Short Films; Short Means Short

By Ian Rattray, FrightFest co-director with over 30 years of experience in all areas of film distribution and exhibition.

So you’ve done it. You’ve finished your short film. The film that you have put your heart and soul into. The one you scrimped, saved, begged, borrowed, twisted the odd arm and called in favours owed to complete. You have produced a well made, well edited film with a great cast and it sounds fantastic. Every penny of the budget is up there on the screen. You’ve also done your research. You’ve checked out target festivals and the films selected in previous years which confirms these events are the best fit for your movie. The poster and press kit are in place, and you have cut a kick-ass trailer that sells the film. You’ve done everything even remembering to put together a polite but hard-hitting cover letter. Now it’s time to get the finished article in front of audiences and share it with the world. All that’s left to do is upload to FilmFreeway, sit back, and wait for the rush of festivals that will be lining up to play your film.

Nurturing and exposing new talent through showcasing the work of short filmmakers has to be at the core of any film festival. Many of these filmmakers will go on to be the next generation of creators. That said, for programmers short films can be a bit of a headache. To stage a film festival of any decent size, the event needs to have a budget that would support a small town for a year, so a balance has to be struck for events to survive.

Let’s say the average film comes in at 90 minutes. Thank god that the genre world that I inhabit hasn’t yet succumbed too badly to running time creep. Add a five-minute introduction, another five for odds and ends such as sponsor messages and trailers. (If any festival organisers are reading this, and you don’t show trailers, you should. Audience’s love seeing them and hey, you never know, it might help sell a few tickets.) Anyway, back to my point, add another 20 minutes for a Q&A, and you have a running time of two hours before any short film is attached. At least 30 minutes is needed to turn screens around between films, and before you know it if scheduling let say five films you have a 12 hour day. Anything other than adding in a couple of shorts would mean a feature has to go with the corresponding reduction in ticket income.

At the festival that I’m associated with, we generally don’t play short films with features. Instead we program three short film showcases. In 2018 the showcases included 41 films. You can do the math but to save you the time, the average length of the submissions selected was a little under eight minutes. Of course, some were longer, the longest was 19 minutes, but most were shorter. You get my point.

The festival’s terms and conditions recommend that short film submissions are no longer than ten minutes. In our last submission cycle, however, 65% were longer. In our opinion, the length that a short film becomes challenging to program is ten minutes.

So, how long is your film? Is it longer than ten minutes? Improve your chances of selection. Keep it short. Short means short.