A book..... on short films

Luckily I was able to get my hands on this book - IN SHORT A guide to short film-making in the digital age by Eileen Elsey and Andrew Kelly with a foreword by Gareth Evans.

Because it is quite a long book and I have to be in the right mood to read it I will be reading it in small sections, blogging about what I learn as I go along....

16/10/11-  From the first chapter I found that newspapers in Britain and North America had begun to take interest in short films between 1999 and spring 2001. What with digital short film websites, the news and the release of nineteen films, a lot of them being shorts, of the complete works of Samuel beckett.
http://www.themodernword.com/beckett/beckett_film_bof.html


Shorts were the only films in the early days of cinema, my already known knowledge being confirmed with the book saying how they were commonly used as First World War propaganda, they were extremely popular in the 1920's and 30's with stars such as Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and Langdon but started to become only present in specialist cinemas and festivals in the 1960's and 70's.


Short films are not just shortened films, they are cinema and television commercials and music videos of all different styles including animation, advertising, educational and avant-garde among others (of course my short film will be your typical short film).

A lot of film festivals say that short films should have a maximum duration of 30 minutes (a definition based purely on duration is arbitrary, and many superlative shorts are often very short.


Overview: Short films offer the opportunity to allow people making films to practise their art outside the pressures of feature film and television production, but this also comes with sometimes limited distribution, which restricts the amount of viewers to that film. Short films involve sound and image that communicate a story to the audience in a creative short space of time. "The combination of diversity of product and interconnectedness of practise is an important aspect of short film production". Short films should leave their audience with a lingering feeling of resonance after viewing it. Directors can experiment with different things such as structure, ways of working with actors and other crew members and subject matter without the pressure that failure will bring an end to their careers.


I must think about my distribution of my short film and my intended audience when making my film.


"The right to fail is an important aspect of all experimentation".


"Experimentation and a powerful personal vision must be at its centre".