What is a Short film?

So, what is a short film? a short film according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is 'an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits'. Now we know what a short film is, here are a few examples of short films:

The Black Hole, by Sansom and Williams 2008


What's good about this short?

The overall idea of the film is original and I believe very clever, as I think that the film has a message about greed. This is shown by the protagonist in the film crawling all the way into the safe to see if he has left any money behind even though he had already taken an proficient amount. This shows that greed does not pay off as if he would have just taken the money that he had initially grabbed and walked away he would of reeked the benefits, but instead his greed led to him being locked in the safe.

What could be improved in this short?

Although I like the overall idea of the film, I think that the last scene where the man crawls into the safe lets the film down slightly as in reality if you have all that money by your side you wouldn't put yourself in jeopardy just to see if you had collected everything. Instead you would just take what you had and leave.

Spin, by Jamin Winans 2005



What's good about this short?

The idea of this short is very original and interesting, also I think that the non digetic sound used adds a degree of suspense and tension to the short. Also I believe its clever how this short shows that one small event can trigger several bigger events.

What could be improved in this short?

I think that the title of this short does not suit the concept of the film, I think that if the font colour was not red it would be applicable as the colour red has connotations of murder, passion & love. I think that if the colour was lighter it would improve the film by making it look more effective.

The God, by Konstantin Bronzit 2004



What's good about this short?

I think that this film is comical as the idea of a God being taunted by a little insect is amusing. Also this short is original.

What could be improved in this short?

Although the idea of this short is amusing, I think that after a minute or so the idea becomes slightly tedious.

The purpose of this post is to grasp an understanding of exactly what short films are, as we have to individually come up with our own short film idea to present to the class to see whether or not our idea could be achieved.