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THE BEST OF BRITISH SHORTANDEXTREMELYSWEET
In the world of cinema, size is not always an indicator of quality. That much is true, critically – for every Dances With Wolves there is The Postman – while epic productions tend to come with huge budgets, causing mammoth headaches for filmmaker and distributor alike.
And in an industry with such a pre- carious history as British cinema the chance for filmmakers to experiment and learn their craft in a shorter form is essential, the only significant drawback being the relative lack of broadcast opportunities. Until now.
Britshorts aims to change this state of affairs by offering a forum for high quality short films online, as well as giv- ing them the chance to be seen in film fes- tivals and on the proliferation of TV and cable stations around the world.
The company is headed by a directo- rial board that comprises Fragile Films’ Barnaby Thompson, theatre impresario Robert Fox, former investment banker Miles Millard and Carter Pilcher, who is chief executive.
The site already boasts a wide range of films including Paul Kaye (aka Dennis Pennis) in the toilet humoured Yoorinal, David Lea’s animated tale of luvvie angst Four Minutes and Respectable, the story of a man who finds himself down on his luck after investing in a dot.com business.
But the company is also putting its money where its high ideals are, and con- tributed funding to films such as the mag- ical drama Fish, which stars Melanie ‘Scary Spice’ Brown. All in all it’s an eclec- tic mix that Britshorts’ Head of Production Christopher Granier Deferre sees as one of the strengths of the short form medium.
“You can pretty much cover a broad spectrum with short films,” he says. “The market is open to all sorts of ideas, but at the same time audiences are not going to watch just anything. For us getting hold of scripts is easy, getting hold of good scripts is difficult – just as it is in the fea- ture film world. There are millions of ideas, it’s just a question of getting the right one and really working it.”
In other countries – France, for example - there is a formal structure in
place that positively encourages feature film distributors to release their movies along with a short film. Granier Deferre – who is half French, his father being film director Pierre Granier-Deferre, his moth- er is Susan Hampshire – worked in France for seven years as an assistant director on several films, and observed this sys- tem with interest.
“The French governing body will account for that short film within the ticket receipts, deduct a certain amount of money and make sure that goes to the short film production com- pany,” he explains. “So if you can just convince the distributor to forget they are paying for an extra five minutes of film, it can work and there’s some money in it for everybody.
“But in England there is no way trac- ing and tracking, and no distributor will give you a penny to get your short film in front of their feature. You can never really recoup the cost of the print. Ten million people could go and see the film and you would never see a penny; they would say those people were going to watch the feature.”
There are good reasons why short films are important to the overall health of the film industry. Granier Deferre points to stories of David O. Selznick, dur- ing his days at Paramount, encouraging producers to make short films on existing backlots, with short ends and cast with contract players.
Britshorts may not yet be the British version of Paramount Studios, but the ambition is there. As well as producing films from scripts that are generated with- in the company, and from some of the better ones that are submitted on spec, Britshorts are actively acquiring films made by other people.
“We take those films on as distribu- tors and promote them through the site. There are two main revenue streams: the distribution of the films to traditional media and new media.
“The traditional routes is with things like TV and cable and airlines, which are very good at buying short films. But we can also sell them on to other broad- band internet companies,
because although a site is accessible throughout the world, their marketing presence and their brand tends to be real- ly territorial still.”
With the continued advances in broadband technology – which will improve down-
load speed and
image quality – the possibilities in the future seem endless.
“It’s feasi- ble that once
you’re at home with your com- puter/TV you can order what you want to watch,” adds Granier Deferre. “So effectively you can sell the films on a pay- per-view basis, know where they’re going to and establish a market, know- ing that x amount of films were sold in one month in one particular territory.”
There are, however,
always a few
unforeseen problems, and with technolo- gy getting faster and smaller no-one at Britshorts is taking anything for granted.
“I had an interesting conversation with somebody who works in the techno- logical side of the industry,” Granier Deferre continues, “who was discussing a product they were developing.
“They said they had a very, very good lead on their closest competitor
with this product, and when we asked how long, they said, ‘two weeks’. Two weeks in this indus- try means a huge amount.” ■ Anwar Brett
www.britshorts.com
Photos this page: David Lea’s online animated film Four Minutes and another online image from Britshorts
Photos opposite page l-r: Sponsorvision’s Blair Krempel; Last year’s BAFTA Interactive Award Winner Sydney 2000 and Chris Gibbs of Attention To Detail; Cadburys, Coronation Street’s sponsor
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