Unlike the feature film, in the United States the short film has strong link-ages to noncommercial arts—the short story, the poem, the painting, the photograph.. Whether the filmmaker ch
Trang 1the narrative Metaphor, parable, allegory, in short, a more literary approach
to narrative is closer to a poetic approach, as opposed to the more realistic approach found in the North American examples mentioned earlier
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SHORT FILM
The short film is crucial, not simply as a format suitable for portfolio devel-opment It is important for three enduring reasons: its proximity to other arts, its cost, and its enhanced capacity for the voice of the writer and the director First, we will address the proximity of the short film to the other arts Unlike the feature film, in the United States the short film has strong link-ages to noncommercial arts—the short story, the poem, the painting, the photograph Consequently, in both form and content, the short film is adap-tive to a broader band of creaadap-tive goals The short film can address a moment
as the photograph does; a mood, as the poem does; or a deep, reflective observation, as the short story so often has The form consequently is far freer in its creative parameters than is the long film
A second and obvious consideration for making the short film is its cost
No “stars” are required, and given the noncommercial nature of the short film, locations and extras can be kept minimal to suit the story and the budget of the filmmaker Not mentioned, but equally important, is format flexibility—a choice of 16mm, or video in various formats from beta SP to digital to half-inch All are used for the shorts Budgetary considerations may dictate the recording format, but improvements in transfers and print-ing suggest that the exhibition format for the short film is also flexible Voice continues to be a critical element Whether the filmmaker chooses
to use a genre that highlights voice (the fable, the satire, the docudrama, the experimental narrative) or a more traditional melodrama or situation comedy where voice is more masked, the more natural fit of the short film
to metaphor implies the greater potential of the short film for a stronger sense of voice
In addition, short films have been the starting point for significant
film-makers John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) began with Terminus Roman Polanski (The Pianist) began with Two Men and a Wardrobe George Lucas
(Star Wars) began with THX1138 Each of these films experiments with form
and content, using a powerful voice that ultimately reached large audiences and that thematically links the filmmakers’ later work to those short films
THE PARALLELS IN DOCUMENTARY
The documentary shares with the short film its noncommercial history Consequently, each uses a broader band of actual and potential material In
Trang 2part it also characterizes each as a less expensive and thus more available form of expression The two forms also share an important goal: the deep desire to say something, to affect their audience That conviction to affect the audience is enabled by the relationship each form has to voice
As mentioned earlier, the link of the short film to metaphor and to fable enhances voice In the case of the documentary, however, it is its unique structure as well as the fact that it looks real that lends gravitas to the enter-prise It’s about real people and real events, so the intention of the filmmaker
is to portray a real world as opposed to an imagined world And as a result, the documentary seems more important
Turning to the structure of the documentary, its difference is almost imme-diately apparent The documentary looks like a case upon which its maker has taken a decisive point of view Think of it as the presentation of a social, political, or economic problem Implied in the voice of the filmmaker is what
he or she thinks is the desired solution Every sequence makes another point about the problem The key is to emotionalize that problem through our rela-tionship with a character or characters victimized by it Few dramatic shorts unfold in this way Either character is a vehicle for voice (the fable) or the vehicle for our identification (melodrama) We will have something of a jour-ney as we follow the dramatic arc of the narrative Unlike the documentary, however, the structure is not driven by the need to make a case
Finally, the documentary, because of its relatively low cost, has been a cen-ter of innovation In style, in sound, in its relentless attachment to “real lives,” the documentary has been far more interested in innovation than its more commercial counterpart Here too, the parallels between the documen-tary and the short film are striking
THE PARALLELS IN EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO
The parallels between the short film and the experimental film and video are even more striking As in the case of the documentary, the experimental film
or video offers cost advantages over the dramatic narrative In addition, the history of experimental film and video has been marked by a willingness to take creative risks—a quality that affiliates these forms with innovation The experimental film and video forms are, as a result, as much a center for invention as the documentary
Because experimental film and video put a greater emphasis on form or style than content, one can frame the genre as using style and content in a dialectical fashion or simply to see the form obsessed solely with style The consequences are as follows:
1 A form in which premise, character, and plot are highly simplified
2 A form in which voice derives from the primacy of style over content
Trang 33 A form in which resolution or the result of the use of a plot is supplanted by an open-endedness
4 An embrace of metaphor
Do these qualities have their analogue in the short film? To a certain extent, they do Short films rely on simplicity in characterization and the deployment of plot They tend to embrace metaphor And short films also tend to deploy a powerful voice—which leaves us with the degree of style employed in the short film
Although the experimental film and video embrace style as the central quality of the genre, the short film varies in the degree of that embrace Although it is true that style is very important in the short film, it needn’t be the exclusive defining characteristic that it is in the experimental genres Style will be less important should the filmmaker opt for a melodrama, but
