Okay, let me start this whole thing off with a disclaimer. I'm an indie
filmmaker who likes big concept and blockbuster movies too. I know,
the horror! Listen, I find a lot of us "serious" filmmakers may be
programmed never to speak of such heresy, but it's okay, I'm not
afraid. There's such a thing as big concept, awesome movies. There are
also bad, artsy movies. Either way, all types of genres have good and
bad movies, but my absolute favorites tend to be the big ones with
heart. So even though I may have just lost half my audience, I thought
I'd poke a little fun at the short film genres no one seems to talk
about. I find short films tend to fall into some of these
categories: dating, mob, creepy, insanely tragic, and artsy. Yes,
these
are new genre categories I sort of just made up. But really, most
short
films (not all of course) are done by young directors in their early
20's and end up falling into these categories. Allow me to explain:
Dating: The dating category can consist of what it's like to date for
someone in their 20's. They may center around games people play, shaky
advice from friends, why
men/women suck, or maybe it's about someone who just can't get a date.
I've seen a lot
of these. Sometimes these shorts are filled with gratuitous sex that
makes you wonder if some guy just exploited a bunch of his friends just
to see what they would look like naked. Sometimes you see a main
character who's confused and gets advice from the Yoda of relationships,
either their best friend or a stranger. Yup, a stranger. Sometimes
Yoda turns out to be an idiot in these things, unaware by the filmmaker
who just got through college, a cesspool for bad advice in dating.
Another storyline may consist of some womanizer or cheater who learns
his lesson, ending with a slow zoom out shot of him winding up alone.
Whatever the case, the problem with these, I find, is that you can't
setup a really good, memorable ending. At best, the guy you think will
get the girl doesn't, or the guy does get the girl in the end, even if
he doesn't deserve her. It also works the opposite way, maybe with an
uptight woman who is encouraged by her promiscuous friend to relax and
have fun before she gets old. My advice is if your short script starts
looking like this: do something seriously unexpected. What is that exactly? That's up to you.
Mob: It amazes me how I can't attend a festival without a few short
films starring the mafia. It's a pretty obscure genre these days in
feature films (yet by no means has disappeared), but man, I see so many
of these in short form. One of the biggest mistakes here is it usually
involves a gang of 7 stereotypical mobsters who look like teenagers in
sunglasses and a suit. Anyone with me on this? How weird is it when
these bad-ass guns are pulled out, one guy is begging for his life, and
they all look like high school kids with sunglasses and a suit on?!
Usually the villain in this is a hoarse-voiced, overweight mobster with
slicked back hair and one foot in the grave. Okay, I'm the opposite of
being in the world of the mob, but really? Is it really like this?
Man, the more I think about it, what do I know? Then again, these guys
look like teenagers in sunglasses and suits yelling at some old
overweight guy... it just seems wrong to me. Even worse, they may have
"just mustaches." Come on, "just mustaches?" No one in this world
looks good in a "just mustache." They're the facial hair of mullets.
They were in style from 1975-1985, God knows why, and somehow they live
on to the 21st century?! Okay, this genre also may move over into a
more teenage gangs kind of thing. I actually like these a bit better,
because they are supposed to be about kids. Anyway, the short
film mob genre usually has solid production value, there's an f-bomb
every few seconds, and there's a lot of shouting and yelling. I get it,
a lot of filmmakers want to do the action thing, and we all love
action. The genre is great in that way, because we don't have time to
establish much else but that world in 20 minutes. It's not like we have the
money (or the rights) to have Spiderman shoot across the screen and
knock out a guy dressed like a lizard without making people laugh for
the wrong reasons because there's no budget. If you go the mob/gang
route, make sure it looks very, very good and if possible, give it a surprise
ending. I say this a lot and it's easier said than done, but you'll
see a lot of shorts at festivals like yours if it's too predictable.
Creepy: Okay, this usually works the best for me with short films.
