Codes and Conventions of Short Films

What are short films?

Short films are films that can range from 40 minutes to anything shorter. Short films are usually made with the purpose:

• Experience, to gain experience in practical filmmaking, or as working in a team.
• Showreal, if pursuing a career in filmmaking, showreel will be essential to demonstrate your skills.
• Partnerships, to get used to working with different teams and people.
• Testing an idea out, making a short film will help get the audiences views and opinions, also, uploading it to YouTube or Vimeo will allow you to see how many views it gets.
• Money, you may not have the money to make a feature length film so a short film could be produced in order to raise awareness about it to get help with funding for the real feature film.
• Festivals, once you have made a short film, you might want to enter into film festivals such as Cannes De Film festival to raise awareness of it or to sell it.

Codes and Conventions of short films...

• Characters, is an obvious convention of short films. They tend to stick to two or three main characters, as short films are obviously 'short' they don't have the time to go into depth with the storyline, and definitely not enough time to keep introducing more and more characters. There's is usually just enough time in the film for the audience to relate to the characters. I will intend to follow this convention.
• Twist, is nearly always contained within a short film. The slight twist to the storyline will help make the short film become more interesting for the audience and will prevent it being boring and uninteresting. I will also follow this convention.
• Budget, the budget for a short film is usually very low as this is because Directors work independently without funding. They tend to keep the budget down by sticking to one or two locations, and using a small cast. However, some actors will work for free if they really like the storyline, this increases the budget even more.
• Length, in short films are obviously 'short' and have a max length of 40 minutes, however, typically, they are around five to ten minutes long. If these films would be any longer they would be classed as feature length films. You can always get short shorts which are between 1 and 3 minutes long. I will be following this convention. 

Overall, I will be following these codes and conventions in order to create a successful and professional looking short film that catch peoples eye and engage them to watch until the end.