OUR MISSION

There are lots of reasons to make a short film. Every year, students, hobbyists and professional filmmakers prove this by making thousands of short films, even though there are almost no venues to show them.

We're not talking dancing cats or nutty stunts. We're talking plot, characters, mood. Art.

So, after spending, say, thousands of dollars to make our movies, filmmakers wind up spending even more on film festival application fees, with the hope that maybe a couple of times the film will be accepted and shown in a shorts program.

But the odds are sketch. Great festivals like Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto and the Academy qualifying festivals like Palm Springs and Ann Arbor receive THOUSANDS of applications, perhaps as many as 7,500 every year. Sleepless programmers have to whittle those down to a screening or two of 15 shorts each.

The rest wind up sitting on hard drives, pretty much unseen.

We hate this. We're filmmakers, too. And it's our considered opinion that IndieRoar.com can be the event that short live action and animated films need: a place to show off work to the world in an environment that has all the buzz and interactivity of a brick-and-mortar film festival.

It's not enough to just make your movie. You've got to get others to see it. So we've devised the IndieRoar Online Short Film Festival and Competition to give independent filmmakers the tools to work their films: web pages for cast and crew listings, a photo gallery for stills, bios, and more.

Lastly, we're working to make our festival a destination. We encourage all of our filmmakers and viewers to communicate with each other and make connections for future films.  Learn from each other.  Read blogs about the industry from experienced professional actors, writers, producers, lawyers, distributors, reporters and directors. Network.

With a little luck and a lot of pride, short films can bust out of the film industry's blackhole, stop being an afterthought and become what we already know it is: a solid, exciting art form all its own.

Get busy. Make films.