A short film is defined as an original notion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less which incudes all the credits. In the early years of film production, all films were short. Feature length productions developed, as the cinema industry became established, with purpose built venues and complete film programs. From the pre 1920s, this was the era for short items from newsreels to adventure serials, comedy to natural history and cine-magazines to dramas.

Short films began in 1910, in the United Sates of America. The films were animated films or live action. The purposes, of most short films were made to make people laugh, which is under the comedy genre. In the 1930’s the popularity of short films started to decrease, however in 1955 short films were on the rise again. The rise was because of Charlie Chaplin who was a film maker. Charlie Chaplin started to make short comedy films again but since then short films haven’t really been that popular. Pixar and Disney have made a couple of short films in the recent times such as for the birds, Geri’s Game and The Lamp.

A short film has a low budget and amateur actors. The movie is rarely screened and has a niche audience due to the fact its not distributed as largely as a feature length film. The type of short films that are available already are various films under many genres such as animation, artist’s moving image. Music, drama, comedy and documentary.  “Drive” Funny Telugu which cam out in 2015. A single life, which is under the animation genre.

In the words of Catherine Des Forges, her definition of a short film is ‘ spare, economic narrative, interesting storytelling; well-structured work which draws in the audience quickly.

The cheapest way to distribute short films is by using YouTube as its main way of working is by using videos from the public in which attracts attention. There are many different film festivals that show the ideas of aspiring film makers in which gives them attention. 

The advantages of short films is that their cheaper, short films need a much smaller budget than feature length films. This means that a lot of money will be saved and considering a short film budget is small it’s a great advantage. Short films are mostly distributed online which means they are able to saturate a greater audience online. The films can be be easily uploaded onto YouTube or Facebook which is not time consuming.

Another advantage is the flexibility of the short film, which is its greatest asset because it can cross many genres and an effective idea can be shown in a short time.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Making a short film is quicker than producing a feature length film. Which is an advantage because if the short film is discovered, it can be nominated for an award, which is another way to get into the industry. This also means that more films will be made due to the audience that it has attracted from the first film.

The disadvantages of short films is that it’s very difficult and unlikely that short films will make any profit, which is why the budget has to be tight and not spend more money than needed because it can be financially difficult.

Secondly the time frame of a short film can’t exceed 40 minutes and it may be difficult to fit a whole storyline into that time, which can lead to a lot of editing and changes of ideas, which can be time consuming.

In comparison to a feature length they are different because a feature length film has duration of around 100mins, with such a long running time of the film they are able to do this because of having a big budget. Feature length films have an advantage because they are able to afford more things and most importantly have professional actors, who are able to attract a mass audience and be widely distributed. With a short film it lasts for around 10 minutes due to the fact it has a low budget they have to compact their idea into a short span because of having a low budget, which means because financially they have to be tight they use amateur actors and the films are rarely screened as they are normally distributed online which is why they normally attract a niche audience.

By doing my short film research, it increased my knowlege and understanding about short films and also learning about the history of short films and genres, helped us as a group to decide on our final genre which helped with our final ideas. The research helped us understand what needs to be included in a short film and how we can condense our idea into a short duration. 

By doing research on short films this helped us plan our film and the conventions that are included in a short film. The research increased our knowledge on short films. 

Tracy Kimani 8108