Where Can I Show My Short Films? 

Are you a frustrated short filmmaker who can’t get their film seen?

If you are then you are not alone.

The inability to get adequate distribution for their short films is one of the main problems filmmakers face. For years, the movie industry as a whole has ignored short films. The reason behind this was a long-held belief that short films don’t make money.

The success of many high profile short films has helped start a shift in attitudes towards short films. Gradually the industry is starting to wake up to not just the artistic value of short, but also to their financial potential too.

However, the wheels turn very slowly as the saying goes. Leading the charge to raise the profile of the latest short films is the international film festival. Nearly every major international festival now has a number of awards that aim to recognize outstanding achievement in short films.

The Academy Awards, for example, now has 3 categories for short films:

• Best Animated Short Film
• Best Live-Action Short Film
• Best Documentary Short Film

Festivals can raise awareness but they can’t help people access short films

The work that festivals have done in promoting short movies has been invaluable. They have certainly met their primary goal of raising awareness about short films.

A short that wins an award at any global short film festival is guaranteed to see a huge bump in the number of people who want to see the film.

Sadly, this desire cannot always be achieved. While film festivals do hold workshops and film markets to try to bring together distributors and filmmakers, many films still struggle to get that much-needed distribution.

Even films that do get distribution often find that it is frustratingly inadequate. Films might get a limited number of prints that can then be sold through online stores such as Amazon and even iTunes. However, audiences are often reluctant to spend large sums of money to buy a short film that they may not even like.

The free distribution route

Some filmmakers have even resorted to uploading their videos to sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. While these sites guarantee access to a huge audience, they do have a number of drawbacks.

Firstly, the problem is that there is no rock solid way that filmmakers have of making money from people watching their films. Most sites like these actually offer nothing in terms of income for the filmmakers who upload them, not even a slice of the advertising revenue that they generate.

This means that it is the sites that benefit financially rather than the filmmakers who put in all the hard work to make the movies in the first place.

So while free video streaming sites such as YouTube can help raise the profile of a film and allow it to be seen by a larger audience, they don’t guarantee any form of income.

Any of you who have ever tried to raise money for a short film will already know how hard it is to do so. Filmmakers would benefit enormously from actually being able to generate returns from their work. Not only be able to use this money to help finance their next film, but they would also be able to show production companies profit returns that would help them to get funding for future projects.

This is why it is so important that the industry as a whole finds ways to boost distribution and get people paying to watch short films.

Out of the Darkness Comes Sofy.tv

A team of passionate short film filmmakers and enthusiasts from Largo Films set out to solve this problem. Many of the team are short filmmakers themselves, so they intrinsically understand the distribution problem.

They came up with an solution that would satisfy everyone. They set about creating a dedicated short film streaming site that would allow short film lovers from all over the globe to access a vast catalog of great short movies.

In order to create this catalog, they would invite filmmakers to submit their films to the platform. Once the submissions team had watched and approved the film, it would then be made available on the site. This would then allow filmmakers to get their films seen by Sofy.tv’s ever-growing number user base as well as being financially rewarded too.

In less than 5 minutes, filmmakers can arrange for their film to be distributed on the Sofy.tv platform.  After a film is up, filmmakers will earn money whenever Sofy.tv subscribers watch their film or non-subscribers rent the film.

Thanks to Sofy.tv’s model of rewarding filmmakers for allowing their member to access films, a solution to the short film distribution problem of generating income from shorts has been at last been found.

So if you are a filmmaker who would like to finally monetize your short movie then head to the Sofy.tv site and begin commercializing your film today.