Vancouver film school students take short films on-line

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      For roughly a decade now, record sales have been in free fall. And as Internet download speeds continue to accelerate, the film industry could follow suit.

      Not everybody in film is looking at this transformation as a bad thing, though. For short films especially, the Internet means distribution and exposure on levels once only reached with professional promotion.

      Stephen Webster realized this before most people. The head of marketing for the Vancouver Film School has spent the last several years giving away the school’s best work on YouTube.

      “It has become a calling card for the students to get their feature up on our YouTube channel,” Webster told the Georgia Straight.

      He began VFS’s experiment with the video-hosting Web site (and second-most-searched archive on the Internet) in March 2006. Less than four years later, Webster said, VFS has the most-followed YouTube channel of any educational institution in the world.

      As of January 19, more than 37,000 people had subscribed to the channel, which hosts some 600 videos and has racked up over 26.5 million total upload views.

      “Current students are pretty excited about it,” Webster added.

      He explained that the benefits of distribution on YouTube became apparent back in 2006, when a student’s short film called “Piece of Mind”—a visual-effects piece—was promoted on YouTube’s home page. Webster said that what was most impressive was not the number of views the film subsequently received, but the comments it brought forth.


      Vancouver Film School student Ori Ben-Shabat's short film, "Piece of Mind", had received over 900,000 views as of January 19, 2010.

      People asked how certain effects were created, what was involved in creating the film, and how its creative vision took shape. Webster and VFS subsequently brought Ori Ben-Shabat, the film’s creator, back into the studio and put his viewers’ questions to him.

      “It allows you to engage your audience in a new and different and exciting way,” Webster emphasized.

      Of course, higher levels of exposure do entail tradeoffs.

      Filipino-American filmmaker H. P. Mendoza, like “any good narcissistic filmmaker” (his words), has Google Alerts set up that inform him whenever one of his films is mentioned on-line. When one such notification popped up last August, Mendoza clicked the link and was asked for US$39.99 to download a copy of “Fruit Fly”, a film he had screened at the 2009 Vancouver Queer Film Festival and that he believed was not available on-line.

      Speaking from San Francisco, Mendoza said that he was initially angry about a third party attempting to profit from his work without consent. But his next thought was, “Who would pay $40 for a movie that they probably never even heard of?

      “So I stopped worrying about it,” he continued. “This is the new medium. I mean, we don’t even have a TV. We watch everything on-line.”

      Mendoza conceded that there is a loss of control inherent in on-line distribution. But he questioned how much control filmmakers had over distribution to begin with. And he argued that the benefits of films going viral outweigh the potential drawbacks.

      Perhaps a more tangible concern arising from the distribution of short films on-line is their potential disqualification from film festivals.

      Jason Karman, a Vancouver filmmaker, told the Straight that he has watched the distribution of short films undergo a drastic transformation since he graduated from Capilano College in 2002. He said that when he was making films in school, a short film’s distribution was a three-step process. The festival circuit was always the first stop, Karman explained. Next would be television. And then a film might be posted on the Web.

      “The Internet was the last thing you wanted to release to because once it was released on the Internet, it was no longer exclusive,” Karman said. “Now, television and Internet distribution are almost at the same level.” But film festivals have not been as quick to accept on-line distribution as other stakeholders in the industry, he warned.

      According to Karman, many festivals, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, remain hesitant to screen films that are available on-line. He said that this has led some film students to feel cheated.

      Regardless, Karman still expressed admiration for what the Internet can do, especially for new filmmakers. “You can reach a wider audience and can use the amount of views on your film as leverage towards your next film,” he said.

      The Vancouver International Film Festival’s director, Alan Franey, refuted Karman’s claim that the VIFF holds a bias against films previously distributed on the Internet.

      He said that if the VIFF finds an exceptional film on YouTube that really fits into one of its programs, the festival would like to see it included.

      “But that is not the same thing as saying that we would be happy to show a film that’s probably good enough being seen on the Internet,” Franey cautioned.

      Webster expressed absolute confidence that it is only a matter of time before festivals fully embrace the on-line distribution of films.

      “I think they have no choice but to learn to deal with it,” he said. “This particular generation, Generation Y, doesn’t want to be told how to control content.”


      You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Justin

      Jan 26, 2010 at 8:21am

      The school has started this digital presentation, but stopped paying for students' submissions to the film festivals, which are more important.