Primary research- Short film

Short film  

A short film is a film, of any genre or type, such as documentary, animation etc, that is usually 40 minutes or less. It is any film that is not long enough to be considered a feature film. Anything over 40 minutes is normally considered as a feature film, such as films that are about an hour in duration. Quite often short films can be made by film-makers to introduce themselves into the industry, or to just get first hand experience when it comes to making an actual film.

History into Short Films

Short films have been made as early as the 1920's, when comedy short films were produced in quite large numbers. Audiences may of found these short comedy films, that were around 5-10 minutes in length, as a way of relieving stress and having a laugh for a little while. 

Short films can also be dated back to 1894, when Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, projected short films to audiences in a way such as a 'peepshow'. These films at this time were also around 20 minutes in length, iconic comedians such as Charlie Chaplin had a key involvement with short comedy films; this was considered a 'modern TV sitcom'.

However back to the modern era, some animated shorts, for example with Pixar, attach some animated short films before their feature films. They have been doing this since their initial run since 1995, it works as an effective way of promoting other material as well as the main animated feature film. - Wikipedia


Students examples of short films: 'Narco'

The following is a student made short film from our school, that was produced last year.

I think that Narco is a well made short film, reasons for this is that it is shot well, edited well, the lighting is good, and the overall direction is well done. For the camera work, the shots are all filmed smoothly, there isn't any jumpy footage or any shaky footage unless it was intended for. I think most of it was done using tripods which results in their clean looking footage, along with the smooth shots.

The editing was also good in my opinion, once again linking back to the video clips being smoothly put together to result in a professional looking short film. I also found that the match on action was considerably good, such as shots with the car coming into the drive, the shot with the camera placed on the floor made for a great piece of match on action.

I am choosing to do a short film for my coursework. Therefore I will be looking to this short film inspiration, and I may be referencing this short film when it comes to the production of my coursework piece.