Short films are motion pictures that aren’t long enough in running time to be considered a feature film. They are generally 40 minutes or less and can even be 30 seconds long! To qualify as a short film at film festivals, the running time should be less than 15 minutes.
Short films can be of any genre (e.g., horror, comedy) or method/mode of filmmaking (e.g., documentary, animation). Making a short film is great practice to get hands-on experience in filmmaking. Often, short films become feature films; for example, Whiplash (2013), starring J.K. Simmons, directed by Damien Chazelle.
How To Make A Short Film
Before you start, here are a few things you will need:
- A computer with editing software – if you have an Apple computer, iMovie is a good choice or if you have Windows, you can work with Windows Movie Maker.
- A script – it could be your idea or one that you’ve borrowed
- Crew – the odd short film is done by a person, but filmmaking is inherently collaborative. Hire a good team or drag your friends into this passion project!
- Actors – the stars
Now that you know what you’ll need, let’s walk through the steps of how to make a short film in detail.
Pre-Production 🎬
You may be tempted to grab your camera and start shooting right away. But beware, there is an old adage – every dollar and every minute spent on pre-production will save your THREE in post!
Before shooting a short film, you need to prepare a script, create a budget, and recruit the cast and crew.
If this is your first short, try making one that is approximately 5 to 6 minutes before attempting films of longer duration.
Prepare A Script
The script is of utmost importance. It sets the stage for your project – it’ll determine much of what you’ll need to shoot the short film such as number of actors, locations etc.
There are 2 ways to obtain a script
- Write it yourself – while it can seem daunting to write a script from scratch, fortunately you’re working on a short film! This means less content (a shorter script). Short films should have a beginning, middle, and end. A ten-minute film will be about 7-8 pages long. If you choose to write your own script, here’s a good read to guide you through the process.Pro-tips:
- Streamline. Do not cram too many ideas while brainstorming as it can muddle up the story line.
- Reduce overhead. Keep the number of locations to a minimum as it can become expensive to shoot multiple locations.
- Polish your script. You can make a bad film out a good script, but can’t make a good film out of a bad script. Make sure you write a script, then rewrite, and rewrite until every scene moves the story forward.
- Use visuals versus dialogue. Use visuals and symbolism versus adding dialogue. Dialogue should be one of the last things you add to a script.
- Fast Pace. Do not pace your short like a feature, get to your story quickly.
- Storyboard. Create a storyboard as early as possible no matter how bad your artistic skills are. Let the crew see them and reference them in the shoot.
- Borrow a script from the internet – this way is faster and may make sense if you don’t fancy yourself as a writer. Here are resources to find scripts: If you plan on monetizing (making money from) your film, ensure you reach out to the screenwriter to get their permission to use the script.
Create A Storyboard
Storyboards are a pictorial representation of each scene, shot-by-shot, as per the description given in the script. It is close to something like a comic book.
If you aren’t artistic, no worries! You can use stick figures to represent the actors and simple shapes to represent the elements in the scene. The storyboard does not need to be an artistic masterpiece- it is merely a visualization for reference for shoot day.