The Shorts Circuit: Tigris Films (PT 2)

Big Film Shorts

The oldest of the three partners, Big Film Shorts has been in the shorts distribution business since 1996. They buy shorts of all genres, lengths, and national origins from the experimental to the mainstream, including dramas and genre pieces, but especially comedies, gay-themed and animated shorts shot on film or video. That means that there’s plenty of competition.

But, they also license shorts to domestic and foreign broadcasters, DVD packagers, web-casters and theatrical exhibitors worldwide—so there’s quite a demand for quality product.

Operating under a belief system, best articulated by founder and Tigris Film president David Russell, that short films are "great gems of truth and enjoyment," BFS does cruise well-known festivals such as Sundance, Telluride and Cannes looking for films but they also accept submissions.

Nano TV

On the venue side, Tigris branched out in 2003 with Nano TV, the first short film channel in the United States. Designed to provide a new and exciting entertainment alternative to tech-savvy consumers, Nano exhibits online through iN DEMAND Cable and via Sprint’s Mobi TV, offering content drawn from the combined Tigris Films/Big Film Shorts library.

The Cloud 9 Festival

Even though I’ve purposefully tried to steer clear of profiles centered around the festival circuit, like the Cellflix Festival, the Cloud 9 Short Film Festival is an exception worth mentioning. Co-sponsored by Tigris and Frontier Airlines, the “Festival” (it’s really more of a contest) boasts viewer judges, audience-based exposure and a $5,000 grand prize. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The films selected for the competition are available online at gowildblueyonder.com and each month Cloud 9 provides a fresh program of short films for Frontier’s customers.


To Be Continued . . .

The Shorts Circuit: Tigris Films (PT1)

Let me ask you a quick question: Are you working on a short subject that could impress judges and attract contest dollars, or a film that would engage an airline or international television audience?

Now that we’ve come to the conclusion that there is, in fact, a growing number of venues out there for short films, a paradigm shift in the way we think about producing shorts is past due. Forget feature film festivals and their short subject addenda. Right now, the most import thing to focus on as you produce a short, is its’ intended market.

Fortunately, even if you can’t decide, there’s a company you can look into. Founded by Jon Nash in 2001, Tigris Films specializes in distributing short films to buyers ranging from Spain’s Morphe Arte and Italy’s Village SRL to Denver’s Frontier Airlines. They operate as sales agents for short filmmakers and as consultants for film bookers and programmers.

More importantly, though begun independently, Tigris is the parent company of both Big Film Shorts and Nano TV as well as the co-sponsor of Frontier’s monthly Cloud 9 shorts festival.

To Be Continued . . .

The Shorts Circuit: AtomFilms (PT 2)

The Bottom Line

Most of the below is simply fancy way of saying that if you’re looking for a distribution venue that will offer your short film the maximum possible exposure, AtomFilms just may be the place to turn. They pay both an up-front acquisition fee and continuing royalties. And more notably perhaps, once you’ve sold to Atom, they’ll offer you an avenue to seek financing for subsequent films.

Before you get too far ahead of yourself, here are the basics what you’ll need to know to submit to AtomFilms:

First off, Atom accepts both animated and live action submissions in all genres so long as the films include neither pornographic nor infringing content. Second, they prefer their shorts under five minutes but will consider films as long as 15 minutes. Third, you’ll be able to mail submissions to their San Francisco offices or submit via email. Fourth and finally, proper clearances will be required for the actors and elements in your film, so be sure to have all of your paperwork ducks in a row.

The Shorts Circuit: AtomFilms

You’ve got a short film to sell, so you need to understand that the expanding reach of broadband Internet access has changed everything. That’s right, literally every aspect of short film distribution has been affected by faster download speeds. New opportunities for short filmmakers are popping up every day. Or at least that’s how the hype goes. But before there was any hype, there was an AtomFilms. When the company first appeared back in 1999, there were almost no online venues for short films.

These days, there are dozens of specialized film sites following www.atomfilms.com’s lead—financing their efforts with a profitable combination of advertising, sponsorship, e-commerce, subscriptions, and partnerships, paying filmmakers a percentage of ad revenue based on how often a film is downloaded (i.e. the more popular a film is, the more it will make) and most notably, chasing wider and wider distribution channels.

Even if one were inclined to discount the good PR, it would be hard to make a case for a better first stop for a filmmaker with a short under 15-munutes to sell than AtomFilms. Not only does their site boast a list of contributors from short filmmaking’s biggest names—including Joe Cartoon, JibJab and Aardman, it claims a monthly audience of between 13 and 30-million visitors as well.

According to Atom Entertainment’s CEO Mika Salmi. “Short-form, on-demand entertainment is something we started in 1998. AtomFilms enables innovative filmmakers and animators to earn money and reach a large audience.”

Most recently, Atom’s been signing distribution deals that have extended their reach to AOL, Singingfish, BlinkxTV and other video-friendly search engines—and their newest service, AtomFilms To Go, has made the company a player in the mobile device cinema market via Verizon’s V Cast and platforms, from Sony’s PlayStation Portable and Apple’s iPod to Creative's Zen Vision: M.

“The ad market for online-video sites and content is just blowing up, so now there is a race among the large media companies to acquire video inventories, but there's very little quality short-form video available." said Scott Roesch, JibJab partner and Vice President and General Manager of Atom. “Fortunately, AtomFilms has a longstanding history of opening doors for today’s most promising filmmakers and animators,”

TO BE CON'T