Is There an Ideal Length for a Film Festival Short?
Length is always a tricky issue when it comes to short films. Some advise that you should keep them as short and sweet as possible, others say you should let them be as long as they need to be to properly tell the story. Continuing the great conversation with HollyShorts co-founder Daniel Sol, Film Courage asks with the clip below “How long should a short film be?” Click through to check it out.
It’s clear that if you make a good film, it’s going to find its way into a festival somewhere, but as Daniel mentions, length can become an issue. You might find yourself in more festivals if you make a 5 minute short versus a 15 minute one. A lot of this is simply down to the math involved. If two movies are of similar quality, and both deserve to be in the festival, it’s only logical that the shorter film has a better shot, especially if there are multiple shorter films that could be programmed in place of that one longer movie.
There is also the subject of how long a film feels. A faster cut 20 minute film may work better in a shorts program than a very slow 10 minute film. These shorts programs aren’t just about the movies in the screenings, but how the screenings as a whole are put together. If you put a bunch of very slow films together, the audience is going to get restless fast, and it’s going to make people think twice about coming next year.
So what’s the takeaway from all of these clips? Know exactly the story you’re trying to tell, and tell it as well as you possibly can. You’ve only got so much time with a short film, so it’s probably best to save the genre-bending twists and turns for a feature. If you can tell the same story in 10 minutes that you can in 20, you might have a leg-up when the films are being programmed, because there are only so many shorts that can fit into one package.
If you want to enter the HollyShorts festival, there is still time left, so head on over to their website to learn more about their submission process.
What do you guys think about short film length for festival films?
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9 COMMENTS
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Matt on 03.19.13 @ 3:10PM
I’ve been working on a “short” film for a long time now, about a year. Currently it’s clocking in at 35 minutes including closing credits (which only run about 20 seconds). I’ve been seriously debating submitting it to festivals due to the run time alone. A lot of what I’ve read online kinda suggests not to bother. Is there anyone here that’s had any festival acceptances with a 35 minute film?
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Clark Nikolai on 03.19.13 @ 3:15PM
It’s an odd length. Many years ago I did what was supposed to be a 16mm feature and it ended up being only 31 minutes long. Some people liked it but it has only ever played once at a festival. A programmer for a Vancouver festival told me that they really liked it but that it was too long to put in a shorts program or before a feature and that they just couldn’t find anything of an hour long that fit it thematically.
There are many factors that programmers have to work with. It’s like being a DJ in some ways. One film affects the next one and so on.
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Matt on 03.20.13 @ 9:49AM
Yep, I guess so.
What’s frustrating is that the movie I’ve been working on can’t be cut down any further. Sure maybe a minute or maybe even two minutes. I tried it. But when I did, the movie became a hurtling onslaught of seizure-inducing cutting and the whole pacing becomes erratic. There’s no time for it to breath.
Maybe it’s just because I haven’t made a lot of movies yet that I feel this way. I’ll post it online when it’s finished and maybe some of this community can provide some feedback.
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Don’t care how long a short is as long as something interesting happens in the first 30 seconds, that’s going to make we want to watch a bit more of the film. So no pretentious credits or endless montage of SDOF shots at the top. Get to the story, and make it interesting very quickly.
The other problem with shorts is they’re marketed so badly. You need to be MORE to the point, with MORE of a twist. Unlike a hollywood film you don’t have lots of CGI, amazing explosions, & big CUs of global superstars, so all you really have is your story. Don’t make a trailer which is just a compilation of your best shots and a bit of shouty dialogue. Your average person needs more of a compelling reason, and that compelling reason still has to be something that can be articulated in one sentence.
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Oleg on 03.22.13 @ 7:22AM
You in US have very strange vision of ‘short”. Here in Europe, short film can be 40 minutes length. Oppositely, VERY short film (under 10 minutes) looks like unfinished or undeveloped project. Animation is exeption, but in our area festivals contains from 2 hour blocks with 6-10 movies. And no fee.
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Thanks for posting these, really informative especially since I’ve been submitting my short to festivals the past couple weeks (sadly, HollyShorts is out of my budget lol).
1 pingbacks
- Is There an Ideal Length for a Film Festival Short? | Film School Home Study on 03.18.13 @ 11:39PM
Running a film festival is all about filling screens and filling them for blocks of time, usually the length of a feature plus some clear-up/switch-over time. If I want to fill a screen with a program of shorts then I need around 10 short films of 10 mins each (100 mins + 15 mins clean-up/changeover) to fulfil the criteria of offering variety and filling the time slot.
If your film is over 10 mins including all credits, then it’s likely to get binned before it’s even screened. It’s cruel and heartless, we know, but with more than 600 short films submitted to our festival each year there will always be something else that fits the bill. Occasionally – and I mean VERY occasionally – something longer will get through, but it has to be of such extraordinary execution – and that means idea/script/acting/lighting/editing/direction/CGI etc. all have to be amazing – for this to happen and, frankly, most short films are just never going to make the grade in that way.
A good short film should be a set-up and a punchline – get in/get out – tell your story in a few words and few shots as possible and don’t make the mistake of thinking your long arty shots are impressing anybody. They’re not. Almost every short film I’ve ever seen has been too long by at least one-third so seriously, do yourself and your festival programmer a favour and keep it short.