What Is A Short Film?

A short film is usually defined as being under 40 minutes, or sometimes under one hour. Short films are vastly different to feature length films. While feature films usually focus on character development and structured narrative, short films are obviously far shorter, so rely on quirks and controlling ideas to gauge interest from audiences. Short films also usually have a very low budget, which means locations and ideology have to be chosen carefully, and sometimes filming has to be done over a long period of time. For example, the short film ‘Doodlebug’ (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 1997) was very low budget, and the director, crew and actors had to film on specific weekends in the year, taking time off work and having to rent out the location many times.