Film Courage: I’m wondering if can talk about short films for a moment?
And you talk about how you made your first short film and when you look back at it now
there are things that you’re really proud about?
And some can you also touch on some of the misconceptions filmmakers have about short
films and I know this is your opinion, it’s not law but you had some opinions about it
and we’d love to hear it?
Chris von Hoffmann, writer/director of DRIFTER, MONSTER PARTY, WHITE TRASH and more: Yeah,
I understand that a lot of people are very anti-short films.
I hear these people saying “No one cares about short films.”
And I mean, there’s an Academy Award for short films.
Obviously some people care about them but I get what they’re saying that feature films
(that makes sense).
I was making shorts for years and none of them were going anywhere and then boom!
I make a feature and then it gets a lot of exposure and all that stuff.
So I understand that but I wouldn’t have been able to approach the feature that I did
if it wasn’t for all those shorts that I was making.
I think short films for me I started to realize over the years that they’re not at all about
getting representation through those or getting a big movie out of those.
There was a time that that happened.
I am shocked when people make one five minute short that goes viral and they get a twenty
million dollar movie.
I just don’t really understand that at all.
I think you really need to earn your stripes a little bit.
But I think shorts are much more about sculpting your aesthetic and learning to tell a story
and working with actors, working with truncated schedules, and just understanding how movies
are made before you jump into a feature.
Making a feature versus making a short, it really is night and day.
I mean it’s such a completely different experience.
Like you need to get those warm-up periods and maybe make shorts that are like 5 minutes,
10 minutes, then maybe a 20 minute short, getting a little closer to stretching out
a story a little bit more.
Everyone has their theories on things and I don’t want to knock anything down but
when people say “I don’t care about shorts, I just graduated film school.
I just want to make a feature right now.”
I hear that a lot from people.
Or people just want to make one short and then jump into a feature and I remember Rian
Johnson said something (of the newest STAR WARS movie) and he was saying “Make like
30 short films if you can.”
Make as many mistakes as possible because that’s probably the biggest thing.
Because making movies is always sort of like success training.
Experiment, mess up a lot, and always go for the most ambitious projects.
Always try to approach something that is hard.
And I think a lot of people get so cautious about them, I think they are so afraid of
failure.
I think they are so terrified of making a movie that’s a little too dense or a little
too challenging for them to approach in a short schedule or with no money.
Because if you make something that is super ambitious and maybe you do totally fail, but
I would rather make something that’s ambitious and it challenged me so much and it trained
me for the next movies.
And perhaps maybe fail at it than make something that’s just two people talking to each other
and is just some easy movie just because it’s more economically realistic.
But I don’t think that’s going to train you.
I think they can train you on somewhat of a level but I think if you can do something
really ambitious in a very tight budget like someone like Robert Rodriguez or John Carpenter
or Edgar Wright even.
I mean those are guys that I look up to.
I understand that Robert Rodriguez and John Carpenter score their own music and do a lot
of their own stuff but their mentality about always going for the more ambitious project
and just creating a bunch because John Carpenter made so many short films like DARK STAR and
then Rodriguez made so many short films before he made EL MARIACHI and I just think that
short films are very important to do because I think if you completely neglect them, I
almost sort of think it’s like somewhat disrespectful I think to moviemaking because
what makes you think you’re so good to jump into a feature right away?
Scorsese made so many shorts even before Who’s That Knocking At My Door.
So I’m a very much pro short films and make as many as possible and just really screw
up as much as possible, make as many mistakes as possible.
Because one day you might make a movie that where everything just clicks but you’re
not going to be able to make that movie until you make those previous movies that you’ve
learned from all those mistakes and just don’t overthink things, just keep creating.
Keep making stuff.