Anatomy of a Short Film

By definition of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a short film is “an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits.”

I’m happy to confirm that for this year’s portfolio project I will be delving into the world of short film ! And for my first real blog post concerning this endeavour I wanted to research what exactly a short film was. I am most interested today in learning how to structure one, and in learning how to successfully develop plots as well as characters.

So let's begin. Short films can be live-action, animated, computer generated, or a combination; I feel as though I will probably stick to a live-action short film but I have no intention of limiting myself to a medium just yet. It is crucial to note that a successful short film possesses a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In addition, due to the length limitation they generally utilize few locations - one or two- and have a limited amount of characters.

A tip I found from a Jodie Foster masterclass article is to start each scene as deep into the action as possible so you can develop the story with as much efficiency as possible and don’t waste time with unnecessary backstory or moments. Another piece of advice was to pick a simple premise and give the main character an extremely specific goal and potentially a short time frame to complete it. The rest of the components of a short film such as screenplay and creating a storyboard generally follows that of a feature film just a more condensed version.
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adieu

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