The Prize is Right!

In the economics of short film production, festival prizes and awards play a major role. Cash prizes and awards of a material nature make up a significant portion of the means that are publicly available for the promotion and production of short films. The amount of money connected with short film awards differs greatly from festival to festival and from country to country, ranging from a few euros to tens of thousands of dollars.

 

We would like to present here some of the "top" awards and take a closer look at the role of sponsors.

 

In these tough economic times, film festivals are feeling pressured to cut corners. What can they do when their budget is simply no longer sufficient? Reduce expenditures and increase income – it’s as simple as that! But how and where are festivals supposed to start pinching pennies when they have already been subsisting on a meagre budget, and have long implemented all of the usual austerity measures? This situation calls not just for sober calculations, but for a modicum of imagination as well. As everybody knows, necessity is the mother of invention. The effect of such ‘imaginative economising’ on the presentation of awards to filmmakers, and the curiosities to which it can lead, will be delved into in the second part of this article.

 

 

Prize money as film funding

 

Festival prizes and awards, received as they are after-the-fact, once a film has been produced and has already met with success, do not of course defray the costs of production up front. However, such awards can enable filmmakers and producers to repay any debts incurred during production, as well as contributing toward financing a new project. Unfortunately, there are no comprehensive statistics available on the number of prizes awarded to short films and the amount of prize money involved. According to my own estimates, 60 to 70 German short films received almost 100 awards and prizes last year, with a total volume amounting to approximately 600,000 euros – an appreciable amount compared to public film funding! Especially in the case of artistic and experimental works that are not yet being traded on the art market, such awards often represent the sole source of income for their makers.

 

A large portion of the prizes (and prize money) for short films is bestowed, aside from open competitions, at festivals. Due to the large number of short film festivals and organisers’ ever-growing eagerness to enhance their festival’s public prestige by boosting award money, short filmmakers now have relatively good chances of winning a prize. The arithmetic looks promising, at any rate. In reality, however, there seems to be a strange "cumulative effect" that lowers the chances for any given individual, distributing the odds unevenly between the various competitors. What actually happens is that during the course of a festival year just a few selected titles walk away with the majority of the big prizes. This is surely not due solely to the quality of the films in question, but can also be traced to the publicity effect of the big international festivals. The winners there capture the attention of scouts from other festivals, who then invite them to participate in their own events. Nevertheless, it’s still quite amazing how juries all over the world, with very disparate membership, still wind up voting for the same films over and over again.

 

Filmmakers who are successful or simply lucky can hop onto a ‘festival carousel’ that revolves non-stop from the big festivals to the small national provincial festivals for at least one year’s time. The lucky films last year were, for example, "Meska Sprawa" by Slawomir Fabicki (PL 2001), "Comme un seul homme" by Jean-Louis Gonnet (F 2001) and "Det er en yndig mand" by Martin Strange-Hansen (DK 2002).

 

By virtue of this peculiar cumulative effect, the gap between the films that regularly ‘rotate’ among the festivals and films that are only shown once or twice becomes wider and wider throughout the festival year, ultimately limiting the chance to receive one of the cash prizes to just a few titles. In this respect, some festivals’ policy of favouring premieres and refusing to accept repeat award-winners in their competitions can be better understood and even seems to make good sense in terms of raising the odds for all participants.

 

 

Top Prizes I

 

Of all the short film festivals in Europe, the Tampere Film Festival tops the list in terms of the amount of cash prizes distributed: in 2003 prize money in the amount of almost 50,000 euros was awarded at Tampere. The National Competition prizes in particular are incredibly generous. No less than 10,000 euros is taken home by the lucky winner of the Risto Jarva Award! The International Competition awards are significantly lower, although purses of 1,500 and 5,000 euros are certainly nothing to scoff at. After all, at Tampere winners not only get cash, but a "kiss" on top of it!

 

The impact of cooperation with sponsors, who are exercising an ever greater influence these days on cultural events the world over, can be seen particularly well in the case of the Micromovie Competition at Tampere. Micromovies refer here to digital films with a maximum length of 3:27 minutes that can be played on mobile phones. With a lot less competition than in the other sectors, and relatively low production costs in comparison with a 30-minute short film, a simple computer animation can walk away with a grand total of 10,000 euros at Tampere! This is only possible because the aims of the festival in terms of content and aesthetics gel so perfectly with the sponsor’s intentions: the main sponsor is a company with headquarters just 15 kilometres away from the festival centre – in a town called Nokia!

