Minor Mogul

Reviewed: Crafty Short Films

By DTL
Posted December 25, 2025

Crafty states:

Crafty (or Craft Services) is a little snack on a film set. It’s the thing filmmakers need to keep themselves going. But it also describes the mentality of our filmmakers who have to get crafty in order to tell their stories. [ . . . ]

Crafty presents snack-sized stories, both narrative and nonfiction, with an emphasis on heart and humanity. We host these stories on our YouTube Channel.

My impression is that the creators of Crafty really love independently-made short movies with character- or relationship-based stories. That defines a definite theme for the Channel — always a good sign for the Channel’s success.

But it’s a fairly broad niche; you could tell such a story in almost any genre. And Crafty features short movies for comedy, documentary, drama, horror, queer, sci-fi, and thriller audiences.

One thing I don’t see any mention of is payment. So they’re going to take your movie and put it on their Channel, and monetize that Channel, and keep all the money from that Channel. You are giving them your work so they can make money from it. Probably not much money, but still . . .

Is that ethical? No; creators should be compensated for their work if their work makes money. If you’re making money from creators’ work, and you’re not paying those creators, then you’re an exploiter; QED.

Crafty also charges a fee to submit your movie to them. So they want to get paid for considering putting your movie online, and then they want to get paid for putting your movie online. They try to get around this sounding quite like a scam by pretending that they’re some sort of online film festival, but it sure looks like they're running the ol' Vanity Press Scam.

Is Crafty something you should consider? The answer is a qualified maybe. They have almost 65,000 subscribers as of the end of 2025; their most-viewed movie Odd Bird had 375,000 views, and their least viewed had 41. Some of those people might watch your movie.

What else are you doing with your short movie? Does your YouTube Channel have 65,000 subscribers? It may be worth it to use your movie as a paid advertisement for your body of work — paying Crafty Short Films for their audience.

An opportunity like this can a tactic in the larger strategy of building an audience for your body of work. Remember: A career making movies independently is a marathon, not a sprint!