Eileen Elsey and Andrew Kelly, November 2002
0851708935 £15.99
Short films are like poems
The first films were shorts. Most leading film-makers made shorts including Chaplin, Keaton, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Lindsay Anderson and more recently - Lynne Ramsey and Damian O' Donnell.
In the current age of mediated society, visual stories are numerous and surround us everywhere. The landscape of story-telling opportunities in the digital age is vast and depends on your idea and determination to be able to use it and tell your story to the world. Advertising commercials and music videos play an important role in sustaining a film-making culture in Britain and most filmmakers in this country have been involved in their production. Most commercials nowdays have high production value and high budgets. Short films in the other have much lower budgets but directors have more creative freedom and they tend to try something innovative, utilise new structures and different ways of working with actors.
Divided into five chapters In Short features a history of short films, conversations with shorts filmmakers, a run down of how short films can be made and screened, looks at the short film as an opportunity for new talent, and offers a useful resource guide to short filmmaking covering distribution, funding, exhibitions, festivals, training and publications.
Gareth Evans, a freelance writer and film programmer, provides the forward introducing you to the authors and continues with a definition of 'short films ' and it's history up to the present day.
"Short films are nothing new, though, they have been present since filmmaking began. Shorts were the only films in the early days of cinema." In Short, 2002
Elsey and Kelly believe that it is about time we look at short films again, as the digital technology age offers opportunities to everyone with a good idea and determination to tell his or her own story. Everyday we see short films, whether they are commercials, short sequences on your mobile phone, animated shorts or music videos that try to convey a message across. Hundreds of student films are made annually, television stations use shorts as fillers and short film festivals take place all over the world.
What distinguishes a short film is their ideal opportunity for a creative process, from initial idea to finished film. The short filmmakers agree that the experience of making a short is like making a film but shorter.
Shorts are an important part of the filmmaking industry but they have been ignored largely in critical and distribution terms. In Short offers an in-depth insight into the short-filmmaking in the framework of production, distribution and audiences.
They have included commercials and music videos and attempt to locate a community or network of filmmakers. The interconnectivity between the drama and animation shorts, commercials and music videos is also examined.
It does not however focus on short-film production, nor provide tutorials or a run down of the filmmaking process as some filmmakers may look out for, but rather engages you on the poetics and politics of short-filmmaking.
If you like shorts and want to make them, teach about them and justify your determination in short-filmmaking this book offers plenty of information, useful resources and critical debate that any filmmaker can benefit from. The important message that In Short puts across is the creativity and process of filmmaking and the relationship between that and funding and distribution.
A history, state of the art report and practical manual, In Short - the first book to be published on the topic for years - is essential reading for the film-maker, producer and indeed everyone interested in cinema.
Arsim Canolli
"The advice and resources chapters are invaluable" Venue
"This is a wonderful book, full of information and advice for both the practising and aspiring short filmmaker ... not only an informative account but a truly inspirational guide" bfm
Eileen Elsey is Principal Lecturer in Time Based Media at the Faculty of Art, Media and Design, University of the West of England. She is also a screenwriter and member of the board of Brief Encounters Short Film Festival.
Andrew Kelly is Director of the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership and Founder of Brief Encounters. He is also a management consultant, journalist and writer.
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