it will become more important if the filmmaker opts for a fable or a
docud-rama or indeed an experimental narrative
Nevertheless, the parallels between the experimental film and video and the short film remain striking
THE SHORT SHORT FILM—THE COMMERCIAL
The obvious characteristic about the commercial is how little time there is to tell
a story Nevertheless, there is character and plot in many 30-, 60-, or 90-second commercials Several characteristics of these have had considerable influence
on the short film Foremost of these characteristics is that the commercial needs
to find a visual solution to character and to plot In addition, the style must be strong but simple, and it has to observe the economy of the narrative
Another influence that devolves from commercials is the use of humor Of course, humor is widely used in every film narrative form but again, the commercial doesn’t have the time to build character and plot So the humor must be presented in an exaggerated form A man finds out he has lost his job as his boss on the elevator offers it to an “eager” and “younger” person All this happens on the trip up to his office
Another notable characteristic of the short short film is surprise—a toddler wearing the smock and stethoscope of a physician, the use of an animal to comment on human behavior, and so on Surprise and exaggeration are both qualities of the commercial that have increasingly migrated into the short film
THE NONLINEAR FILM
Another directional influence on the short film is the nonlinear film The non-linear feature film that I refer to takes two forms: the structural nonnon-linear film,
Trang 4such as Anderson’s Magnolia and Egoyan’s Exotica; or the pseudo nonlinear film, such as Stone’s Natural Born Killers The latter is in fact a loose narrative
that employs the MTV style to shape individual scenes The latter also has a more clearly linear shape in that there is a resolution of sorts
The nonlinear film is marked by a number of characteristics From the point of view of resolution, there is none The form is totally open-ended There are multiple main characters but they don’t share a goal or a dilemma There may or may not be a plot Because the characters don’t have apparent goals, there is nothing for the plot to work against and so plot in the nonlin-ear film is background, no more important than dialogue or another infor-mation track
Two characteristics of the nonlinear film particularly commend them-selves to the purposes of the short film The first is the importance of voice
to pull the film into a coherent experience The second is the urgency with which individual scenes need to play out They need to do so urgently because the usual sources of identification and energ—the main character and the vigorous pursuit of a goal—are absent in the nonlinear film Consequently, the nonlinear film needs to rely on sharper conflict between characters and greater energy in the dialogue
It may even be useful to think of the nonlinear film as a series of short films about the individual characters who inhabit the narrative What pulls the stories together may be the voice of the filmmaker or it may be a dilemma the characters share (The half-dozen characters of the Sprecher
sis-ters’ 13 Conversations About One Thing, all find themselves living in New
York They share location but differ in their philosophies of living How fate and the city interplay to challenge those philosophies is the core of each character’s story.)
THE DIGITAL VIDEO MOVEMENT
The technology advance of digital video offers a new opportunity for mak-ers of the short film Essentially, the technology will not contribute directly
to the writing of a short film, but it will enable the writer-filmmaker to view the writing process as more malleable
To be specific, the fact that the writer can use digital video—an inexpen-sive recording format—to work with actors and to try out scenes, implies that such work, whether improvisational or scripted, can enhance the actual script In other words, the writing process can embrace what may have been
a discreet part of the pre-production process—casting, rehearsal—and a more liberal attitude to what will constitute a scene or sequence as it even-tually appears in the final form of the short film
Digital video allows for experimental as well as experiential components that were simply too expensive to imagine in 16mm, for example In that
Trang 5sense, digital video can alter what the writer considers the writing phase of the production It also opens the short film to a much larger constituency, again because of the lower expense This democratization can only benefit the short film as a form as well as broaden its aesthetic parameters There is little question that the digital video revolution is already changing the nature of short films
NEW DIRECTIONS
Change is all around us The object of this chapter has been to address the reasons for and influences on the short film in a period of technological and media change Our goal has been to encourage the filmmaker to embrace that change, and renew this form—the short film That renewal is the oppor-tunity you face today
Trang 6APPENDIX A
SHORT SHORT SCREENPLAYS
New to this edition we have included three short screenplays that are 8 min-utes long or less A great deal of feedback prompted us to pose the question,
“How long is a short film?” Our point in including these three screenplays is
to suggest a wider view of the short screenplay In fact, screenplays in this cat-egory can run as short as 90, 60, or even 30 seconds However, since we wanted to focus on the apprentice-early filmmaker categories, we excluded
the commercial Of the three screenplays, Vincent, by Gert Embrechts, became
a prize winning European film The second and third screenplays were both written and produced in the undergraduate film and television program at
New York University Sob Story, by Matthew E Goldenberg and Michael
Slavens, is a situation comedy that poses the question, “How far is a young
man willing to go for a girlfriend?” The answer is as far as necessary Pigeon,
by Anthony Green, is a melodrama based on a real event that occurred in France in 1943 An elderly man, a Jew, is using false papers to escape from France His kindness to pigeons endangers his planned escape All three films have an abundance of narrative, given their brevity, and each tells its story through creative choices of story form, character, and structure They are remarkable examples of what can be accomplished in 8 minutes or less