Animated Short Academy Nominees Films Removed From Net
As of yesterday, all Oscar nominated shorts have been taken offline. A complete u-turn by the individual creators of the shorts, by request from the Academy awards ballot panel.
It was a tricky choice in the end for the creators of Paperman, Adam and Dog, Head over Heels, Fresh Guacamole and The Longest Daycare, to either allow their videos to be watched by the largest viewing audience ever (The Internet) or distribute them via programs like iTunes for pay-per-view, which the Acadamy prefers.
When Paperman was realised online (January 29th), people went crazy for it; released online prior to the cinematic release of Wreck-it-Ralph here in the UK, it was one of the only ways for regular Joes and Janes and people who don’t go to animation festivals, to see a critically acclaimed short whilst it’s still fresh and amassed millions of views.
Disney had intentionally uploaded Paperman online to create a buzz before the ballots where finally closed, with others eventually taking suit, with the last being The Longest Day-Care, which was realised online to coincide with a benchmark anniversary of The Simpsons. Disney asked an interesting question,
Does hype for a film play an important role in its ability to win an Oscar?
This is something feature films don’t even need to consider, their global take at the box-office and mass marketing is partially why they are even considered for an Oscar. It’s a fact of film-life that advertising and marketing is a big part of the filmmaking process, with Facebook groups, twitter accounts and online trailers created months before many films leave the editing suit, making that latest billion dollar Hollywood movie dwarf the subtitled indie film played in three UK cinemas.
However, shorts do not follow this pattern, as they are considered to be ‘only shorts’. They seem to live outside the bubble, viewed as quirky and not worth enough for the buzz of marketing. We at Skwigly and an interesting discourse with a british cinema chain, who couldn’t even take the concept of short films being played in cinemas seriously; preferring to quote Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, hit on our editor and call us trolls, before flamboyantly announcing his or her dress sense. It is a sad fact that without the animation festivals in the UK, animated shorts are not viewed in cinemas across the country. Something our American friends are not familiar with, as the Oscar short films get a limited released in the lead up to the awards. For UK residents online viewing is the only viewing opportunity we can get, to see films like Adam and Dog and Fresh Guacamole. But this isn’t completely fair, as shorts are not made for the internet, but for the big screen like any other film. If you go to animation festivals frequently, you will be familiar with the joy of viewing a good short on the big screen.
This makes the choice by the academy to remove the shorts online seem lopsided, acknowledging the potential of the internet to appreciate and enjoy short cinema, but forcing the opinion that short films are only a niche market with any alternative option out of our hands and the filmmakers hands, to be released as an afterthought with all the potential gone.
I can’t help feel that in the eyes of large UK cinema chains shorts are told they cannot play with the feature films, but instead forced to wait in the corner for the chance to play and make a few bucks on the side. It would be nice to see shorts, both animated and live action, make a return to UK theatres, and with it a sense of variety.