With no fanfare whatsoever, the “IMDb Theaters” program has expanded. When I logged into Withoutabox yesterday, I had links to upload Camera Noise and Two Night Stand to their respective IMDb pages. The Epic Tale of Kalesius and Clotho doesn’t have a link, although I suspect that’s because in IMDb it’s listed with the full subtitle “A Meditation on the Impossibility of Romantic Love in a Rapidly Expanding Universe” so without an exact title match it can’t automatically make the connection.

I like the idea of IMDb Theaters, but so far it’s really a quarter step into the new web world. IMDb is still the resource for answering questions like “how many movies has Christopher Walken been in?” (about 100) but its complicated system for submitting updates and changes has really held it back in the age of Wikipedia. For example, when I recently wanted to remind myself what happened in “The Cheever Letters” episode of Seinfeld, I went straight to Wikipedia where there are several pages of description. IMDb’s rigid structure doesn’t really allow for that sort of completeness although there is a very brief outline of the episode.

To be fair, IMDb includes comprehensive credits for people like me who don’t even rate a Wikipedia entry. So there’s that.

I like the idea behind IMDb Theaters, but so far it’s just a little video icon at the top of the page. Also, it doesn’t seem to track views or allow comments, so it’s a little like throwing it out into the void, which was one of my many problems with submitting to film festivals. There’s no feedback unless you get accepted and actually attend the festival. And even then it’s extremely limited.

Anyway, I’ll be keeping an eye on this thing.

Trying to make money with short films is a fool’s game, even in the supposed Internet-based renaissance of the short. I’ve made somewhere around $150 from my short films, mostly from Revver, and I’ve spent a lot more than that making them. I never expect to make money on the Internet, but now that Two Night Stand is taking off on Vuze, I want to get paid!

Vuze shows an advertisement every time Two Night Stand plays, and as of June 30 they had a guarantee of $5 per 1000 views in many countries. If all of the downloads of Two Night Stand include a qualified ad impression, right now I’m owed about $500. That’s a significant portion of the production costs of Two Night Stand. But the guarantee has expired with no explanation of the current offer. And the Sales History for Ad Supported Content in my account shows “No Entry.” Does this mean I’m not getting any money? I’ve emailed Vuze but I haven’t heard back yet.

If they had never offered any money I would be totally happy with the explosion of views from Vuze, but now that the thought of money has entered my head I’m disappointed in the situation. Now it seems like if these downloads aren’t earning me money that I’m somehow missing out on an opportunity.

Update: Vuze has written back, and they assure me I’ll get paid for qualified advertising impressions. I don’t have a report yet on the number, but I expect it to be fairly substantial.

Over the past few days, Two Night Stand has totally exploded on Vuze. It’s over 20,000 downloads in its first week of availability. I know the thumbnail of Jennie has a lot to do with the popularity of the movie, but I’ve also seen a lot of people coming to this site searching for Two Night Stand over the past few days. Today is one of my highest traffic days in a long time. Of course, YouTube is up to 320,000, but that’s taken a long time and I almost never see anyone searching for info about the movie afterward.

It’s funny how things change. Two Night Stand was my first real post-college movie. I had a really hard time finishing the script without any deadlines. In early drafts they wandered around the small town they’d ended up in and got drunk in a local bar. After a lot of revision I ended up with just one location and two characters. I decided not to act in it because I wanted to focus on directing. It turns out it’s a lot easier to make a movie when you don’t have to act at the same time. We shot it in the summer of 2004 right before I moved to NYC. I took my time with the editing and premiered it in February 2005 at The Pioneer Theater along with a bunch of my other short films.

At the time I kind of thought I was done with the film. I had gotten everything I wanted out of it. I made a movie that looked good and didn’t cheat by using the documentary tricks that characterized my earlier films. If the sound recording was bad I couldn’t turn it into a joke like I did in Kalesius and Clotho. After spending nearly $1000 on festival submission fees for Kalesius and Clotho I was totally sick of the so-called “festival circuit.” I half-heartedly submitted it to a few friendly festivals and got into a few of them, although I was disappointed not to get into the Anchorage Film Festival, which is my favorite festival ever.

So Two Night Stand sat on the shelf until YouTube took off. I uploaded it there and hardly anyone watched it. Meanwhile, my Bad Webcam Sex video got 2 million views. Eventually things picked up and now it gets around 1000 views a day. It’s been really great to have all these viewers for a film I never expected to get much exposure. I don’t see any reason for short films to go to film festivals anymore. The Internet is the place for short films. At festivals they’re a sideshow at best.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who’s watched it, and I hope I can make some more films soon.