Kim Adelman, Author/Filmmaker/Instructor: And often in film festivals they'll tell
you the ticket to buy at the film festival is the short compilations
because that's where the really most exciting filmmaking is happening.
Film Courage: What is the short film?
Kim: What is the short film is a really good question because a short film can be anything
but I think what defines a short film obviously is the links it's a short film and there's actually a
few organizations that do have a definite defined length of what how long a short film should be
for example if you want to be uh considered for an Academy Award the academy says a
short film is I believe the academy is 40 minutes or less for narrative
documentary sometimes has different lengths for their films quite often for film festivals in the
application they'll say specifically how long the short film can be disqualifies for short
film usually it's 50 minutes or less although personally I think if you're making a 50 minute
long short film that's a too long of a short film short films should be short in my opinion
do what percentage actually it's way past a half hour I mean it isn't generally it's 15 minutes or
under well a lot of people because they see short films that are longer they think that's how long a
short film should be so they've seen student films that the university requires the film to be a
certain length because it's a learning experience right so you want to do a longer film so you get
the full experience of making something you're not making something on half a day and it's 30 seconds
long or something that so when people are used to seeing these kind of longer short films they think
oh that's what makes a good short film a short film should be 20 minutes long or 30 minutes long
or they worry people won't take them seriously if their film is not that long but truthfully
because I've seen a ton of films on the festival circuit I feel if you're beyond 12 minutes you're
just too long and quite often for dramatic films 12 minutes is a nice sweet spot aim for 12 minutes
or less I'm always a big fan of or less but if it's a comedy short or a short you expect
to have be on the internet nobody's going to be watching a 12-minute short on the internet at the
internet we have no attention and we want to be short short short and comedies as with features
if you're too long you outstay your welcome you should be short fast and funny has it changed
as as different uh social media platforms have given us more short content well also when you
say what defines a short film things that people are making for on social media are shorts right I
wouldn't necessarily call them films per se but they're short pieces of content so when TikTok
started it was extremely short teeny teeny teeny is what it was supposed to be and there used to
be a service called Vine and that was six seconds long and that I would consider those shorts not
necessarily films but short pieces of content so it is amazing how much you can tell in a short
short time period of time but even TikTok realized they had to start giving people more time that
it's really hard to do such to actually do some kind of storytelling in a very very very very one
minute or less time frame having said that I've seen great short films that are a minute or less
what draws you to the short film genre I'm kind of unique in the sense that I started out the first
thing I ever produced was a feature and then I started producing short films and people always
say don't you want to go back to features and I love shorts it's features features are hard short
films are fun fast and easy to do and that's where I think the most exciting storytelling
is and often in film festivals they'll tell you the ticket to buy at the film festival is the
short compilations because that's where the really most exciting filmmaking is happening
unique voices are happening unique things that you can do with cameras and fun off-the-wall
things all happen in short films first because we can it's a format to experiment in to take
chances in to do crazy things and you don't have that same pressure of having to do a 90
minute storyline with three acts and characters who have to develop and all the things that you
have to make happen for a feature with the short film you can even take a small smallest idea and
do it great and well and crazy and unexpected and surprising and so that's what I love so much about
short films every year there are so many made and every year there are so many that are just amazing
that you've never seen anything that before they're funny they're surprising they're touching
they're moving and so many feature films I'm sure everybody watching this has had that experience
that you pay your money to go see in the theater and you feel very disappointed afterwards you're
it's the same old same old or oh I was expecting it to be so much better often because the trailer
kind of sold you on how great it was going to be because the trailer is showing you all the best
moments but the resulting feature is long and not great where short films rarely disappoint
has there been a Resurgence in shorts or short filmmaking has never really gone
away well the thing about short filmmaking is uh it's always been around right when
actually when when filmmaking started it was short films there was one reelers right
that those were the silent films that people could make and the birth of films was shorts
um and then they graduated related to more and more reels that became a full-length feature so
short filming is always always been there and students make shorts all the time so in that
sense it's always been there as well but what has made it very Democratic what has made it easy and
accessible and Universal to everybody is now that we have something in our pockets that are cameras
that we can shoot films on and that has never been the case before so every single person practically
has the ability to shoot something and that's a miracle now whether you're actually a Storyteller
that's something completely different but you actually can put your camera up film something
put a title on it put it out on YouTube put it out on social media and you've made a short film so
in that sense there's more short films being made than ever and we often use the statistics from the
Sundance Film Festival because they're very uh out with public with their numbers and every year they
say this many short films have been submitted to the Sundance Film Festival and it has grown
exponentially when I was making short films very small amount because people were still shooting on
film and then again we can shoot digitally and now we can shoot on so many different formats but so
many people are making short films so last year the people that applied to this year's Sundance
Film Festival last year they were obviously making their films during the pandemic but still over ten
thousand people made short films and submitted to Sundance so you can see that's a lot and that's
of course only people who submitted to Sundance but that's a lot of people making short films
how many types of short films are there short films that can incorporate anything so when you
say types it's what does that mean exactly does that mean live action animation documentary those
are kind of or mixed media um or those are buckets that you can say and that's kind of what way
um people classify short films for example the academy when they do their short films Awards it
is live action animation documentary but when you say short films does it mean something a
