Short Films

As I have chosen the short film task I need to look at the history, distribution and notable short film so I can grasp what target audience I need to aim my feature at. The term was coined by the indian and American film industries in the early period of cinema. In America it usually refers to any film between 15 and 40 minutes in length yet in Europe and Australasia in can be used to describe a film with a duration longer than one minute and shorter than 20 minutes. This fits in with my task specification, for me to make my film last between 5 and 7 minutes.

By the 1910s in North America, a typical film program at the cinema would be composed of a main feature proceeded by a short film, which would usually be animated or live action comedy. Well-known comedians such as Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chapman, Buster Keaton and others rose to fame in these comedy short films as well as their features. Animated cartoons also rose to public awareness as short films, such the first ever animated feature 'Gertie the Dinosaur' or Walt Disney's first production 'Steamboat Willy'.

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.

As short films are no longer distributed at cinemas modern short film focus on difficult topics which are usually avoided by commercial main features, which inspires me to focus my own film more extreme than usual feature movies. Although it allows these film makers larger freedoms and let them take higher risks, but they must rely on festival and art house exhibition to achieve public display.

However in more recent times, popular websites like Youtube encourage the submission of user-created short films, where they can get thousands or even up to millions of views, allowing some of these film makers to be noticed by film companies. Also there are many short film competitions across the Internet with the winners being awarded contracts with film companies.