Short Film

Research
Short film is a technical description originally coined in the
North American film industry in the early period of cinema. The
description is now used almost interchangeably with short
subject. Either term is often abbreviated to short, e.g. a short.
A trailer for a feature length film is sometimes mistakenly
referred to as a "short" for the complete film.
Although the North American definition generally refers to
films between 20 and 40 minutes, the definition refers to much
shorter films in Europe, Latin America and Australasia. In New
Zealand, for instance, the description can be used to describe
any film that has a duration longer than one minute and shorter
than 15 minutes.
history
The term came to be applied in North America in the 1910s, when the
majority of feature films began to be made in much longer-running
editions. A typical film program came to be expected to include a
feature preceded by one or more short subjects. Short subjects could
be live action or animated. Comedy was particularly utilized, and well-
known comedians such as Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster
Keaton and others are known for their short films as well as their
features.
Animated cartoons likewise came principally as short subjects, as did
newsreels. Less frequently, short subjects might be in the form of
travelogues, human interest films or concert films. The form was so
popular that virtually all major film production companies had fully-
staffed special units assigned to develop and produce them, and many
companies, especially in the silent and very early sound era, produced
short subjects exclusively.
 Rise of the double
feature
The death of the two-reel short as a commercially successful product for
independent studios put producers such as Mack Sennett out of business.
Hal Roach moved Laurel and Hardy full-time into feature films after 1935,
and halved his popular Our Gang films to one reel at the request of
distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Roach, who could no longer afford to
produce shorts after 1938, sold Our Gang to MGM at that time and
exclusively produced features from then on.
After the 1930s, fewer shorts were made for theatrical release, most of
which were one-reel long, like George O'Hanlon's Joe McDoakes shorts,
and the animated shorts of studios like Leon Schlesinger
Productions/Warner Bros. Cartoons, Walter Lantz and Fleischer/Famous
Studios. These shorts and others were produced in-house by, or financed
by, motion picture companies that either owned their own theatre chains or
forced theatres to take their shorts by selling them in the same unalterable
package as their big-name features. This practice, called block booking,
was declared illegal in 1948 by the US Supreme Court case United States v.
Paramount Pictures, Inc., a case that also forced the theatre chains to sell
off their movie studios. By 1955, thanks to double features, the ban on
block booking and the rise of television, the commercial live-action short
was virtually dead, and the cartoon short was fading. Since the 1960s, short
films have been largely reserved for independent filmmakers and special
major-studio projects.
Rise of the double
feature cont.
The Three Stooges shorts were the only major series of two-
reelers to survive the double-feature system because they
were issued by Columbia Pictures using block booking. They
continued into the late-1950s, largely by reusing footage
from previous series entries to reduce costs.
In the 1950s, television programming, including the
telecasting of older short subjects, eclipsed the value of all
but cartoons featuring well-loved characters. By the end of
the 1960s, rising inflation, and the higher cost of
manufacturing outweighed the return, and short subjects
effectively disappeared
Shor t subjects in
the moder n era
Since the 1980s, the term ‘short subject’ has come to be used interchangeably with
‘short film’ an international, academic term used to mean a contemporary non-
commercial motion picture that is substantially shorter than the average commercial
feature film. There is no clear definition of the maximum length of a short film, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences classify it as 40 minutes, while the
Internet Movie Database refers to any film lasting less than 45 minutes as a short
subject. The short-film form is to the full-length film what the short story is to a full-
fledged novel.
Short films often focus on difficult topics which longer, more commercial films
usually avoid. Filmmakers benefit from larger freedoms and can take higher risks,
but they must rely on festival and art house exhibition to achieve public display.
Most short films are better known outside the United States than within, due to less
rigidity of audience expectation as to program content, arrangement and length
outside the U.S. However, film shorts are often a popular extra feature on a film's
DVD. For instance, Pixar's DVD releases of its feature films typically includes not
only a short that was distributed with the feature film in its initial theatrical release
but also an original creation featuring the characters from the feature itself.
Dreamworks Animation has a somewhat different policy where it often produces a
short film sequel for their special edition video releases of major features that is
usually long enough to both be shown on broadcast television as a television special
and then later released separately on its own DVD. By contrast, Warner Brothers
often instead includes selected animated shorts from its considerable film archives
on DVD releases of its family-oriented films that have a thematic relationship.
Short subjects in the
modern era Cont.
Films such as S. Luciani's Dolls show how professional actors and
crews still choose to create short films as alternative form of
expression. Short films are often popular as first steps into the
cinematic art among young filmmakers. They are cheaper and
easier to make, usually don't take very long to produce, and their
brevity makes shorts more likely to be watched by financial
backers and others who want some demonstration of a
filmmaker's ability.
Short filmmaking is also growing in popularity among amateurs
and enthusiasts, who are taking advantage of affordable
equipment. ‘Prosumer’ or semi-professional cameras now cost
under USD$3,000, and free or low-cost software is widely available
that is capable of video editing, post-production work and DVD
authoring.
Ver y shor t films
Very short films are sometimes considered as a category of
their own. They are the film equivalent of microfiction, like
the 60 Word Story. The International Festival of Very Shorts
is a festival based in Paris which shows only films less than
three minutes long. Filminute, the international one-minute
film festival, has presented and promoted a collection of one-
minute films across multiple media since September 2006.
Other media
Cinema
Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures distribute the annual release of The
Academy Award Nominated Short Films (Live-Action and Animation) in theaters
across the US, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom throughout February/March.
Internet
Such films can also be easily distributed via the Internet; Across the Hall, for example,
was solely distributed on the Internet. Certain websites which encourage the
submission of user-created short films, such as YouTube, Openfilm, BritFilms and
New grounds have attracted large communities of artists and viewers, whereas sites
such as BBC Film Network focus on showcasing curated British shorts.
Television
Shorts are occasionally broadcast as filler when a scheduled film's length cannot be
conventionally fit in the standard broadcast schedule and the short is intended to fill
in the remaining time of the timeslot. By contrast, Movieola is a Canadian cable
channel devoted exclusively to shorts up to 40 minutes long. Another television
station in Canada called Bite TV is trying to become the world's first user-generated
television station, trying to get viewers to send in their videos.
Shorts TV is the first television channel dedicated to short films. It broadcasts an
SDTV feed in the UK, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Turkey An HDTV version of
the channel, ShortsHD, is available on AT&T U-verse channel 1789.