As some of my readers already know I run a website called shortfilmweb.com which curates short films. It started back in 2013 when my own short Kickoff was doing the film festival rounds, during which I saw many short films on a variety of big screens, inspiring me to make a website to showcase the ones I liked most.
All the films are already out there and free to watch on the Internet via YouTube, Vimeo etc – the idea of ShortFilmWeb is simply to find the best films and reshare them with original commentary. The shortest films are under a minute, the longest stretching the definition at around 45 minutes or so, but the average is around 5 to 10 minutes.
I feel around 5 minutes works well for this medium. Good short films are hard to make. Every second counts – you have a very limited space to develop character arcs, drive the story forward and provide a sense of resolution or climax – all of which is already challenging enough in longer form content. As a result, simply finding films worth posting is the main obstacle.
What’s more, by today’s standards, even a 5 minute short film is asking a lot of the viewer. Social media reels lasting mere seconds are now the most popular form of content and they’re delivered to us in endless, highly addictive feeds so it’s no surprise that attention spans are now shorter than ever.
This isn’t bad for short film though – it just means the bar for keeping people engaged is higher. That said, short films are much more than just trailers. Simon Ellis, the film director who created the highly acclaimed, multi award-winning short Soft, argues that while many see short films as little more than a stepping stone towards feature films, they are a highly valuable art form in their own right.
Check it out if you’re interested – you can browse by category, or just hit ‘random film‘ for a lucky dip. You can also subscribe by email to get notified whenever a new film is posted.
