I’ve been a judge for several short film festivals in NYC since I moved here and I’ve noticed common threads in the ones I reject (finishing up my list for one of the bigger festivals today).
Those of you who have been around the block won’t need to read this — you know this stuff already.
I hope.
For one, after we establish a base of really solid submissions, subsequent short films in the festival begin to be judged not only against themselves (internally consistent world, coherent narrative, etc) but against the themes and visions of their competitors. That means you’ve got to stand out, and not in a bad way.
• DOs and DON’Ts •
If you can’t do really good graphics then don’t even try — it’ll rip your judge (and their future audience) out of the world you’re trying to establish as base reality.
If you have $10,000 to spend, don’t blow $7,000 of it on a really sweat monster costume that none of your actors can use with subtlety. Please PLEASE spend your budget proportionally: story, dp first. Then actors, sound. Then costuming, makeup. Then effects. This isn’t comicon, it’s a film — if you’re low budget, don’t give one of your departments a large budget.
Creative limitations are your friend: use them to your advantage. As Chesterton said, “Morality, like art, consists in drawing the line somewhere.” He was talking about morality. I’m talking about art: don’t be afraid to use some self-restraint.
That said, if you *have* the capacity, I don’t see nearly enough animated shorts — whether digital or hand-drawn — or weird mediums like rotoscoping and whatnot. I know this is time-intensive, but a really great story in a unique medium would stand out very, very easily in any festival that doesn’t distinguish between shorts and animated shorts. Especially if your thematic thrust has a deep emotional resonance.
On length — the best submissions for short films seems to be either in the 3 minute range or 9 minute range: basically enough for one or two escalations of the goals in conflict within the narrative. It is very rare that I’m green lighting something over 12 minutes and EXCEEDINGLY rare that something over 30 minutes will get in.
If your actors are terrible or you don’t have money to hire quality or you’re stuck in the midwest away from talent, then write a silent script. There are some in here that are very good and I have a hunch, based on the budget of the rest of the piece, that if the actor in question opened his mouth, it would shatter the reality for me. Play to your strengths and be very, very honest with yourself about what you can and cannot do at this stage in the game.
And then do it. Pull the trigger. Stop talking about your idea — it’s nothing until you make it.
Hopefully that helps one person out there. I was getting a headache from some of these. Others are absolutely brilliant.
cover image by Incase
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