 

The fact that a sizeable cash prize, even when it’s put up by the festival itself rather than by a sponsor, sometimes has strings attached, is demonstrated by the short film festival in Huesca (Spain). The highest honours awarded at the festival, the Danzante de Oro (6,000 euros) and Danzante de Plata (3,000 euros), are conferred on condition that the prize-winning film is left behind in the festival archive!

 

In Germany, the Short Film Festival Oberhausen – with prize money totalling 32,500 euros in 2003 – is situated squarely in the upper segment and, if one counts the music video prize, even takes the lead. At this festival, film copies are purchased for the film archive. A further, indirect advantage for participants is the festival’s mediation of film purchases by television companies. The most lucrative award at Oberhausen is the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen at 7,500 euros, received this year by Sergej Loznitsa for his documentary "Portret".

 

Also high up in the German hierarchy is the Filmfest Dresden (in 2003 cash prizes in the amount of 36,500 euros). Here, animated films are favoured over other genres in terms of prize money. First-prize winner this year, for a total of 7,500 euros, was Koji Yamamura for "Atama Yama".

 

The largest cash prize that can be won by a short film in Germany outside of a festival is the Short Tiger Award, presented last in July 2002 by the German Federal Film Board. Seven young filmmakers each received 25,000 euros and five additional filmmakers 15,000 euros apiece. A total of 125,000 euros was distributed. However, this prize is only awarded to film school students. Last year, six German film schools submitted 22 films for the 12 "Short Tiger" awards, which thus amount to a kind of high-end, elitist cultivation of a narrow circle of beneficiaries.

 

In Eastern Europe the Molodist Film Festival in Kiev is without a doubt on top in terms of cash awards – at least as far as its grand prize goes, the 10,000 $ Scythian Deer. The Golden Dragon awarded at the tradition-rich Cracow Short Film Festival doesn’t even come close (20,000 Zloty – about 4,600 euros). The only award that’s higher still is the Dragon of Dragons, a special prize for outstanding achievement in the field of short documentary film. With 50,000 Zloty (approx. 11,500 euros) this is one of the largest awards for short documentaries anywhere.

 

Head and shoulders above the rest in North America is the Sun Life Financial Award for Best Canadian Short. The 25,000 $ prize is presented at the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto and is the world’s highest festival short film prize (about 16,000 euros). The prizes awarded in the International Competition at this festival, however, come with only a fraction of this amount and thus lie well under the high mark -- in particular since, apart from the Digital Award for Best Animated Short (5.000 $), almost all of the remaining awards are in the form of benefits in kind rather than cash. Here as well, this imbalance is the result of private sponsorship policy, which in this case is geared especially toward attracting attention to national filmmakers.

 

In the USA the festival with the most (although not the highest) prizes and the best chances of winning is probably the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Here, about 20 prizes totalling 18,000 $ are presented. In 2003 the prizes were ‘distributed’ among about 100 films, so that the odds of winning were about 1:5! A large number of small cash prizes can also be had at the Cinematexas Festival. Like Ann Arbor, this is one of the few US festivals that promotes and favours artist’s films and experimental work.

 

Worth mentioning is also the Golden Gate Award in San Francisco, with about 80 prizes and certificates. With its proximity to Hollywood and the Academy members, this festival can be of strategic significance to winners (see the Golden Gate animation award-winner and Oscar winner "Pan with us" by David Russo).

 

One of the highest awards in Asia and, together with Dresden, one of the largest prizes for animated film, is the Grand Prize of Hiroshima in the amount of 1,000,000 Yen (around 8,000 euros), awarded only once every two years.

Since there are very few film festivals in Asia devoted primarily to short film, any further comparison with Europe and America is difficult. Only very recently has a greater interest in short film been evidenced, particularly in Korea, Japan and Singapore, although thus far only native filmmakers have profited from this new attention.

 

‘Down under’ as well, it’s mostly the homegrown short filmmakers who pocket the awards. At the St Kilda Film Festival the first prize in the National Competition comes with 10,000 AUD (about 5,600 euros) and at the Melbourne International Film Festival up to 7,000 AUD (about 4,000 euros – here for international films as well) can be collected. In New Zealand, at the Auckland Drifting Clouds Short Film Festival, Kodak donates 20,000 NZD to the winning entry – with an expiration date, however, since the prize comes in the form of film stock!

