Streaming / Media

Shortfilmed

Free short-film streaming platform

Visit shortfilmed.com

HLS

Adaptive streaming playback

Film + thumbnail origin

Free

Ad-supported, no paywall

Netlify

Serverless hosting + Forms

The Challenge

Independent filmmakers lacked a clean, free home to showcase short films. Mainstream platforms bury them, and DIY setups struggle with large-file delivery, device compatibility, and cost.

The Solution

Shortfilmed serves films as HLS straight from an S3 bucket, with a build-time script that scans the bucket for videos, thumbnails, and metadata to generate the catalog into Supabase. The Next.js app on Netlify renders genre rows and a custom react-player streaming experience, monetized with ads rather than a paywall so viewing stays free.

Features

HLS streaming player

A custom react-player UI with skip, seek, fullscreen, auto-hiding controls, and a buffering state.

Genre catalog

A Supabase-backed film library rendered into genre rows (drama, horror, comedy, animation, and more).

Build-time S3 ingestion

A Node script scans the S3 bucket for HLS films, thumbnails, and metadata to generate the catalog dataset.

Filmmaker submissions

Filmmakers submit films through Netlify Forms with reCAPTCHA and a homegrown math captcha.

Search & discovery

Debounced search and a details drawer make the catalog quick to browse.

Ad & SEO monetization

AdSense and Ezoic ads, GA4 with internal-traffic exclusion, next-sitemap, and IndexNow auto-submission.

System Architecture

Origin

AWS S3

Ingest

Ingest Script

Catalog

Supabase

App

Next.js (Netlify)

Playback

react-player

Origin

AWS S3

Ingest

Ingest Script

Catalog

Supabase

App

Next.js (Netlify)

Playback

react-player

Technology Stack

Frontend

Next.js 14 (App Router)

React 18

Tailwind

Material TailwindZustand

Video & Streaming

react-playerscreenfullHLS (.m3u8)

Storage & Data

AWS S3

Supabase (Postgres)

aws-sdk

Infra & Growth

Netlifynext-sitemapAdSense / EzoicGA4