Platformers

🕹️ Platform Games

Does Vimeo Want Its Audience Back?

Years since the infamous statement that Vimeo is “not a viewing destination”, clues to the contrary have been accumulating. Staff Picks received a sizeable bump in views out of nowhere a few months ago, and the company debuted new grants to filmmakers. Recently, they’ve rolled out a series of products and redesigns targeted to a viewing audience, like resurrecting their AppleTV app and a long-overdue overhaul of the feed. A year into the reign of a new CEO, is this a change in strategy? Perhaps, but if so, it’s hard to square with turning off discovery in the EU. I still have great affection for Vimeo and the work of the curation team, but even if they can fix that, I worry it will be a case of too little, too late?

Reddit: The Website at the End of the Internet

At 20 years old, Reddit is bigger and more relevant than it has ever been. But, as New York Mag argues, that is inextricably tied to the “ecological collapse” of the open web, AI aggregation, and a potentially doomed lovers’ pact with Google. The site is where “real people” are on the web, free from influencer pressures of social networks, and that makes the platform very valuable, and not only for users. For short filmmakers in particular, Reddit is one of the first things I talk to them about when it comes to promoting their shorts, and usually, it is the platform about which they are most clueless.

Is The Era of Crowdfunding Over?

A vital player in film crowdfunding, Indiegogo has sold itself to a tabletop gaming company. Indiegogo was never as cool or idealistic as Kickstarter, but it has served as a healthy complement, pioneering features like flexible funding, equity crowdfunding, and leaning into the reality that many people treated these platforms as a storefront. It had a pretty strong film community, and I’d contributed to dozens of projects there.

Tabletop gaming has emerged as crowdfunding's most potent niche, though, so it makes sense that a company native to the hobby takes over the more generalist site. Still, a couple of years after a massive shakeup at Kickstarter that led to the loss of its beloved Brooklyn HQ and culminated in its CEO unveiling “A New Vision” for the company, one must ask if crowdfunding is in fundamental decline.

Pining For the Old Internet

Part of visualizing what we want platforms to look like is to think back to what they were. Chances are, your favorite indie animator was once a kid spending way too much time on Newgrounds. A fun piece from Ernie Smith at Fast Company revisits the platform famous for its flash animation shorts and games. Somehow, I was not a regular during the site’s heyday, but I have had its virtues extolled to me many times by folk like Common Side Effects co-creator Sean Buckelew (who wrote lovingly about the site many years ago).

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. Introducing Short Films 24/7 - As we approach 2M subscribers on our YouTube, the Short of the Week collection has grown to such a size that we can support a new viewing experience. We’re determined to utilize more of YouTube’s functionality going forward, so, for those of us who miss the serendipity of linear television, or are crippled by on-demand decision paralysis, we can now tune in to an always-on stream of S/W-approved shorts! To check it out, head to our channel page and click the logo.

2. Welcome Back GLAS - Founded by former S/W contributor and Oscar-nominee Jeaneatte Jeanenne to fill an independent-sized hole in the US animation landscape, the Berkeley-based festival was derailed by Covid. Now it’s back and moving to LA with new December dates. Also, submissions are free for the next 2 weeks!

3. Daniel Kwan Calls for Solidarity in Face of AI - Hollywood Reporter covers a recent conversation between the Everything Everywhere All At Once director and celebrated futurist Jaron Lanier. EEAAO famously utilized AI as part of its visual effects, but Kwan is now wary of the technology’s implications and calls for collective action from the creative community to make sure that adoption is on our terms, not the technologists’.

4. Amazon Invests in the “Netflix of AI” - Variety’s story is fairly boilerplate, but this one is getting a lot of mockery on X mainly because the launch video plays like a parody. I should probably expand on this at some point, but tech people have been making this case for decades, and it’s fundamentally wrong—NO ONE WANTS PERSONALIZED ENTERTAINMENT! We’re an egotistical and social species, so a huge component of art is for identity formation and in-group signalling. No one wants individualized shows that are not shared.

5. MV dir. by Yorgos Lanthimos and Starring Emma Stone - Lanthimos and his muse, Stone, team up for this short promo for Jerskin Fendrix’s new album. Lanthimos has, despite his profile, been prolific in shorter formats over the years, and Fendrix composed for Lanthimos’ last few films, including Poor Things and the upcoming Bugonia.

6. AI Shorts Head to IMAX - Runway, the AI tech startup, cuts a deal with IMAX to bring their AI Film Festival program to screens across the US later this month. I wrote extensively about the program at its NYC premiere in June.

7. The Sequel Series of MILKY☆HIGHWAY is on YouTube - Four episodes have been released of MILKY☆SUBWAY: The Galactic Limited Express, which picks up immediately after Yohei Kameyama’s 2022 independent student short, which made a splash with nearly 7M views in 2022. A cool example of the growing shorts-to-series trend, it is also emblematic of the increasingly professionalized future of YouTube, with an impressive rollout of consistent weekly drops and episodes subtitled and dubbed in 11 languages.

8. Congrats to NewFest x Netflix Grant Winners - A quick congrats to the winners of this grant presented by NewFest and Netflix who will each receive $25k, and who all have a celebrated history in shorts. Cheers to MG Evangelista, Shuli Huang, Farah Jabir, and Kevin Xian Ming Yu.

9. Another YouTuber in Cinemas - Following the brouhaha on film Twitter a couple of months ago about the A24 horror film from the Philippou brothers, I mentioned that we’d see many more filmmakers with YouTube backgrounds in cinemas soon. This week is a prime example as Michael Shanks, director of Neon’s Drave Franco and Alison Brie project Together, once had a thriving channel, @timtimfred.

10. What To Watch This Weekend - Check out She Rides Shotgun, which hits US theaters today. The film is from 2-time S/W alum Nick Rowland (Slap, Group B) and was picked up for distro by Lionsgate. I caught a preview screening this week and quite liked it. Starring gritty yet charismatic Taron Egerton as a no-good, but well-meaning dad, and sporting an astonishing performance from child actor Ana Sophia Heger, the film is a Lone Wolf and Cub-inspired B-movie crime thriller married to A-level indie character acting that sells its emotions. Reminiscent of classics like Hanna and The Professional, it’s worth a watch.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

🪐 Into the Shortverse

☀️ Summer Days: Sun-soaked Shorts

Last week’s official playlist is a collection of short films set in the haze of summer.

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🗓️ Best of the Month: July ‘25

13 films that popped up on Shortverse this month which caught our staff’s attention.