Short Film Requirements for Academy Awards

To be considered for an entry, a short film must be screened in the competition of one of the participating festivals. If your film is not accepted at any of the eligible festivals, choose the third option that shows your short film in one of the Los Angeles cinemas. Short films shown publicly at a commercial theater in Los Angles County, California, qualify for the Oscar. It is important to remember that the screening of your film requires admission, must be open to the general public and last at least three consecutive days with at least two screenings per day. There are additional formatting rules for this qualification option. Read carefully the little words about the Academy`s submission rules and conditions. In general, there are three ways to qualify your short film for the Oscars. You`ll need to win a student award at the Student Academy Awards, rent a theater for a week in Los Angeles to show your short film, or win an award at an eligible film festival. It is important to mention that the Academy defines a short film as “an original film of a duration of 40 minutes or less, all credits included”. Taylor Swift may be the most famous person to use the various rules of the short film category as a stealthy attack on the Oscars, but she is far from alone.

She`s not even the only famous person trying an Oscar race like this this year. In a sign that things are returning to some degree of normalcy, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is returning to pre-pandemic admission rules and will no longer allow its digital screening room as a way to qualify. Instead, he said that because theaters have reopened, the six eligible U.S. metropolitan areas continue to be Los Angeles County, New York City, Bay Area, Chicago, Miami and Atlanta, and the rules apply to general participation categories as well as documentary and short film categories. Feature films must be shown at least seven days in cinemas to be eligible (there are specific requirements regarding screening times, etc., but this can be done at the same time as screenings in other media such as streaming, VOD). Drive-in theatres remain eligible. Go through the history of the Oscars and you`ll find all sorts of examples of the relatively looser limitations of short film categories that make interesting things happen. Character actors such as Christine Lahti and Ray McKinnon have won Oscars for short films they directed and starred in, and failed TV pilots and animated specials have also triumphed in these categories. (The Academy quickly filled in the gaps that made these victories possible.) They have an incredible story that no one has ever heard, and the world needs to hear it, but it needs to be included in a script, action plan, or set of cards with instructions. Some of you reading this will think that a card game with your scenes looks unprofessional and ridiculous, but some of the most entertaining short films have emerged from this process.

Remember, the average length of a short film is 7-10 minutes, so when it comes to dialogue, sets, time of day, etc., don`t take 2 pages to tell us where we stand. Why not check out our other guides on the Film Industry Network to help you with your film career? Winning an award at an eligible film festival qualifies your short film for the Oscars, which means you can now submit your film to the Academy. From this moment, your film will go through several rounds of voting until the final decision (Oscar…?). Each year, the best festivals reward live-action shorts, documentaries and animated films, which can then be submitted in the corresponding Oscar category. These festivals span the globe, from Hollyshorts in Los Angeles to the New York International Children`s Film Festival, from Cartagena to Bengaluru to Busan. The Oscars are known to be one of the toughest competition awards to win, but there are categories that. Less controversial, for example, and categories where qualification rules are less strict than in others. If you have access to the resources to first qualify for a movie and then launch a campaign to get it nominated and eventually win, well, you`ll be a real head start on the other nominees in a category historically under the radar. Winter is awards season in Hollywood, the time of year when actors, directors, screenwriters and other creatives are honored for their work by critics, trade guilds, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and, most importantly, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. While Oscar nominations will be announced on March 15, 2021, the New York Film Academy is proud to announce that films from three alumni currently qualify for Best Live Action Short.

Saving Chintu by Tushar Tyagi, an alumnus of NYFA`s 1-year film program, also qualified for a theatrical screening. After a productive festival run with official selections at more than twenty film festivals — including the Oscar-winning Outfest and Flickers` Rhode Island International Film Festival — Tyagi`s Oscar campaign manager suggested opting for a theatrical release. They installed one at the Laemmle Theater in Los Angeles, but had it cancelled due to pandemic restrictions. Nevertheless, the Academy accepted a letter of intent to exhibit theater as a qualification, so the short film is now officially in the running.