Winnipeg: Short film buyers and distributors were among 175 filmmakers, broadcasters, industry delegates and another 450 seminar attendees who gathered for the inaugural Local Heroes International Screen Festival in Winnipeg March 8-13.

With over 40 Canadian short films screening, buyers and distributors scouted for acquisitions. But the festival is also viewed by producers and broadcasters as a means to keep an ear to the ground for emerging talent set to make the leap to television and feature-length drama.

‘I go to regional festivals to find interesting new filmmakers before they hit the bigger venues and I am sitting in a room with everyone else who wants to work with them,’ says New York-based Good Machine vp of production Anthony Bregman (The Ice Storm, Sense & Sensibility). ‘It definitely panned out at Local Heroes. I found several filmmakers with interesting points of view who I would like to work with down the road.’

Addressing emerging filmmakers at the festival, Brent Haynes, supervisor of new programming at The Comedy Network and producer of Canadian Comedy Shorts, announced that Comedy is developing a genre comedy/satire series with two writer/directors whose short films have aired on the channel’s short film slot.

The new project from Vancouver writer/directors Kellie Benz (The Second Coming) and Ken Hegan (William Shatner Lent Me His Hairpiece: An Untrue Story) is titled Skullduggery.

Another new sketch comedy series in development with Vancouver’s Glen Lougheed emerged from a series of five-minute shorts, Goofbud & Pete’s Spaced Out Adventure, about ‘two stoner puppets in search of aliens,’ prelicensed by Comedy and packaged as a half-hour pilot.

‘Our shorts program is an avenue for development,’ says Haynes. ‘It’s a testing ground to see how a concept looks and feels on air and a way to gauge audience reaction before we invest further in a program.’

Canadian Comedy Shorts, which this year has settled in a Saturday and Sunday 11:30 p.m. timeslot, pays $100 a minute to a maximum of $1,500, taking first-year exclusive and second-year non-exclusive rights on ‘irreverent, outrageous’ comedies under 15 minutes. Films are played once a month, offering more exposure than many other shorts programs, says Haynes.

Looking for acquisitions, Big Film Shorts president David Russell distributes shorts to terrestrial, cable and satellite channels around the world, as well as selling its catalogue of over 100 titles on home video cassette through its Website store.

The Burbank, California company also packages shorts in thematic compilations, the first of which, Kisses In The Dark, has been released by Vanguard International Cinema and is available at video stores such as Blockbuster and Tower. Two new compilations are in the works.

Theatrical releases are the next big push at Big Film Shorts. The company is working with independent producers in Boston on a selection of comedy shorts to be compiled into a feature-length film with an umbrella title and celebrity wraparounds between shorts. The features will have an after-theatrical life on broadcast and home video.

‘The key is pulling together a dynamic package of films and attach a theatrical distributor willing to put up p&a,’ says Russell. Although he says the theatrical release will not make money, the business plan is to break even on the theatrical release with hopes that the publicity and name branding of the compilation will lead to tv and video sales.

Two other short film features are in the early stages with a group of Cleveland investors and an l.a. short film distributor. Russell is also negotiating with an in-the-works American satellite channel to provide block programming of shorts.

Russell says Europe is the most lucrative market for broadcast sales, particularly Canal Plus and Channel 4. Sundance Channel pays a flat fee of up to $2,500 while the Independent Film Channel maxes at $1,000. New opportunities are opening up in the u.s., with hbo/Cinemax now looking at shorts as interstitials.

Russell looks for an eclectic array of genres and styles of shorts. The filmmaker receives 65% of sales, with Big Film Shorts absorbing the costs of marketing and promotion and taking three to five years exclusive rights.

Short film distributor and documentary/animation producer Maple Lake Releasing plans to launch three traveling programs of short films this year through art houses in Canada and the u.s. The first tour, slated for fall, is a program of short films from Canadian, American and Brazilian women filmmakers titled Secret Lives. The next circuit involves animation from Canada, the u.s. Brazil and Estonia.

Maple Lake, based in Winnipeg, has over 45 short films in its catalogue from Canada, the u.s., Australia, the u.k. and Germany. The company antes up between 60% and 70% of revenues from sales to the filmmaker and helps with festival exposure and publicity.

While the market for short films ebs and flows, Coles says $150 per minute is one of the better fees being paid in the u.s., whereas $150 to $350 can be picked up in Europe. Prices can also vary depending on when in the buying cycle a film is acquired and how much of the budget is left.

Bravofact, which offers up to $25,000 in grants for arts videos from both new and established filmmakers, hosted a special screening of its short films at Local Heroes, and announced that in the next few weeks Bravofact will be launching an online database of all its short films, allowing distributors to access information on its short titles such as project synopses, festival screenings, awards won, running times, directors, talent and producer contacts

With Canadian Reflections’ switch to a Sunday 11:30 p.m. timeslot (in direct competition with Canadian Comedy Shorts) from Friday afternoons, Tara Ellis, executive in charge of production, movies and miniseries, and programmer of Canadian Reflections at cbc, is looking for more daring adult content. Roughly 50 shorts are acquired per year and licence fees run $10,000 per half hour. Budget permitting, Ellis says she would like to raise the fee but at this point cannot say if or how much.