Short Films
Besides the obvious titular implications, there are certain common qualities that define a ‘short film.’ The term, which is used interchangeably with ‘short subject’ or simply ‘short’, is used in North America to define a film with length of 20 to 40 minutes. Feature film trailers are often referred to as shorts, but this is incorrect, as these are not technically short films.
Short films are often documentaries on subjects that may be controversial or politically sensitive. Social and environmental themes are popular topics in short films. Older films, or nostalgia film, often fall in the realm of "short film" by virtue of their length.
Many DVDs now include shorts as bonus features. Many animated feature films will now be shown with a short film from the same production crew, often with the same characters as the main feature.
As camera and film-editing technology becomes more affordable, the short film is growing in popularity, as many amateur filmmakers can now easily produce a short. Further, internet release and marketing makes dissemination of amateur short films free and easy, and in some cases even more effective than a theater release.
A short film script can be a great calling card for a writer. Short films aren’t a lesser form of cinematic storytelling. In fact writing them requires the exact same skills as writing a feature length script - though on a smaller scale. Although TV broadcast opportunities may be limited, there are more and more outlets for these opportunities. I recently read on IndieWire: “Shorts used to be this artsy thing. But now there really is this explosion in film making. With all this new technology, shorts films have a lot more interest among regular people, because so many people are making them and putting them on the web. Suddenly, we’re not explaining short films to people. Everybody’s seen one.”
References:
: Retrieved from http://www.raindance.org/7-rules-for-writing-short-films/
