Oscar-winning alums, a much-needed revamp of our Newsletter, new team members, and the first full year of Shortverse—there was much to celebrate here at S/W in 2023. Thank you for being part of it! Here’s a look back on our year…

Short of the Week

When S/W first began, in March 2007, our mission statement was clear: bring festival-quality films to a broader, non-festival-going audience. During those early days, the internet landscape was markedly different, and in line with our name, we dedicated ourselves to championing one short film per week. Over the years, as the internet and the world of short films evolved, so did our aspirations and reach.

In 2022, we showcased 236 shorts, and truth be told, we could have featured even more without compromising the quality of our curation. However, in 2023, we re-evaluated the editorial direction of our site. Recognizing that achieving our goals required more than just quantity, we decided to reduce the number of Official Selections featured on our pages (204 in 2023), to allow us to broaden our coverage on S/W but also to explore curation on Shortverse and beyond.

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New Editorial Initiatives

A crucial element of our editorial approach over the years has been to inspire and educate by leveraging what we’ve learned from working with thousands of filmmakers and industry members. This past year, Rob took responsibility for introducing three new editorial series:

  • Meet the Gatekeepers delves into the realms of the individuals responsible for curating and distributing short films. From festival directors to company heads, these are candid conversations with key decision-makers. 
  • The Importance of… expands our focus beyond directors, giving shine to short film luminaries that fulfill other vital roles in productions, such as producers (Loran Dunn) or Sound Designers (David Kamp).

The Daniels Everything Everywhere All at Once

Also, while we’re pleased as punch about these new initiatives, we are proud of our existing series too, such as our annual Staff Favorites, Best of the Month, Festival Previews, and the Short Awards which saw The Sentence of Michael Thompson win “Short of the Year” from our jury panel. Stay tuned for news about the 2024 Short Awards, coming soon. 

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A Proper Newsletter

Since the beginning, Short of the Week emails were an automated, impersonal RSS feed of articles & reviews posted to the site. With the launch of Shortverse in the Fall of 2022, we began to send out a separate, handcrafted email to Shortverse users. We liked it!

So, in July, we smashed the two approaches into Shorts Weekly, a free newsletter that drops every Friday in your inbox. Written by our co-founder Jason Sondhi, this newsletter still links out to our Short of the Week picks, but contains so much more—news, industry insights, and updates from the world of short film as well as Shortverse content and product updates. If you’re not receiving it yet, sign up below.

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New Curation Avenues

We’ve strived to make the impact of Short of the Week felt beyond the site, spreading the gospel of short film to fans in multiple ways. Here’s an update: 

  • Shortverse Collections have proven to be a fun and invigorating tool for the Short of the Week team curation team. Because Shortverse can showcase films that are not online yet, they have been useful for showing others’ curation, such as our popular Oscar collections. They are dead simple to put together too, so we ended up making one whenever an idea popped into our heads, like with We “Felt” Joy ❤️, which collected examples of felt-craft stop-motion shorts. We made over 100 collections for the Shortverse homepage in 2023! For 2024 we hope to make them discoverable and…allow users to make their own collections?
  • Competitions were also facilitated by Shortverse’s new capabilities which allow submissions to multiple festivals or events to run on the site’s infrastructure. We have harbored a longstanding desire to organize competitions and in 2023, this aspiration finally materialized through our Unsanctioned contest and a collaboration with M&M’s. While both projects offered the opportunity to see how competitions can run on our platforms, they both also offered something important to the filmmaker community we hope to support and inspire. Expect more contests in 2024!

unsanctioned competition short of the Week

  • Distribution Opps – 2023 saw us dip our toe into classic shorts distribution for the first time as Céline facilitated a deal with French travel technology company, Moment, to feature Short of the Week-selected shorts. We think this helps provide additional value to filmmakers in our alum family, and are planning to announce additional opportunities soon. 
  • YouTube 📈 – The video giant continued to be our highest growth platform as S/W videos garnered over 50M views in 2023 and the channel added 150k new subscribers. Looking forward to our Gold Play Button arriving in 2024!

We also want to shout out McKayla and the work she’s done to freshen up our look on YouTube and Instagram, leading to our highest engagement year on IG ever. Our 2024 resolution is to finally crack a short-form video strategy and perhaps jump fully onto Letterboxd?

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Team News

None of this happens by magic, it is the result of the effort of our talented team. For the first time in a while, we brought on new members in 2023, please meet them:

  • Lorraine Caffery, an experienced filmmaker and producer, was brought on as a team member and shored up our Feedback service in 2023.
  • Irina Wirjan and Georgina Krikitos graduated from our resurrected intern program to full-team status. They’ve been critical on the submission front as well as learning editorial ops.

The Short of the Week Team

Cheers to them all, and we’re excited to add new contributors in the new year!

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Shortverse

We unveiled Shortverse at the end of 2022 and we’re proud of the user growth we’ve seen, and the rapid pace with which the product team of Andy, Tommy, and Jacob has been able to improve and add new features to the platform. 

First some numbers: In 2023 we welcomed 14,000 new members to the community and have surpassed 60,000 filmmakers, distributors, and festivals in total! The Short of the Week programming team has integrated fully into the service and evaluated over 3000 submissions. Feature-wise, here are some of the things the team introduced…

Powerful new capabilities.

We introduced several new features and improvements to make Shortverse even more powerful and easier to use. A few highlights:

  • Searchable Festival Pages : We unveiled 14,000 festival pages to help filmmakers find the right festivals to submit. Powerful search to find the right festivals, rich pages with key deadlines, past festival selections, and submission links to get you on your way.
  • Powerful Search : We made significant enhancements to search, making it easier than ever to find the right films, filmmakers, and festivals. Our improved search capabilities ensure that you can navigate the Shortverse universe with precision and efficiency.
  • Support for Film Trailers: Recognizing the importance of film trailers in capturing audience attention, we added support for film trailers on Shortverse. Filmmakers can now showcase previews of their work, giving viewers a taste of what’s to come and building anticipation for their projects.

Shortverse Profile Page

  • Revamped Profile Pages: New profile pages provide a visually appealing and comprehensive overview of a filmmaker’s work, honors, and skills making it easy to find great collaborators.
  • Unsanctioned Film Competition: We proudly hosted our first seasonal film competition, which brought focus to the many filmmakers in regions of the world that are shut off from most international film festivals due to sanctions. Expect to see more competitions in 2024.
  • General Improvements : Thousands of minor fixes and improvements that you’ll probably never notice but make everything a bit easier.

What’s Coming…

We have so much coming. We remain committed to making Shortverse easier and more accessible for filmmakers from outside the system to find their voice and unlock new opportunities. We’re grateful for your continued support and look forward to what’s to come.

Sign up on Shortverse to get early notice of all the exciting updates, events, and opportunities to come!