RANCHO MIRAGE, California -- Ever wondered who watches those quirky animated and live-action films that get nominated every year in the Academy Awards' short-film category? You guessed it: Practically no one.
Tiny AtomFilms hopes to give these forgotten films a new lease on life by screening them on its Web site and selling video compilations. The Seattle-based company, less than two-weeks old, is quietly seeking to lock up distribution rights and copyrights for all 10 short films vying for Oscars at this year's 21 March show.
Last week, AtomFilms slapped Alexander Jovy and J. J. Keith's Oscar-nominated Holiday Romance on its Web site. Visitors can view a video-stream of the film in its 19-minute entirety for free. If they like it, they can buy a US$16.95, three-film video compilation that includes Holiday and a short film called Judgment, which stars Matthew McConaughey as a Texas cop.
By Tuesday, AtomFilms president Mika Salmi plans to sign up two more films. And by the Oscars, he's shooting for getting seven out of the 10 short films nominated up on his site.
"There are a lot of people looking for interesting programming who would buy them," Salmi said in an interview at Variety's Interactive Marketing Summit here Friday. "But there's never been a mechanism for [filmmakers] to get their shorts out to the public. We are helping by being that mechanism."
Just what do filmmakers get out of the bargain, besides lots more exposure?
Theoretically, lots of cash. Salmi said he'll pay filmmakers royalties well in excess of Hollywood's standard 10 to 15 percent of gross merchandise sales. They also get advance payments ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
"We want to be seen as film-friendly," said Salmi, whose resume includes a seven-year stint in the music industry signing artists like Nine Inch Nails and The Presidents of the United States of America for Sony and EMI. Salmi's mixed Oscar bag includes Holiday Romance, about a would-be thief forced by his "victim" to watch her house while she is on vacation; Victor, about a young boy dying of leukemia who, after a visit to his local fire station, prolongs his life; an animated Danish version of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales; and the animated Jolly Roger, in which a band of ruthless pirates plunders everything in sight until a captive sets her mind on revenge.
AtomFilms' Oscar campaign is a microcosm of the company's business plan: create a market for little-watched animated and live-action films under 30 minutes by giving them a place to shine on the Web -- much as Robert Redford's Sundance Channel seeks to promote the commercial viability of long-form independent films. AtomFilms also hopes to leverage its control of the shorts' copyrights by airing them on TV, broadband, and even airlines.
The seemingly laudable goal of building a bigger audience for forgotten short films attracted a media firestorm when the company launched at a Jupiter Communications conference in New York on 1 March. Whether AtomFilms has a workable business is another question.
"It is not a familiar brand, and it's a niche product," said Gary Arlen, president of new-media research firm Arlen Communications." Atom's challenge, like anyone in its position, is "to get the word out."
To get the visibility it needs to succeed, Arlen suggested, AtomFilms may need to partner with or be acquired by another, better-established company -- a Reel.com, say, or a studio like Disney -- with the means to bankroll a specialty-film division. Disney, for example, owns former independent art-house producer Miramax Films.
AtomFilms also typifies a new strand of Internet concern emerging as high-volume e-retailers like Amazon.com lock up big product categories and Web startups cater to ever-more specialized consumer tastes.
"The Web has proven itself as a mass medium," Arlen said. "Now, with ventures like this, we're going to see whether it can be a class medium as well."