Creepy films can either be spine tingling or flat out grotesque,
depending if you want to go with eerie or horror. I like these because
if you can do the cool anthology thing, such as "The Twilight Zone"
did. It's very natural and much easier to come up with some twist
ending that can blow audiences away in this genre. I find a common
mistake with these is when the setup takes up half the film. That's not
a good idea. Too much of the same thing will bore people, and suddenly
audiences find they've been watching people creeping around an old
abandoned house for 10 minutes of your 15 minute film. I'm not a fan of
this at all. To be fair, this is done all the time in feature films, so maybe
I'm wrong. Still, with so little time, instead of having one setup
that is good, have a setup, spin it on its head, do it again towards the
end, then one more time to really freak everyone out while keeping them
guessing. If we're going creepy mystery thriller, keep it as
mysterious as possible. An audience that can predict the end by the the
time the setup is introduced is never a good thing. Another thing is
executing the gore. I may be stating the obvious but you'd be
surprised... no rubber masks and buckets of blood. If you don't have
the money to make it look good, don't do it.
Insanely Tragic: Yeah, these are fun. Okay, not really. As
someone who isn't in love with tragedy to begin with, I really think
some filmmakers are having a competition on how much like absolute crap
they can make us feel. It'll be about some man who has flashbacks about
how his father used to whip him with a belt when he was bad and his
mother watched while drinking Vodka straight from a funnel. Then you'll
hear his wife has been missing for days and the search is on. Then you
see a flashback where he had to kill his father with his mom's Samurai
sword, which was hanging from the wall next to photos of the dad
slapping himself in the face. I mean, these things get so, so dark.
Then we'll have hope he'll find his wife alive, but she's dead, next to
his brother and sister, who were forced to shoot themselves. Then we get
that fun finale of the main character killing himself off camera, right
after a melodramatic scene of hysterics and fake tears. The theater
leaves quietly as we all contemplate suicide on ourselves for sitting
through the most depressing story of all time. Another kind of
insanely tragic buckets of fun short film may be a trippy story about a
heroin addict who hates his life and we see why as he obsessively works
to get his next fix. We see how he started using because of his evil
friends or parents, then we watch as he slowly overdoses in the end.
Yay! Pizza for everyone! Okay, obviously I'm not a fan of the insanely
tragic walk through hell on a stick. Instead of insanely tragic, maybe
just try regular tragic so that the audience actually learns something
from the main character's journey in the story. There's always a place
to shock audiences in film, but it's our responsibility as filmmakers to
at least have a point.
Artsy: Artsy movies are a dream for a director of photography. They
usually rely on the visual aspect of storytelling. Some of these are
awesome. Some of them, I think, can really end up to be the most boring
of the boring if they don't work. There's a fine line to artistic and
self-indulgent/over-the-top. The best artistic films, in my opinion,
are the ones you catch on to subliminally while being driven by a strong
story. First off, this style usually commands insanely extreme close
ups. You'll get to know the eyes of the main character very well,
including the left part of their cheek, the length of their fingernails,
and every gray hair growing in their eyebrows. It might even be about
an artist who is obsessed with painting, writing, or photography in a
borderline creepy fashion. Then the art of the artist will be featured
more than the film itself, sucking any story there was out of it. It
may even be a movie about making a movie! Usually these stories end
abruptly with the audience wondering, "That's it?"... because nothing
really happens. We just see things. My advice here, though it may
seem obvious, is have a story and make it the main focus. One of the
great things about movies is that you have art within the art, so don't
lose track of what art is being featured here: filmmaking. So, if you
decide to go artsy, visually driven stories can truly come out cool,
just don't lose focus of the overall story and make it stand out.
Really, I'm just poking fun at some genres that really can be great
sometimes, as long as they're original and/or visually interesting. I'm
sure I missed some other genres that tend to pop up at film festivals
every once in a while. The important thing is to make a short film
that speaks volumes, that way you won't let anyone let you go
unnoticed. So if you haven't and need to show someone what you can do,
go for it and do a short film. Get noticed!
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