SHORT FILM CONVENTIONS

Short film is called a ‘short’ because firstly its duration is normally 5-10 minutes and maximum 35 minutes. If it exceeds this duration so it’s no more considered to be short film but a feature length film. Apart from that these short films are low budgeted reason being that the people making these films are not the big-shots of the industry. We can also say that short films are experimental form of art where fresh film makers polish their skills and display their work at different film festivals. In these short films as the time and budget is limited so the story lines or the concepts are really simple. Furthermore, when the story line is simple so it must have a spark in it to attract the audience and that spark is called the twist. The twist is a problem which enters in a simple situation and that problem can be between characters, problem with the characters in sight or problem with the surrounding. But eventually that problem resolves and comes to a new solution or ‘new equilibrium’ as termed by the media theorist Todorov. These short films sometimes have an ending without a conclusion or solution to the issue, this is because the motive of some short films is just to make people think about little issues of the society. Short films are a beautiful world of art in which an artist can play with all the signs and elements of sound, editing, mise-en-scene and camera without even making his characters speak a word. These were some conventions of short films which I observed and I believe that any form of art have infinite conventions and same goes for the art of short films as Elbert Hubbard said “Art is not a thing; it’s a way.”