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📅 This Week on Short of the Week

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

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1. This is very cool! YouTube had Reka Busci make a 5min “meditation/countdown” for when you use the platform’s “premiere” feature. I honestly didn’t even know this was a thing, and now look forward to our next YouTube Premiere upload.

2. A good piece in No Film School from filmmaker Tatjana Anders titled “How I Made My Short Film Go Viral.” In it she describes a phenomenon we’ve seen on our YouTube channel where her short was DOA for the first several months of its release before going supernova. Films are never really dead on YouTube yet many filmmakers have a sense of fatalism towards the algorithm. However, your promo efforts have a much higher potential upside in reach than ever before, and old-fashioned pitching is a great way to feed the algo!

3. A vital short film anthology has begun to make festival rounds. From Ground Zero is a feature-length project comprised of 22 shorts filmed inside Gaza during the war. 972mag details the story, including the film’s supposed acceptance-then-rejection from Cannes. You can view the trailer here.

4. FAST channels keep outperforming premium streamers in Nielsen’s ratings of overall TV time spent, leaving analysts scrambling for explanations. Here’s one: “FASTs are increasingly winning because they are products first and walled gardens for content last.”

5. Michael Mann just launched his own independent filmmaking masterclass site. Starting with his recent feature, Ferrari, $65 gets you full access to a plethora of material captured during the making of the film.

6. Runway has released its official prompting guide for making the most of its new Gen-3 Alpha Text-to-Video.

7. And, if you’re wondering if AI hype will die down any time soon, reports have Runway fundraising at a $4B valuation, so…probably not.

8. Joe Sill and our pals at Impossible Objects have built a new, cutting edge LED wall for virtual production in Culver City. Sill tells VP Land that “….the technology has not been accessible to smaller productions,” something hopefully they will be able to fix!

9. New details are trickling in on Apple Immersive films for the Vision Pro. No firm date, but the narrative short film Submerged, which was teased at WWDC last month, is set to premiere this Fall.

10. Finally a celebratory shout 🗣️ to Katy Cowan and her Creative Boom blog which celebrates turning 15 this month. It’s not in our short film niche, but the site’s centering of the creative artist and its integrity is something I hope our work echoes. Take it from us, 15 years on the internet is no small feat, so kudos to Katy and team.

🤝 Partner Message

The Killer Shorts Horror Short Screenplay Competition celebrates horror short screenwriters and authors from around the world, providing them with career opportunities and industry access. The star-studded panel of judges includes Gregory Nicotero (The Walking Dead, Creepshow), Barbara Crampton (Suitable Flesh, Re-Animator), Xavier Burgin (Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror), Sophie Carrol (ALTER, Gun Powder & Sky), Aaron B. Koontz (Scare Package), Chelsea Lupkin (Short of the Week) and literary manager John Zaozirny (Bellevue Productions).

Killer Shorts is thrilled to offer the ShortVerse community an exclusive discount! Screenwriters may use code SWVERSE25 on Coverfly only to receive a 25% discount on the entry fee. This code is valid until Dec 31, 2024 and applies to all categories except those with additional feedback. Early Deadline August 1st, 2024. See the website for more information.

🪐 Into the Shortverse

🕺🏽A Moving Experience: The Best Dance Films

We’ve been surprised by what talented directors and choreographers have been able to achieve in storytelling this past year. It’s been a purple patch for great dance films and we ride that wave with this collection gathering some of our recent faves intermixed with modern classics.

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🌟 Previewing Fantasia 2024 🌟

Fantasia is the big fest going on in our orbit right now, having kicked off yesterday. The venerable Montreal genre fest has a huge 191 film shorts lineup but Rekka and I perused the program and, rather arbitrarily If I’m completely honest, plucked out 9 films that have us intrigued. Take a look at the pages and trailers and let us know if you agree! Chelsea will be at the fest for its project forum and so will scout for us, but leave ratings and comments if you catch any of these films at the fest.

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S/W Alums Playing Fantasia

Finally, if you happen to be attending we put together this list of Short of the Week alums who are presenting new shorts at the fest. Be on the lookout for them, and for their films!

💡 Product Updates

Shortverse has a hot new pair of new features that I’m confident will get a lot of use in the community.

🔒 Unlisted—We have a new film privacy setting available: Unlisted. This is similar to the Unlisted option on Vimeo & YouTube and will hide a film page entirely from Shortverse. It’s suited for those filmmakers who are still in stealth mode while submitting to festivals or Short of the Week and aren’t yet ready for a public presence.

🔗 Share Link—Next, we’re opening up the Share Link to everyone (previously was only for Pro users). Anyone can now share a private screener link with festivals, distributors, or press to access their film page and watch their film all while keeping it private from the public.