 

 

Cheers! Prizes awarded by the beverage industry...

 

In 1999 Irish whiskey distiller John Jameson & Son Ltd., a multinational corporation, signed a 300,000-euro film promotion agreement with the "European Coordination of Film Festivals" (ECFF). Since that time, the "Jameson Short Film Awards" have been presented every year at between eight to twelve European festivals. In 2003 prizes in the amount of 6,000 euros apiece have been awarded at festivals including Tampere, Ume?, Grimstad, Huesca, Vila do Conde, Regensburg, Drama and of course Cork, Ireland. It’s only in France that this prize has not yet been able to gain a foothold – perhaps as revenge for the Irish company’s takeover of the traditional French brands Pernod and Ricard? Currently, Jameson is expanding into the new Eastern European markets instead. The first award in Eastern Europe was recently presented in Sofia (Bulgaria). Slainte and Nastrovje!

 

But it’s not only the beverage-industry multis that have gotten involved in the short film scene: in Oberhausen this year, the 5,000-euro MuVi Award was donated by Diebels Alt, a regional brewery.

 

There are also a few ‘non-alcoholic’ prizes for short films – as might be expected, mostly in the USA. Coca-Cola grants its "Refreshing Filmmaker’s Award" to film students, including 10 x 5,000 $ in production funding and a grand prize of 10,000 $. French mineral water giant Perrier once underwrote the "Perrier Bubbling Under Award" (at festivals including Nantucket, Florida, Taos and Santa Barbara), which brought the winner of the final round the impressive sum of 50,000 $ for the production of his/her next film. Nowadays, however, Perrier, like Heineken and others, has switched from the film industry to the fashion world and is presenting designer awards instead. In the film sector, the only thing Perrier still offers is the chance to win a trip to Hollywood. Too bad for the film festivals, who now have to scramble for new sponsors!

 

EFA and the Prix UIP - All power to the sponsors?

 

When sponsors withdraw their support, sometimes without warning, festivals are hard hit. A change in business policies or new marketing strategies, or perhaps dissatisfaction with a cultural partner who is pursuing entirely different ‘laws’ and aims, can abruptly lead to the end of a partnership.

 

This can be especially bitter when festivals allowed, or were forced to allow, their name to be tied to the sponsoring company. From Murphy’s Cork Film Festival to the Drambuie Film Festival, there are plenty of examples of this phenomenon, especially in Great Britain. One recalls as well the repeated name changes undergone by the British Short Film Festival in London: once known as the BP (British Petrol) Short Film Festival, and most recently called the BBC Short Film Festival, it was finally forced to close altogether upon the withdrawal of the BBC.

 

In the year 2000 a number of short film festivals protested the plan of the European Film Academy to change the nomination process for the European Short Film Award (EFA) in cooperation with sponsor UIP. Up until that time, the nominations had been made by the five major European short film festivals: Oberhausen, Clermont-Ferrand, Vila do Conde, Tampere and Cracow. Each festival submitted three recommendations, out of which the jury then selected the winner. In 2002 the European Film Academy presented the festivals with a proposal that would more or less exclude them from the nomination process: short film awards, christened Prix UIP after the main sponsor, were to be awarded at 12 European festivals and the winners automatically nominated for the European Short Film Award. The festivals had the choice of either accepting this proposition or being excluded altogether from the nomination process.

 

The Oberhausen, Clermont-Ferrand and Cracow festivals regarded the plan as problematic, since it harboured implications for their aesthetic as well as economic autonomy. The EFA and UIP would henceforward enjoy the complete benefits of this sponsorship agreement while the festivals themselves would be left high and dry. At the festivals that are still participating and at which this prize usually comes with the highest cash award, UIP now seems to be hogging the spotlight - the European Film Award is familiar only to insiders!

 

 

- End of Part 1 -

 

 

Reinhard W. Wolf

 

 

To be continued…:

- Top prizes II

- When awards and competition participation cost money!

- Prizes that come with strings attached...

- Trophies, certificates, medallions – being there is everything!

- Material prizes and awards in kind – what am I supposed to do with it?

- Scams, fakes and pranks

- Give-aways and consolation prizes

 

For the second part of this article, I would like to receive information about your own experiences with awards and prizes. I am especially interested in hearing about what award-winners found to be strange, wonderful or annoying!