SpoutBlog: film & community

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.

Comments

super excited you're visitng my home-state
hope you're having a good time
dare you to stand on the capitol steps and yell, "Gig 'em Aggies!!!"
double-dare you

Posted by Kate Mulder on October 23, 2005 10:18 PM

Reading this post made me suddenly aware of an interesting discrepancy in my tastes and preferences. I have always been a huge fan of short fiction--I enjoy it and collect it considerably more than I do novels--yet the short film simply doesn't occupy a place in my world. Short films are not respected as an important genre, and they're not available, but I've suddenly become intrigued to find and see as many short films as possible. They appeal to me for the same reasons short stories do: For their density and compactness. For the acute awareness one has of the many details that were not included out of a necessity of the form. For the rich ambiguity that emerges from this carefully balancing act—what to include and what not to include. And ultimately, short stories leave me in awe of how powerfully they transport me and communicate something to me in such a short amount of time. Let's face it, novelists have it easy in comparison.

So if writers like Flannery O'Connor and O. Henry and Eudora Welty could build impressive careers on their amazing command of the short story form, why don't the names of people who focus on short films roll off our tongues? I think what Paul suggests is exactly right: there is no comparable outlet to the literary magazine or the published collection of short stories. There is no O. Henry prize for short films. There isn't a Paul Auster out there collecting short films the way he collected true stories about small, turning point moments in people's lives, and then turning them into an amazing book (I Thought My Father Was God).

But why not? Why can't someone become widely known for her short films and then continue to make short films her entire, rich and famous career simply because that's what she loves and what she's good at? Why can't I go to my movie rental store and get cool compilations of short films? Why can't someone organize a National Story Project like Auster's that focuses on sharing glimpses of compelling narrative through film? I would love to see these things change. Anyone up for doing something about it?

Posted by Kristin Tennant on October 24, 2005 12:10 PM

It reminds me of the way still life and landscape painting was treated by the European salons in the 19th century when the place serious painters were trying to get to was the great history paintings with plenty of refrences back to classic Greek statuary. These paintings cramed with figures doing important dramatice things were the ones taken seriously while the painting of a table top with a handfull of scattered apples just didn't carry the same weight untill people like Cezzane came along and the people good with words and explanations like Grutrude Stien could champion a new way of seeing timeless truth in small everday places.

Posted by Brenda Beerhorst on October 25, 2005 10:59 PM

I've decided to give some serious thought to renting a digital camera and shooting some shorts next year. I have three finished short scripts that could just do with a little polish. I'm getting a second computer that will be ideal for editing. And maybe I'll submit them for festivals, maybe I'll just make them for myself. But I have a website, so I could post them myself if I wanted. I could send them to atomfilm or iFilm. Or I could just send DVDs out to friends.

I think that the short film martket and audience are about to explode with the advent of new technology. Several people at the festival dismissed the possibility but their arguments for doing so sounded awfully naive. Their main point is that nothing will compare to the theater experience, which means that they haven't watched a DVD on a 20" display with Soundsticks recently. I checked out the video iPod last night as well and the resolution on that small screen blew me away.

But they missed the important point that nothing costs as much as the theater experience, either. Tickets alone are ten bucks, gas is $3/gallon, snacks prices are astronomical (and not remotely worth the money). And I don't know how many parents I know who haven't seen an adult-targeted film in years because they can't afford a babysitter. The Alamo Drafthouse cinemas have hit on exactly what it takes to keep people coming out to the movies night after night, and if there is someone out there in Texas who hasn't been to one, your loss dude. But I can't imagine that any of the big chains are ever going to figure out why Alamo and innovators like them are kicking ass on revenues while still opening their screens to indies, shorts, etc.

Posted by Constance Reader on October 26, 2005 07:54 AM

On short films.

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