Each year, Encounters features several features amongst its programme of short films. These films, from alumni of the festival or favoured filmmakers demonstrate successful transitions from short to feature filmmaking, as well as the appeal of moving back and forth between varying lengths. We spoke to the filmmakers who have features at Encounters, about the differences between short and feature filmmaking, their experiences with the industry and their thoughts on Encounters.

It is not surprising that filmmakers tend toward perfectionism. A feature film will devour years of your life and will quite possibly outlive you – naturally you want to get it right. Of course there’s a less rational reason too. A film is a house built in a storm on a geological fault line, there are so many things that can and will go wrong the desire to perfect what few elements you can control quickly becomes pathological. Making sure the guy in the background wears the right tie won’t stop the lead walking out, but at least something in the scene will be right…

Why are you making a short film? Shorts are not abbreviated feature films so as a training for your longer work they’re about as useful as preparing for a Grand Prix by riding in the Grand National.

The BFI’s London Film Festival have unleashed their programme for this year’s edition, and as well as offering a bumper programme of regular features, shorts, experimental works and newly restored archive treasures, they’re building a temporary 800 seat theatre to home more film fans in the capital. The 2016 edition takes a special focus on diversity, directing the annual Network @ LFF for emerging filmmakers specifically towards minority entrants, opening with Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom, and closes with the commencement of the BFI’s three month focus on black actors – Black Star.

Besides the obvious, there is no good reason to attempt to start your film career by making shorts. Granted, the obvious reason remains something of an ace – they are shorter, but not only are short stories harder to tell well, telling them is little like telling long stories. Perfecting the art of the short is definitely an end in itself.

Last week, we spoke with three Shooting People members who have films included in Encounters Short & Animation Festival later this month. Here, we hear from two more – the talented, comedy focused filmmaker Kate Herron and Finland-born, Edinburgh-based new artist filmmaker Katri Vanhatalo.

Arriving at the end of September is Bristol’s popular Encounters Festival, one of the UK’s premiere stages for short film and animation. To get you in the spirit for all things short film, we’ve spoken with five Shooting People members who have films included in the competition, about the paths they took into filmmaking, the films they’ve made, and what they’re working on next. Here’s the first three.

Matt Ross is an American actor, writer and director who has managed to straddle the two worlds with remarkable success. As well as juggling leading roles in film and television, he’s directed several shorts and two features in the last few years – the most recent of which, the Viggo Mortensen starring Captain Fantastic has proved both a critical and audience favourite, winning multiple awards on it’s festival circuit and drawing an impassioned response from viewers.

The many contradictions of screenwriting are perhaps best summed up in the oxymoronic word itself. There are a vast number of creative processes that go into the final assembly of work for the screen but writing isn’t one of them. Films are aural and visual events that occur across a set span of time. None of these elements exist on paper. Beyond the title page a script contains nothing that transfers directly to the screen. People often refer a script as a blue-print for the film but a building’s design does at least share a visual similarity with the finished work. This throws up a number of problems and contradictions. The one I’ve struggled with the most is understanding what the real job of screenwriting actually is.

It’s infuriating that a general theory of anything should be named with such a pair of of misleadingly narrow words as “Hero’s” and “Journey”. We should, of course, have the imagination to use Joseph Campbell’s narrative archetype as the metaphor he intended, but the Dungeons & Dragons tone runs throughout (time for step 9, seizing the sword!) In 2016 it seems impossibly juvenile to base our entire narrative culture around the myth of a man leaving his village to adventure, only to return triumphantly with an elixir.