I spent the morning here in Austin going to panel discussions around short films. Here are some basic points made again and again:

• Keep it simple.
• Focus on tone and theme, not plot.
• A good short film will not make a good feature film, they’re two different genres.

Really, good short films and good short stories are very similar. They are both very compact, built on tone and theme, and lead the audience to a singular and-hopefully-profound experience. Short stories found an audience through venues like magazines and literary journals. The theater has never been a fertile venue for short films to grow in.

Unanimously, the consensus of the panels is that the short form is more of a way for filmmakers to hone their chops and build credibility (i.e. the short film is a calling card) in order to get to a feature film project. So the takeaway is, "Make short films that are not features, but the feature is really the ultimate goal for working in the short form."

It’s distressing. Short films are definitely a great way to learn the tools of feature filmmaking, I don’t argue that. What bothers me is how obvious it is that short film is it’s own genre, but is widely considered a lesser alternative to feature length films. Whenever one of the panelists mentioned a good short film and anybody in the audience asked where they could find it, the same answer always came back: I have no idea.

Even the filmmakers on the panel didn’t have copies available of their own short films. With the exception of showing on a site like atomfilm.com, which they all agreed is a terrible way to view short films because of the genre’s inherent reliance on tone and nuance, they said it’s simply too difficult to try and distribute their short work. Economics is what stands in the way of short films reaching an audience.

Shorts have no commercial weight in theaters. However, I can’t help but believe that we are on the cusp of a time when short films can be given more regard and looked at as a genre that stands on it’s own. The speed at which word of mouth now spreads on the internet and an internet store’s ability to carry most any film should give the short form more of a platform to be respected as something apart from feature film. I think in the future it will actually be more economical-even profitable-for a filmmaker to sell their short films online. I don’t believe filmmakers need to wait for video download to take off before their short works can be sold. I think they just need a simple, low-cost way to market and sell a DVD.

Personally there are  handful of short films I’ve seen at festivals that I would count as some of my favorite films. I have no idea where they are. I’m looking forward to Spout helping to reconnect those filmmakers and their films with me. And since I’m here, in 2003 their was an Indian-American NYU student who showed a film at Sundance about two Indian men who meet on the subway. If anyone knows who he is and where I can find his film please let me know.