History of Short Films

By James Bruce

By definition a short film is a feature that is no longer than 40 minutes including end credits but ideally 10 minutes or less. A short film may be either professional or amateur standard as long as it fits within these time constraints.Other names for a short film are “featurette”, however this is often coined for slightly longer films that are not quite feature length, and “short subject”. The latter name was slowly outmoded as it implies that the film is not stand alone and is instead a small section of a larger feature or a subsidiary of a larger feature.

What is a short film?

By using the definition we can categorise many if not all of the first films as short films, they were by the most part within the time constraint. Due to the technology being of a pioneering nature it was extremely expensive for film makers to make anything longer than a few minutes. As a consequence films were shown in the cinema as a set. A group of films, not necessarily similar, that would have been shown at the same time so that movie goers get the best experience for their money and film makers get opportunities that were unavailable before. This is because the only option for film makers before this were in the form of Mutoscopes, basically a mechanical flip books showing cells on rotating spindle.

In the beginning…*Sagely voice

CoexistenceWhile short films were on the rise many film makers wanted to make films even longer and the “feature” was born. These were phenomenally popular and forced short films to take the back seat and be shown along side a feature hence the term “Short subject” being applied.However from this other genres were developed as people took more to seeing a comedy sketch or cartoon reel in between the main features rather than a traditional short film and so short film sketches were born. During the silent film era it was common place for many film companies to have a defined “short film” department especially during the 1920’s however as films developed into the “Talkies” they became more and more rare.

Modern era… and beyond…

Student films… no more need be said. I’m kidding there are entire parts of Indian cinema dedicated to short films along with animation companies that specialise in short films and up and coming film companies. It is an easy way for small companies to make a name for themselves. Whether most of these are student film companies is neither here no there.However due to short films being very set in the domain of students there are many examples some funny, some just sad, of film students making satire or parody or even more common thrillers, horrors or gritty reality films. The reason for this is because the are cheap and anyone can do it, the down side is that as definitions develop and this becomes more common place the meaning of short film, in the future, may be “student satirical production”… and then the world will end.