistake is to put up the film online too early. The Cannes and Berlins of the world, the ones that are going to have a big impact on a filmmaker’s career, are very competitive and prefer films to be premieres; people won’t pay to come and see films that are available online. A smart producer would make sure that they keep their work as clear as possible of any situations that might stop them from achieving maximum success.
A good press kit is always a good start. Even if the festival will look after the PR strategy because it’s got those tools in place, having more than one or two good stills that will be attractive to the media in the proper format is really going to be helpful.
Flickerfest is Academy-accredited and competition is pretty stiff, so many international programmers look at what we’ve selected. We’re also distributors so we’re looking for shorts to add to our catalogue, to take them to overseas markets and broadcasters. In partnership with Screen Australia we’ve created The Filmmakers Resource, an online initiative that answers many of the questions we constantly receive from emerging filmmakers. And finally, we curate films for other festivals, so we’re really trying to provide as many platforms as possible for filmmakers to promote their work.
We’re working with filmmakers at all stages of their career. We were talking to Linda Micsko and Hannah Hilliard when they were making Franswa Sharl and now we’re distributing it with great interest
from broadcasters in Europe, and negotiating with people interested in a DVD release. David Michôd has had all of his shorts screened at Flickerfest and we distribute his film Crossbow. We’ve also showcased the shorts of Warwick Thornton and Cate Shortland; most filmmakers these days are perfecting their craft in shorts films and taking them to the people that they hope will invest in their pictures and saying ‘Look, I can make a serious drama, a genre piece, a comedy, I’ve got a unique style and people will be interested in seeing my work and my stories”. Not only do they learn the filmmaking craft over the process of making different types of short films and seeing the reaction from audiences, but hopefully they’ll build up a following and a profile for their work.
