Jason Sondhi
We know that the Awards Season is getting fierce in shorts. The entrance of big corporate streamers and legacy media companies has belatedly brought the sordid business of awards campaigns to the short film races, while an expansion of qualifying fests and the (welcome!) reform of things like ‘premiere status’ means the pool of potential nominees is larger than ever.
On the Oscar front, the diversifying expansion of the Academy and the realignment of branches has caused confusion as to who the nominating voters are and how to reach them. Never a transparent process, these reforms mean the process is still opaque and increasingly expensive for independent filmmakers who cannot rely on the deep pockets and institutional knowledge of the perennially contending platforms and distributors.
Online Releases Have Become Key
We’re not awards-body insiders and it is not our primary focus. But, we do know that the earned attention of an online release has become a big asset to film teams. We’ve been observing awards trends since before the infamous 2013 Oscars when the entire Animated Short Subject field put their films online and Shorts International had to have the Academy write a letter telling them to knock it off. The Academy could not fight the online trend though, and has revamped its rules multiple times to accommodate online releases more than ever in the years since.
As one of the oldest outlets for short films online, many film teams come to us to be part of a For Your Consideration campaign. To take the Oscars as the most prominent example, in just the last five years we’ve had the privilege of featuring 23 films in advance of their nomination, often serving as their online premiere partner. This is not meant as a brag, but we have declined a greater number. At the 94th Oscars, all 3 category winners were streaming on Short of the Week the night of the ceremony and we were tickled to get a shoutout from Ben Proudfoot in the green room after.
We’ve Stepped Up Our Coverage
Our coverage of major races is increasing yearly, with new pieces like our Voter’s Guides.
For better or for worse, award season is the one time of the year that the mainstream culture pays attention to shorts. And this is fun! Shorts are unapologetically niche and it is invigorating to participate in the monocultural zeitgeist. We find ourselves covering the process in increasing depth each year, recently introducing think pieces and “voter guides” into our editorial. These pieces perform very well compared to standard posts, highlighting the high level of general interest in shorts at this time of year and we plan to do more than ever this season. With our 50,000-member newsletter of short film fans and industry and our 1.5M subscriber YouTube channel, we have more outlets and reach to discuss the awards races than ever before.
If you’re interested in having your short feature in any of these ways, this lengthy post is designed to lay out how best to make that happen. While we’re not constrained by programming blocks like traditional festivals, we resist posting more than one official selection a day or two YouTube videos a week. Spots fill up fast, and our team’s capacity to produce reviews and features is limited. Every award season we have great filmmakers emailing us last minute, or multiple film team members reaching out to different members of our team, both formally and informally, and it is often a bit of a mess! We want to streamline this process.
What’s the Process?
Our Growing Collection Oscar-qualified Contenders on Shortverse
1. Make a Film Page on Shortverse
If you’ve qualified for a major award this is the most basic step. Go to Shortverse and search for your page to see if it has already been added. If it has, you can claim it, or, if it is not on Shortverse yet, sign up for free and make a page. If you’re in Oscar contention, message us to include it in our comprehensive collection of contenders.
Your film does not have to be online to have a Shortverse film page! Choose the “Private” setting when setting it up, which allows your film page to be public and discoverable, but protects your film screener from view. Having a page provides free potential discovery on our huge platform dedicated to shorts, as well as useful tools such as auto-playing your trailer, the ability to. publicly list an online premiere date, and collect followers who are automatically notified of your online premiere.
The platform also has great SEO and is a good way for press to get in touch with you. Your page can function as an EPK, with your festival honors, director statement, promo images, and full credit list in one place. Send your *share link* to allow press to watch your film on Shortverse even if it isn’t available to the public yet.
While directors or producers are most often the ones who create film pages, crew members, schools, publicists, and distributors are welcome to add film pages to the platform too. If you want to add several films to Shortverse get in touch with us about options for bulk importing.
2. Submit to Short of the Week
This is not free, but if we are to cover your film in any capacity we must see it first, and this is how it’s done. You are paying for our team’s time viewing, evaluating, and discussing your work and should do it as soon as possible as space is limited. If we love your film we will invite you to have your film featured as an Official Selection.
Official Selections receive:
- A featured writeup on Short of the Week
- Social posts on S/W channels
- The potential to have your film featured on our YouTube channel (at an Editor’s discretion)
- Frequent mention and recommendation as an “S/W Selection” in subsequent award coverage.
IF you are not planning a free online release at any point in the race (this includes films releasing on SVOD platforms) it is still arguably worthwhile to submit. This ensures that the film is on our radar and can be discussed as “SW-approved” in any editorial we write about the race. Also, acceptance to S/W does not expire, so you can come back to us if you decide to pursue a free online release down the road.
A couple of quick caveats—while it is not our preference, we are open to limited promotional releases of films throughout award races. However, for Official Selections, we request a minimum of 30 days online.
We also prefer Official Selections to be available worldwide. However, we do have the new ability to geoblock on the S/W YouTube Channel. Please note any geographic restrictions you must have in your submission and those will be taken into consideration during the judging process.
3. Decide on Further Promo Options
If you are an Official Selection and are gung-ho about the attention our platforms can provide, or, if you were declined as an Official Selection but desire to promote your film with us, we are introducing paid options. These include:
- Newsletter Promo Spots
- Banners on the Shortverse Homepage
- In-page advertising within awards content on SW.com
- Social Media Posts
- YouTube Promos, including end-cards, community posts, and ‘Shorts’ of trailers or clips
Please reach out to us for rate cards and availability. You provide the assets for these placements, subject to our approval, though we’re happy to advise.
Good Luck!
With several hundred qualified films, the odds are stacked against you and there often feels like little rhyme or reason to what succeeds versus what does not. The selections are not always to our tastes for sure, so we would not suggest indie teams throw ridiculous money at the process. However, we cannot deny the romance of the top awards or the opportunities that result from the attention. We’d like to do our part to reward the films we find excellent and push deserving films further in the process. Hopefully we can work toward a great outcome for your film, together!
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