Swimming Upstream: A Lifesaving Guide to Short Film Distribution

Short films have come into their own, not least in part due to the incredible new ways to distribute them, including the Web, cell phones, new festivals devoted to shorts--even television and theatres. This is the ultimate guide for anyone who's made a short film and wonders what to do next. Whether your short film is meant to be a calling card, a segue to a feature film, or you just want to recoup some of the costs, this book describes the potential paths for distribution. Written by the short film programmer of the Tribeca Film Festival and featuring contributions from top film festival directors, as well as studio, marketing, and technology executives, this book shows you what's important to the decision makers and gatekeepers. This is the definitive handbook filled with insider information available nowhere else.

Sharon Badal is a Short Film Programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival, screening over 1,500 submissions annually without losing her mind. She has been with the festival since its inception, and has produced special projects for various Tribeca entities since 1999, including the 2005 Sloan Film Summit for the Tribeca Film Institute. Sharon is a faculty member at New York University’s renowned Tisch School of the Arts in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, teaching undergraduate courses in what she refers to as ＂the beginning and the end＂ of the filmmaking process - Producing Essentials and Film Distribution & Marketing. In addition, Sharon team-teaches The Business of Producing for NYU’s prestigious Stern School of Business. As the self-proclaimed ＂empress of short film,＂ Sharon has served on the regional jury for the 2005 Student Academy Awards, and on the juries for the 2006 Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films and the 2007 Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto. For the past four years, Sharon has dedicated much of her free time to working for The Leary Firefighters Foundation, founded by actor Denis Leary. In 2007, she worked primarily on the Foundation’s New Orleans Firehouse Restoration Project as well as on its annual fundraiser, The Bash for New York’s Bravest. From her humble beginnings at age fourteen as an usher in her father’s movie theatre, Sharon went on to hold executive positions in distribution for United Artists/MGM, Warner Brothers and Orion Pictures, and has worked on many live events, including projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation, ShowEast, Cinema Expo International, and the Independent Feature Film Market. She received her B.F.A. in film and television production and her M.A. in cinema studies and business, both from New York University. She loves Coney Island, searching for alien life, and chocolate in any form. Sharon lives in New York City, and there’s no place else she’d rather be.