narrative short that has done a traditional short filmmaking way is it something that is a parody is
it something that is an Adaptive short story that has turned into a short there's so many different
kinds of shorts within those buckets and that's again what I love about short films is basically
anybody can say something what they've made is a short nobody's going to stop you because there's
no official board that says this is a short this is a short you could decide I'm going to
make something I'm deciding it's a short and here it is it's out in the world so for Sundance 10
000 people submitted short films this last year for consideration for the film festival
what were those 10 000 short films how do you define what they were obviously the programmers
watched ten thousand and they could answer more accurately what they saw amongst those different
things but sometimes it is literally people who have no clue what they're doing and they just
say oh I've made a short film because I ran a push record on my camera and I pushed stopped
and that's what it is and they submit it and again I'm not saying that is not a short film
um but it might not be something that's worth our while watching
and then there's the definition of a vlog which could have typically the length of a short but
there is that there's it's someone speaking to the camera as if they're zooming with you right
so what is that a short film per se but what if it was with an actor who was that was written and it
was something that had a definite beginning middle and end so it wasn't a legitimate Vlog but it was
a story that was told in the format of a vlog and it has a title that I would consider that a short
film but a actual real Vlog I would not consider a short film in the same way you would say is a
news broadcast a short film however I would used to always say this bruter film from the
Kennedy assassination could that be a documentary short that everybody had seen around the world
is that a short I don't know maybe it's just a news feature what's the difference between a two
to four minute short and a 20 minute short well the difference between a two minute short and 20
minutes short obviously is running time but it doesn't necessarily mean that a two minute short
isn't as good as a 20 minute short or that a 20 minute short should be taken more seriously than
a two-minute short because I've seen amazing films that were two minutes long and I've seen amazing
films that were 20 minutes long I've also seen films that are 20 minutes long that should not
have been 20 minutes long and one of the main criticism of anyone who deals with short films
professionally maybe they're a TV programmer or they're a program for for a festival is that short
films are too long the problem is many people write and direct and edit and produce the short
film themselves so they're a one-man band and they've done everything which is great because
it's a terrific learning experience but they're often not good editors or because they also wrote
it and shot it that they can't tell what they need to take out or not and with a short film
concise concise edit down we we paid attention to every single moment in a short film because every
single moment is important so quite often that 20 minute long film has really only enough story
for 12 minutes per se but the filmmaker can't see because they're too close to it and they've
touched every single part of it what can be taken out to make it shorter so I personally when I see
a 20 minute long film I'm watching it going oh this should have been shut down this should have
been cut down that's too much there's there I also have a thing called feature film pacing and that's
because we've grown up watching feature films and television and that's so naturally that's
our pacing when we watch things we expect them to go in that space well film has 90 minutes
or a TV show that has 42 minutes has a lot of time to set up a lot of information and do a
lot of things where short film doesn't have all that time and a short film you should be paying
attention to every single moment so quite often a 20-minute long film has feature film pacing where
they'll spend way too much time at the beginning with a long credit opening sequence that for
feature you have to do contractually but for short nobody wants to watch that we don't need to we
don't want to we want to get right into the story I used to have a friend that we'd go to festivals
together and he'd be every short film starts with somebody walking somewhere in a short film no
you're already there and then we'd watch and we'd be sure enough somebody's walking somewhere no in
a feature sure you can walk somewhere you can stop at the store you can chat with friends and then
you'll get to where you want to go but in a short film you are already there and we're already going
every single moment counts in a short film so in the similarity of let's say a novel a novella and
a short story there's rules that apply to each each length of a manuscript exactly so a short
film a short story there's a certain style that goes for a short story and we know when we're
reading it it's only going to go a certain amount of pages and we know it's going to have an ending
that's going to come up kind of quickly so we're interested in where where that ending is going to
come and it was very rare that a short story can be expanded to being a novella or even a novel
nobody reads the short and goes they really have a novel here maybe you should expand it sometimes
it happens but it's rare that it does so for a short film it has its own style and it has its
own thing that we're expecting from it and then yeah maybe Novella would be those 50-minute shorts
which usually isn't documentary that it's more a TV episode that just happens to be a documentary
and we're used to that too from from watching TV documentaries that are that long but it's totally
acceptable to have 70 minute doc maybe you have a long story you need to convey but not enough
to make it full 90 minutes and cruel it would have been cool to cut that story down to half
an hour or 20 minutes it has to be 50 minutes or 40 minutes I think documentaries a whole another
kettle of fish but again with short films anything goes you can do whatever you want and if you come
up with a story that only works in 10 minutes then do it in 10 minutes if you come up a story
that you have to take 40 minutes to do and that truly is as long as it needs to be then go for it
or maybe it really is a feature and maybe that 10 minutes you've made is to kind of hook people into
realizing that there's actually a feature in here so there's quite a lot of short films that are
that they're kind of proof of concept or a little teaser of what the feature could be right and this
is just a side note but I think the LA Times is now done in this new short docs that they have yes
New York Times has did it first uh and those are very very popular and then obviously just times
it's not doing too but what anybody who wants to give credit to short films and show short films
more power to them uh because that's kind of the hardest thing is to get people to see your film
so if there's some kind of organization a film festival or a imprint the New York Times opdocs
or the LA time stocks that's just so fabulous they're putting them out there they're getting
a promotion because truthfully nowadays the easiest thing is to make a film this is for shorts
and for features the hardest thing is to get distribution and to get people to watch your film.