Calling Cards.
Guy Ducker’s just posted an interesting blog, less about why people hate short films and more about why shorts can seem unattractive to directors.
He ends with the conclusion that if you set out with a clear sense of what you’re trying to achieve a short film can still be a beautiful thing and a valuable addition to your work. Proof of this popped into my inbox earlier today when I found that Virgin Media shorts have been kind enough to promote our film 0507 in their Friday newsletter.
0507 has also just won the audience award at the Crank Cookie Film Festival as well as being nominated for the Christopher Wetzel Award for Independent Film Comedy at the Just For Laughs Festival in Chicago and is also in competition in London’s own Rushes Soho Shorts festival.
Chris and I swore off short films after we made Hallo Panda, partly because we needed to focus our energies on our feature projects and partly because it felt like we’d done all there was to do. However adding 85 pages to your script easily adds a couple of years to your pre-production schedule and though we did steer clear of shorts for a couple of years we couldn’t keep our hands off for long.
What’s nice though is that it no longer feels like we’re making them to prove anything to anybody, rather we’re just in the lucky position of being able to pull a film like 0507 together just because it’s a perfect little idea that wanted to be made.
This was always the energy behind our best films anyway. Sure, in the past we may have needed to make films to prove that we could, but fundamentally our films have always worked best when the real inspiration was a delight in telling that story.
To get back to Guy’s blog, I’d say that one of the main reasons why audiences often get turned off by shorts is because of the culture of the “calling card” short film. It’s bad enough having to watch adverts for stuff I don’t want without also having to watch adverts for directors I’m unlikely to employ…
Anyway, good luck to everyone in the Virgin Media Shorts competition and best of luck to Guy and Lucy with the short that they’re planning together…
Guy Ducker June 6th, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Hi Ben,
I almost wish that calling card shorts were what’s putting off the public, unfortunately I think that only a very small proportion of the public have seen even one short film – not counting films of cute cats on YouTube. Once we get people watching short films, then they will be free to be put off by the calling cards!
That being said, I can absolutely understand and sympathise with the culture of showcase shorts. We agree that the best reason for making a short film is for the love of it or because you have something you need to say, but, sad to say, we live in an age where everything seems to have to justify its existence in economic terms. If you’re shelling out real money on a short I can understand why you’d want to get as much out of it as you can.
Besides, it’s not like the showcase short idea doesn’t work. I’m sure we can both think of examples where short films have helped a director’s pitch to get a feature made. In fact don’t we both hope that our shorts will help us towards our first features?
Best,
Guy
Ben Blaine June 7th, 2011 at 8:27 am
Yeah but that was never the plan. When we made Hallo Panda the short our feeling was that this was what the story was going to be, a long short film.
Panda is an interesting case actually because it’s a film that everyone else adores but which both Chris and I struggle with – because we see the longer, more wonderful thing that it’s going to be. We made it as a short because Film4 asked us to and that’s an opportunity we couldn’t turn down, and I’m glad we didn’t because it meant we were able to give that idea to people and let them fall in love with it. After all, none of our feature films that are just scripts already have a fan page set up by the fans…
But when we were making it, it felt like this was the one window for the story and our focus was purely on making it work as a longshort… often, frankly, to the detriment of it working as a trailer for the feature. If it had just been a calling card I’d have made it shorter, less ambitious and much slicker… but then I don’t think audiences would have connected with it in quite the way they have.
Guy Ducker June 7th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Interesting to hear that about Panda, you may be right. Then again, it’s also possible that the audience would have fallen in love with the film even at 10 mins, but I don’t know the specifics of the decisions you made, so it’s difficult to know.
It is however possible to make one film for a variety of motives, not all of them artistic or from the heart. Look at the number of great works of art that have been made on commission. Nobleman to painter: “paint me a crucifixion, to fit that wall – nothing too gloomy and can I be in it?”. The artist has taken those uninspiring parameters and produced a masterpiece.
I don’t think there need be any harm in choosing a short film project partly because you hope it will further your career. The real sin is when that concern is the only reason to shoot the film. As long as your prime motive when making a short is a desire to tell the story in the best way you can, even when that means cutting out your most carefully choreographed shots because they’re not needed, I don’t think secondary motives will be a problem.
Greg June 13th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Great short man! I was dying watching the guy’s expressions, trying to remember his girlfriend’s birthday. Way to keep it simple and still be entertaining.
I’ve found it incredibly challenging to write a decent short film. I’m the type that always seems to complicate short ideas so much that they turn into features or crumble under their own weight. I think the problem was (as you said) that I was trying to make them into calling cards for longer features. Once you start thinking up shorts that really only work as a short (like yours), I agree that you discover you want to tell the story for the story’s sake.
Again, love the short. Looking forward to checking out more from you!
Shorts According to Curly « Tales from the Cutting Room Floor June 15th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
[...] question partly depends on what you want it to do. Ben Blaine and I had a debate on his blog about the culture of ‘calling card’ short films. I don’t want to rehash that, save to say [...]