Selling A Short

Almost no market for them here in the US. Ask me how I know.

Seriously, shorts in this country are reallly festival entries or calling cards for directors. I know some people have sold them, but the sales of shorts really are few and far between. I'd love an example of a sale.
 
So, shorts are really just for entering film festivalsand for getting your name out there?

How can one get there shorts seen?
 
go to: http://theore.net

Its a short which has sold quite well as a direct producer to viewer product. Even though you can view it online, the DVD contains a plethora of what we did info. In fact the dvd is really about how they did it for 3 grand and could of really put the short in the extras section.

It proves story and talent are 95 percent of the formula.
 
So, definately have someone documenting the production/postproduction process?

If I make a short meant for selling, how long should it be? 20 minutes?
 
I produced a short last year. It was on 35mm and cost me about $40K. The mistake I made (among others) is that it was too long at 16mins TRT. It was too long for the web at the time, since I could barely make it fit in 150MB much less the 100 megs that most video sites look for.

It did poorly on the festival circuit as well. If I had to do it over again I'd keep it under 10 minutes amd have a kick ass story. You can generate alot of recognition with a short if it's good enough.....hell, one short wins an Oscar e very year. Just don't expect to sell it, IMHO.
 
For my most recent (and first) short I had 100 DVDs made and gave away about 15-20 to cast and crew and have sold about 45-50 for $10 each (mostly to family and friends). I did pre-orders at the premiere which was nice because I had enough pre-orders to cover the cost of all 100. It definitely wasn't designed to be a big money maker, but I've probably profited $100 bucks so far.

For my new short I'm debating on whether cutting costs with the duplication and doing it myself (inkjet printable discs printed with my epson r300) and just using clamshell packaging or going all out again and getting professional duplication with the DVD case and cover, etc. It's hard to decide cause I'm a sucker for everything looking as professional as possible, but if i go the cheaper route I can sell them for cheaper and hopefully get more copies sold.
 
taormina said:
I produced a short last year. It was on 35mm and cost me about $40K.
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Wow! You could have made it a feature length for that amount and then sold it!
 
ozduc said:
Wow! You could have made it a feature length for that amount and then sold it!
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Or even half that amount. The feature "Counseling Day" was shot on film for about $22,000.

On DV you could make a feature for even 1/4 of that $40,000.
 
We'd love to have your short films online at http://www.hungryflix.com.

We are an online distributor of premium indie films. We sell digital downloads in iPod, PSP and Apple TV format.

You set the price for your content and you earn 60% of the profits (after PayPal fees).

Stop by soon...
 
We sold a short to PBS ... they approached us after we played a big festival. We've also gotten screening fees from festivals, universities, and museums. We've probably made back about half our investment at this point, but we still hold worldwide DVD, theatrical, TV (PBS contract was non-exclusive), and internet rights.
 
George Lucas in Love I'm sure sold quite a few thousand copies; Thumbwars, too ... I'd say that for realistic distribution you'd have to have a short of cultural significance and popularity, as well as tons of bonus materials.

However nowadays it's pretty cheap to just take orders through paypal and print up DVDs yourself -- sure you might not reach as wide of an audience without a distributor, but you're going to be in control of 100% of the funds.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Or even half that amount. The feature "Counseling Day" was shot on film for about $22,000.

On DV you could make a feature for even 1/4 of that $40,000.
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These folks must work for Kodak or Fuji or have some type of hook up going on. Just cause you can shoot on film for $22,000 doesn't mean you should. They probably had a ton of freebies.

$40,000 is not a lot of money for a short. We are just broke so it sounds like alot to us. You can spend $40,000 just on making it sound like a film.
 
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