The conventions of a short film

I have watched around 8 short films, as I anaIysed each I started to notice similarities within the short films and now able to get a clear view of the requirements needed to make a short film and could relate them in the production of my own. As I have increased my knowledge of short films I can draw a link that the similarities that are shown in each represents the conventions of a short film.

The first main convention that I realized that shows up in many of the short films that I viewed is that they tend to keep minimal characters in the film, either tending from one to two characters. The production focuses on one character usually. An example of this is seen in ‘Sold’ by Nadia Attia as the protagonist male is the main character in this film, there is also a female character but the audience don’t see much of her as she is not the main focus of the film. The male protagonist remained center of the frame and was the main focus. I believe they tend to use less characters because either the budget is low and the director cant afford mainstream A-list actors as well as removing the main focus of the short film because the audience would have to focus on other characters in such a short space of time.

A second point, is that they all mostly have a twist to the storyline by either having a restrictive narrative and a circular narrative; by the director adding these plot twist they are able to present there skills and present underline modern society issues to challenge. Furthermore as it is short in timing without a plot twist the short film would simply not interest the viewer.

Thirdly in short films there are many point of view shot’s as you have to interact and see how the character see’s things. An example of a short film with many point of view shots is seen in 'Sign Language' hand held camera work and raw footage.

Voice over is very popular in short films. The use of voice over would be used instead of dialogue usually due to the insufficient funds that the camera’s used are of a low standard, another reason voice over is used it is cheaper.

Finally I have found with short films is that most of them are low budget, and this can be noticed wile watching them, there are no expensive titles used or a-list stars with a tendency to show raw footage as the funds can not cover the same quality of a feature length film.