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Earlier today I attended one of the Short Film Corner SFC Breakfast sessions. For those who have a film in the Short Film Corner, you are registered on a number mailers detailing various activities going on throughout the festival. The Breakfast’s are a series of “speed dating” style meetings where filmmakers get to pitch their film’s to distributors, television aggregators and screening venues for 5 minutes in a free-for-all roundtable breakfast setting.

I thought it was a good event, and I have some promising leads for my new short once its released. To be successful, you not only need to have artistic vision, good story telling abilities and all that. You also need to be a solid business person (or work with one). I can’t stress the importance of meeting people face to face in an event like this over blind email submissions.

Some of the companies represented at my sessions were:

SHORT TV AND SHORT HD

L´AGENCE DU COURT MÉTRAGE

FESTIVAL DEL FILM LOCARNO

TV3 TELEVISIO DE CATALUNYA

DAZOO FILM AND MEDIA LTD

etc…

Below is a copy of the email I received informing me I’d been selected

from: sfcbreakfast
to: sfcbreakfast <sfcbreakfast@festival-cannes.fr>
date: Sat, May 12, 2012 at 6:26 AM
subject: May 20th Breakfast Confirmation – Short Film Corner

Dear participant,

We are glad to inform you that you will be able to attend a Short Film Corner breakfast on Sunday, May 20th at 9 a.m.

This session will take place at the Terrasse du Festival (in the Palais des Festivals, Level 4). Please make sure to arrive on time.

Due to a very high number of requests, please note that:

– Only one person per request and per film will be accepted. If you have asked to attend with one or several collaborators, please choose only one person to represent your film.

– The breakfast time and date will not be subject to any change.

Looking forward to welcoming you in Cannes,

As part of the Short Film Corner, the Cannes Film Festival offers a series of panels and workshops for young filmmakers. I applied and was selected for one such panel. It was called, ‘Coup de Pouce’, which roughly translates to ‘helping hand’ or ‘a push in the right direction’. My advisor was Roland Nguyen, head of the short film acquisition at France 3 television; we discussed short films and the viability of sales in an ever-crowded marketplace.

The majority of Nguyen’s advice was from a Francophone perspective. That said, the recommendations were still applicable for sales outside of French speaking markets. He said: concentrate on visually stunning productions; work with a distributor if possible, don’t try to sell your film yourself as buyers often purchase shorts in blocks; and not to spend too much time on broadcasters, focus on the internet and new media. Directors can rely on gimmicks to create buzz around their films. For example, a filmmaker offered a €100 prize via twitter to one lucky fan who both watched and shared his film. Finally, he suggested not worrying too much about recouping investment in your short. This should be the springboard to launch your career.

French television is one of the largest buyers of short films in the world. However, to receive government funding they are required to purchase a certain amount of French films. After that, they concentrate on French speaking nations like Belgium, Switzerland and Canada. Then finally, they look to the rest of the world for content. So for us in English speaking regions, it’s not the most viable game plan to try to sell to French TV.

For English speaking content there are opportunities at the following stations: BBC [UK], Channel 4 [UK], Movieola [CAN], Sundance [US], IFC [US].

While the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival is a great place to land a sale or distribution deal, Nguyen stressed that the premier venue is International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand. Clermont-Ferrand takes place in the winter before Cannes and it’s the largest short film market in the world. He asserted that you should contact your prospective buyers months before the event. You can find contacts in databases like Cinando. And plan to attend; you will strengthen your chances of success by meeting with buyers in person.

In closing, the Coup de Pouce was a great experience and I would like to thank the Cannes Short Film Corner for selecting me. It’s nice to be able to speak to someone on the other side of the fence and hear the perspective of an actual buyer. And finally, I hope those who read this write-up find my notes useful.

England Flies, the music video I directed for the Automatic Erasers is featured on the first ever Zia Records DVD compilation, “You Saw Us Back When…: Volume 1”. The DVD consists of short films, music videos and trailers.

Zia Records top sales for the week ending Sept. 27, 2009
^{(reposted from the Tucson Weekly)}

1. Brand New / Daisy (Interscope)

2. VA (DVD) / You Saw Us Back When Vol. 1 (Zia Records)

3. Pearl Jam / Backspacer (Monkeywrench)

4. Monsters of Folk / Monsters of Folk (Shangri-La)

5. Muse / The Resistance (Warner Bros.)

6. Insane Clown Posse / Bang! Pow! Boom! (Psychopathic)

7. The Beatles / Abbey Road (remastered) (EMI)

8. Megadeth / Endgame (Roadrunner)

9. Tech N9ne (DVD) / Strictly Strange (Strange)

10. Jay-Z / The Blueprint 3 (Roc Nation)

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is hosting There May Be Pleasure’s trailer as part of a pilot for their new IMDb Theaters initiative.
Here is the original letter,

—–Original Message—–
From: Withoutabox Support
To: Steven Christopher Wallace (confidential)
Sent: Thu, 22 May 2008 2:34 pm
Subject: Invitation to showcase your film on IMDb Theaters

Dear Steven Christopher Wallace

You’ve been invited to showcase your work on IMDb Theaters. Read on to see how you can be among the first to join this exciting new program.

What is IMDb Theaters?
IMDb Theaters is a major new initiative from IMDb (The Internet Movie Database) and Withoutabox to create a global, online showcase for top short films. More than 50 million passionate movie lovers visit IMDb each month, making it the world’s most popular movie site and one of the largest sites on the internet. Now, for the first time, consumers are be able to watch high quality, streaming video, right on IMDb Title Pages.

Read the rest of this entry »

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Phoenix, AZ. Local filmmaker Steven Christopher Wallace entered into a distribution agreement for his film There May Be Pleasure with Ouat! Media, a short film distributor based in Toronto, Canada. The agreement covers all media and territories.