Going for Two

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. SORA Goes to Top of the App Store - Days after Meta dropped its Midjourney-tinted “Vibes” app that looked to create a TikTok-style consumption experience, OpenAI dropped its own AI video feed app powered by its new Sora 2 model, but tied it specifically to your friends. You probably saw this, so I won’t go deep, but some quick thoughts:

   • Social networks have become passé in favor of pure algorithmic broadcast networks. But Sora opted for one. Does AI-generation need that human element it otherwise lacks?

   • You could generate pretty much anything you wanted upon launch, with people generating full South Park scenes. This was locked back down 48hrs later, but OpenAI got its viral moment, and it is definitely a shot across the bow to studios to play ball on copyright.

   • The Sora 2 model looks pretty good, but it is limited by the app. Fascinating to see if cutting-edge performance ceases to be a main differentiator for video models.

   • It’s a law of the internet—everything comes back to ads. Look forward to OpenAI building an ad business and using all your ChatGPT data to personalize it.

2. Collaborations Come to YouTube - A commonsense feature that we called for in our 20th Anniversary article on YouTube, Instagram-style “collaborative posts” have arrived. This allows multiple partners to team up on an upload, sending the video to each of their followers’ feeds.

3. A Tip Jar For Film Screenings - Rod Blackhurst, a filmmaker and S/W alum, posted on Instagram this week an idea remarkable in its simplicity. At the end of the credits on his new feature film, Dolly (which is playing at festivals now) he placed QR codes for the major money apps, prompting audiences to tip the film team. Why not! Festivals rarely share revenue with filmmakers, and efforts to incorporate this into distro platforms have either flopped (Vimeo’s Tip Jar) or have red tape unsuitable for creators (YouTube’s Fundraise feature). I wouldn’t expect it to be a game-changer, but for indie filmmakers, any little bit helps.

4. Superman Spin-Off Shorts Hit YT and HBO Max - These 2D shorts starring the superdog Krypto aren’t revelatory, but I always keep an eye on how established IP chooses to leverage short film as extensions of the brand (an upcoming KPop Demon Hunters short will be the next big example).

5. How a Crypto Short Film Beat Out Apple for an Emmy - I didn’t really cover last month’s Emmys (apologies to S/W alums Eric Kissack (The Studio) and Haley Morris (The Octopus), who took home statuettes), but this one caught my eye. White Rabbit from Shibuya Film took home the award for “Outstanding Innovation in Media Programming”. Here’s a clip of its creator, pplpleasr (Emily Yang), talking about the project’s origins.

6. Esteemed Industry Figures Join Substack - A couple of gents I respect have started newsletters, so give them a follow! Amid Amidi, who recently left Cartoon Brew, has started Notes From the Fray. His debut post touches on what inspired him to leave the site he founded, plus teases his current project, a biography of the legendary animator, Ward Kimball. Then, one of the lions of New York film culture, Richard Lorber, has also started sharing his musings, shaped by his 40 years as head of the arthouse distributor, Kino Lorber.

7. Listen to PTA and Spielberg Discuss One Battle After Another - Speaking of illustrious figures, it doesn’t get much better than Paul Thomas Anderson and Spielberg, whose recent conversation at the DGA theater is now out as a podcast.

8. Gotham Week Winners Announced - For the second year, the NYC non-profit has created a competition out of the projects in development at their Gotham Week. Alex Lora’s proposal to turn his Sundance short winner, The Masterpiece, into a feature wins the Shorts-to-Feature section, with Seoul Switch taking a special mention.

9. A Movie Theater Dedicated to Shorts? - A new project in Brooklyn caught our attention at Gotham Week. Theater and film director, Karma Masselli, is planning to launch a movie theater dedicated solely to shorts. Information is light at the moment, but you can sign up for the theater’s mailing list at shortsmovietheater.com

10. What To Watch This Weekend - We can’t claim to have helped out the Safdies much, but they are S/W selected filmmakers! I was at the Sundance premiere of Black Balloon years before Uncut Gems blasted them to a new stratosphere, and Chelsea wrote the film up for Short of the Week in 2015, one of her first reviews for us. Therefore, we can’t help but take an interest in The Smashing Machine, Benny’s new A24 biopic, which is his first major directing project since he and his brother, Josh, paused their professional relationship. Dwayne Johnson plays real-life MMA fighter Mark Kerr and has embarked on a full-court press for awards nominations, which he seems assured of receiving, so I’m going to try and check it out in the next couple of days.

🎉 S/W YouTube Hits a Milestone

The Short of the Week YouTube Channel hit 2,000,000 subscribers this week! Thank you to all our fans—especially the filmmakers who share their work with us. We’re dedicated to using the channel to innovate in the way we curate and present the world’s greatest short films and have some new ideas in the pipeline. Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss out.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week