Noora Kettunen, text
Jaakko Suvanto, translation
Just five years ago short films were a rare treat in Finland. Apart from Tampere Film Festival, only one Finnish channel screened short films once a week, in the late night segment. Finally in 2002, web portal Pixoff started publishing Finnish short films in the net. Last year the portal set a record of one million viewers.
- There was clearly a need for a 24-hour service like ours. In Pixoff, filmmakers can view films and also discuss and rate each other’s works. To young filmmakers, feedback from their peers is very important, says Pixoff’s development manager Lassi Tasajärvi.
There are over 8,000 registered users in the Pixoff community, most of who are 17 to 35-year-old film enthusiasts. Members use their real names, so the feedback they get is mostly constructive in nature. Some of the films have become pay-per-view, and there are now some feature films in the site also.
Filmmakers send their films to Pixoff, where they are then converted to digital format. Pixoff has tried to make linking films to other sites as easy as possible, so as to facilitate the important process of networking with other filmmakers and possible financers. Filmmakers can also create a professional profile of themselves to the site. These profiles can then be used to search for staff in upcoming projects.
Most of the short films in the Pixoff portal are fiction. Two genres stand out as popular: gore films focusing on special effects and youth drama.
- Animation is also another popular genre. I’d like to see more documentaries. Young filmmakers tend to shy away from documentaries, Tasajärvi remarks.
The seminar Visions on Digital Distribution is held in the auditorium of the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, on Saturday, March 10.
Updated 08 March 2007 18:47
