ShortsTV has been the world’s first and only 24x7 linear TV channel dedicated to short films. Since 2006, it has exclusively released the year’s Oscar-nominated Short Films (animated and live-action) in cinemas across the US and Canada, South America, Europe, India, Australia and South Africa.
Considering the pandemic, this year, ShortsTV partnered with BookMyShowStream to present this year’s Academy Award nominations for Short Films exclusively for the Indian audiences to be enjoyed from the comfort of their homes.
t2 chatted with Carter Pilcher, chief executive, ShortsTV on the move to showcase Oscar-nominated shorts, the way ahead for the genre and its growth in India.
Carter Pilcher, chief executive, ShortsTV
What triggered this move to air the Oscar-nominated shorts of 2021 on Shorts TV and the tie-up with Bookmyshow.com?
Last year, we released the shorts theatrically across India. It was very well received. That was probably the first time that shorts in such a huge number were being seen in the theatre space in India. But this year, we are all in a bit of a different place, and are constantly thinking of how to get great movies out for people to see. So we agreed to release these shorts both theatrically — in the theatres that are open in the United States — and we released it on Shorts TV in India and we tied up with Bookmyshow.com to do a virtual release.
What was the response like when you released the shorts theatrically last year?
Of course, when you compare it to a Hollywood blockbuster, the numbers were small. But we got much more than what we expected. We had nearly a 100 theatres in India, which was great, and totally unusual for short films. Our ticket sales were solid. In the US, we started 16 years ago, and in our first theatrical release, we made $50,000 and now we are making over $4million. So it’s one of those things that has become a fixture on the calendar.
And one of the things that has us very excited is that between last year when we first put these shorts in theatres in India and this year, is that we had a number of Indian short films that qualified for Oscar consideration. I have been a voting member of the Academy for 15 years and this was the first year when we had more than one film from India that qualified.
As audiences, are getting used to watching shorts.
Film-makers in India are increasingly taking to this form. They are competing in films festivals in India and outside. There has been kind of an internationalisation of film-making in India. Bollywood, of course, is amazing and quite its own empire. But now we are seeing Indian talent leaning towards telling various kinds of stories that are reaching global audiences.
A lot of content was consumed globally last year, given that we were holed up at home, and continue to be so. Did any patterns and trends emerge in terms of the consumption of short films in the Indian market?
Well, we had a 75 per cent growth in new subscribers, which is great. We have seen a 500 per cent increase in the time people spend on the channel. Before the pandemic, if someone was spending an hour in a week on the channel, now they are spending
four-five hours watching it.
We, at Shorts TV, produce and release only the very best in short films. The audience’s way of consuming stories is changing. They like brisk, arresting but complete stories. As audiences are getting used to watching shorts, film-makers in India are increasingly taking to this form. There has been kind of an internationalisation of film-making in India
Carter Pilcher
Two Distant Strangers won the Academy Award this year for Best Live Action Short Film
With people’s attention span waning and because of deficit of time, do you see a global rise in the consumption of shorts?
Well, that’s part of it, but it’s certainly not all of it. Last year, a common trend was taking a feature film and cutting it into parts and showing it in the form of chapters. But that’s not really a short film and audiences really didn’t appreciate it. We, at Shorts TV, produce and release only the very best in short films. The audience’s way of consuming stories is changing. They like brisk, arresting but complete stories. People are saying,
‘I don’t want to watch a 90-minute film. I want to watch the same idea in 20 minutes’.
With respect to India, are there any specific genres of shorts that have more takers and given the diversity of the country, do they vary from region to region?
Of late, we have been releasing a lot of local language short films in India. People want to see stories that are told in their own languages and set in familiar circumstances. Relatability is a big factor, it’s not so much genre. What’s great about short films in local languages is that it allows everyone to recognise and celebrate their local culture.
What’s it like being a voting member of the Academy for so many years? One would imagine it must be pretty exciting getting to watch so many films, but it must also come in with some pressure?
It takes a lot of time for sure. It’s something I do on the weekends and in the evenings. I don’t only get to watch films, but also interact with film-makers. I find it to be a fun place to be at, considering there is so much cutting-edge storytelling going on now globally.
In this context, I can tell you that some of the film-makers in India who are now coming up will be huge globally in the next few years. They are changing Indian cinema. I liked Raazi, and I think Jaideep Ahlawat, if his English gets a little clearer, will become an international phenomenon. I love Anurag’s (Kashyap) work and Gangs of Wasseypur is one of my favourite films. Indian films are now moving towards better storytelling and are focusing more on showcasing characters. Bringing out a characters’ internal conflicts is a huge shift in Indian storytelling.
What’s the way forward for ShortsTV?
We are having so much fun, I have to tell you! (Laughs) We want to bring at least some shorts for free to people in India. And just yesterday, we started testing our signal in Nepal.
