Media Studies: Research into short films

What is a Short Film?

The Definition for a Short Film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". These films are often shown at local or national film festivals, With many having little to no budget at all.

A Kinetoscope

Where did Short Films come from?

It used to be that all of the first films created were short films, often only being a few seconds long and were created using the Kinetoscope, a creation by Thomas Edison. These very early films were from the late 19th Century and were often depictions of an everyday life scene filmed from a single shot. Although at first these films were only under ten seconds long, within its first few years of release longer films lasting closer to a minute began to be released to the public. A well known film from this time would be the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895), which involves merely a short of a train pulling into a station. The fact that this gained mass interest shows how much of a revelation this was in the development of film itself and how it all spurred from these shorts. 

It can be seen that even in the early films there are aspects that are still used today, for example the title card shown at the beginning of the film has now been adapted into modern title sequences and there has since been a development with the usage of numerous shots within a single short, which has brought us to where we are now with films.

Short Films Today

Nowadays short films are used in order to gain recognition in the film industry, it is used as a stepping stone towards success, this is evident through the various film festivals we have today,  which feature shorts from many different directors in order for them to be acknowledged and in some cases funded by bigger film companies. 

As well as this Short Films are often accredited to being of a unique pedigree due to the fact that in order to be successful in the modern film industry they must use dynamic storytelling and a strong plot as a lot of these previously good ideas have been overused to a point of them becoming clichéd, This is beneficial to film as a whole as it raises the bar to the quality of films produced. 

What's Next?

The future of short films lies with us, and the community of the film industry. Other than short film festivals, there is hardly any economic relevance to short films, which means that many struggle to make any money from it, which in turn reduces how well known it is due to the fact that it wont gain much publicity. Furthermore, even at these festivals, where it gives a chance for the general audience to see the work of shorts, even feature film festivals reserve little for short films and even when they do it is only because it is a necessary step for the film makers to make in going from a short film maker to a feature length director. The idea of someone making short films throughout there life is seen as laughable, other than those who run the festivals, nobody within short films, including film makers can make their living from it. This has been the same in the past and it is also the same today, therefore I don't think much will change in the future, however I like to be surprised.