Whilst pontificating about the purchase and viewing of moving pictures using the internet my scope has been general. However a few of the responses I’ve had suggest that some have seen my comments squarely aimed at short films, rather than features, music videos or any of the other myriad categories used to subdivide the rainbow nation that is Shooting People.

It’s not surprising, the case studies I’ve used have all been lazily if accurately drawn from my own short films. Besides ever since the first downloadable quicktime files began appearing online about ten years ago, people have been talking about the internet as something that will radically alter the way short film is perceived, consumed and paid for. So before I focus my thoughts on the effects that increased online sales will have on short films as a form, I’d best warn you that this blog is written with the cynicism of ten years disappointment. I’ve spent a long time being told in excitable terms that “the internet is going to make short films cool”. These days, when arranged in a sentence, there are only three words I find more guaranteed to disappoint than “internet”, “short” and “film” and those are “england, “world” and “cup”.

To be fair though the internet has always suffered from hyperbole. Long before any normal person even had a dial-up modem we had William Gibson and War Games to excite us about the mind blowing, world destroying possibilities of a technology that was then still twenty years away from even being a genuine competitor to the rude magazines in the newsagent. Thanks to our wonderful imaginations the potential of the internet has almost always outstripped its practical capabilities.

Nope... still doesn't work quite like this William...

So it is with online shorts. When people first started assuring me that the internet would enable the entire world to watch short films and that would make them cool, they were severely over estimating the patience that normal people would have for downloading a highly compressed version of a badly made film. But now you can watch a badly made film almost instantly in almost the same quality it was shot in… so are short films going to be cool soon? Well, possibly…

Certainly the internet offers shorts a commercial platform they’ve never really had before. Selling shorts has always been difficult. They can slip in front of a feature in the cinema but rarely do as this takes up space that would raise a far higher price from advertisers. They have been released on tape and DVD but again only rarely and mainly when they are animated and aimed, at least partly, at children. Now, finally, shorts have a platform where they are just as accessible as features. By being packaging free and with almost no overhead for the virtual shopkeeper, the Download finally offers the short film the potential to be a commercial proposition. Now, finally, everyone is just a single click away from paying for your film. At last it makes sense to charge for shorts in a way that it never has before.

The iTunes store of short films may feel rather uncared for besides their feature gallery (for instance my film’s been on iTunes a month now but it’s still not listed under the alphabetical guide) but compared with the offering in HMV it’s like a paradise. Better still, fans of the medium can now turn to places like MiShorts and have their every whim lovingly catered for. MiShorts is like a rare records shop for an art form that previously couldn’t even sustain a grubby booth in a backstreet of Soho.

There is another consideration which may also yet see the sub 30 minute movie become economically viable. The next big change in our interaction with the internet could potentially give shorts a natural environment to rival the Cinema and the Television. As technology progresses and broadband rolls out across nations without our fixed line infrastructure, the internet is increasingly going to be found in the palm of your hand via smart phones, iPads, iPods, small, portable, mobile, wireless, internet devices. Such restless technology is ill suited to the depth of feature films or the drawn out exhausted slouch of television. So whilst you will still go to cinema to see a movie and still turn on the telly to watch a soap, the screen of your smart phone will become dominated by short films.

Except, of course, there’s a flaw in this argument. The problem is not in the logic of how the technology will change our habits but just that this glorious revolution is built around a product that currently doesn’t really exist. Before the internet it was almost impossible to sell short films and the medium has grown around this problem like plant bending towards the sun. Because there was no market for shorts there are now very few shorts that are marketable. That’s not what they’re made for. The few that do exist don’t even get considered as such. Chris and I once sited “The Wrong Trousers” as one of our inspirations for “Hallo Panda” and got glared at like we’d said we’d based the story on a ride at Alton Towers. How can you call “The Wrong Trousers” a short film? It was sold in shops… normal people bought it… eugh.

Short films are a training ground. They are made by innocents attempting to break into the industry. The entire culture of shorts is infused with this sense that the only audience that matters is the exec you are trying to impress. For decades this has been true because this has been the only audience you’re ever going to be sure of reaching… but now shorts could go wider are they going to be able to? Will the general public really pay to watch a ten minute business pitch? I mean, without the joy of watching a panel of millionaires sneer at the idea afterwards…

I’m hopeful for the future of a medium I have grown to adore. Not least because the collapse in feature film budgets and the rise of the DSLR means that more than ever those wishing to break into the industry are abandoning the “calling card” short film for the ultra-low budget “calling card” feature. With a way of reaching and building an audience finally in place and the ground no longer poisoned by amatuers only trying to shout louder than their peers, perhaps shorts will finally become more than a side-show…

If this is to be the case there’s some basics that we all need to remember whatever we’re making. These I will bark about tomorrow when I finally try and tie a knot in these thoughts on what the internet is doing to independent filmmaking.