The Under-Appreciated Art of Short Films

By Shelby Armor

Everyone takes the time to go with a couple of friends to see the latest blockbuster that just hit theaters, but people rarely go out of their way to see a short film. The art of the short film is rarely talked about, and I can’t think of many people that rave about an amazing new short film they just saw.

I, personally, am in love with short films. The thing that I find most amazing about short films is their ability to construct an entire complex story, often times in less than ten minutes. I find that this is the particular challenge faced by short films. You have fewer than forty minutes (as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences defines it) to make your audience fall in love with your characters and feel invested in the story that you’re telling. You are creating an intricate story with just as much complexity as a full-length feature film. This is a challenge. When watching a TV show, the creators take time and slowly introduce you to characters, knowing that you’ll like them eventually. But, in a short film, you have the length of an episode to accomplish the same thing and more.

Shorts can be anything from a soul-sucking drama to a childish animation. This is what is so beautiful about them. Even in their time constraints, they have such freedom of expression. Shorts are often used to make statements, to comment on human nature, or to take a strong political stance. But, they can also be used to just make people happy and laugh.

Well known for making people happy are shorts made by Pixar. I grew up on these films. My favorite film that I must have watched one hundred times and still enjoy today is called Boundin’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WyR4AqRweY). And while this short may be very amusing, it holds a deeper message for people, telling them to love and accept themselves no matter how they look. Another one of my personal favorites as a child was For the Birds, also by Pixar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLdfpBNjdDc). This one is supposed to be pure comedy with an annoying bird being pecked at by smaller birds as they sit on a wire together.

And, if you take another example from Pixar’s Red’s Dreams (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBtIPJM2AsI), there is a much darker theme. It follows a young unicycle who is lying alone in a run-down shop, dreaming of the day he is bought and can go to the circus. All of these short films are only about five-ten minutes long, but even after not having watched the shorts in about ten years, I still remember every detail. I remember how I loved them so and first began to fall in love with the under-appreciated art of short films.  

Short films have the ability to tug at your heartstrings and lay out a grand story in less than an hour. There is such complexity to them, and they require so much skill to write, which is often not thought of when you see a short film. The ability to do what a short film does, to pull in viewers like they do within such a small time frame, is truly astonishing.

P.S. I highly recommend watching the Pixar short film collection, as they are all really amazing. Two really good ones to check out are Geri’s Game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYRC7g2ICg) and Lifted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVLoc6FrLi0). Another one of my favorites (not from Pixar) is The Present (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjqiU5FgsYc). Happy short film watching!

Editor: Brennan Nick