What is a short film?

A short film can be considered to be a film that is not long enough to be classed as being a feature length film. Short films have no constraints, they can be of any genre, any length so long as it is not long enough to become a feature film they can last between a minute to 45 minutes or more. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes of less, including all credits". However, many short films don't last that long, such as; "Get off My Land", "My Beast Friend" and "The Crush" which are all less than 40 minutes.

Many production companies that produce feature length films have made shorts such as Pixar, whom have made a number of short films and they even started off making short films before they ventured into making feature length films such as "Toy Story". Below is the first Pixar short film, it clearly has a beginning, middle and end although it is only just over 2 minutes long. Since this was released in 1986 Pixar have made numerous shorts along with feature length films.

 

 

There are many difficulties in telling a story in such a short period of time, there is a risk of making the plot too complicated so you won't be able to explain everything within the short amount of time you have. However, you can also leave the film on a cliffhanger making the audience think about what they saw. Or like many short films I have researched you can do a short comedy, where everything is resolved or sometimes not. This can be seen in the "Get off My Land" short, this has a clear beginning, a couple taking a walk in the countryside, a middle, they get into an altercation with the farmer about the public footpath, and an end, the farmer shoots both of them then realises that they were in fact on the public footpath.