A powerpoint explaining what short film is and some examples of popular short film, trying to gain an understanding of what made them so popular.

1. What is a Short Film?
By Rachael Sampson

2. Definition:
• A short film is any film not long enough to be
considered a feature film. No consensus exists
as to where that boundary is drawn: the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
defines a short film as “an original motion
picture that has a running time of 40 minutes
or less, including all credits”. The term
featurette originally applied to a film longer
than a short subject, but shorter than a
standard feature film.

3. Popular short films (June 2014)

4. On the website IMDB, it says that the most popular short film
globally is ‘Tangled Ever After’. What is the reason for it’s
success? The running time for the film is 6 minutes so how
can they create a popular film in such a short amount of time?
Tangled Ever After is a sequel to the film Tangled, which
proved to be very popular globally. It is a Disney musical
which earned a total gross of $200,821,936 with a production
budget of $260 million.
The film is about a witch who takes a princess when she is a
baby and uses her powers to keep her youthful. However the
princess escapes from the castle and ends up going on an
adventure and falls in love.
The short film shows the wedding of the couple.
Because of the feature film’s success, it meant that people
wanted to see the wedding of their most beloved characters.
Also because it was a musical, the film did well on that behalf
as the songs are popular worldwide with lots of iTunes
downloads therefore this attracts the audience to the short
sequel because it is clear there will be more songs.

5. Popular Short Films (September 2014)

6. It is clear to see that the most popular short films are
follow ups of popular films which have an average
running time of 2 hours. Knowing this, it tells us that
people are willing to invest in something when they
know they story outline and plot through a different
source. This suggests that it could be a good idea to
re-tell a story through a different perspective or twist
and manipulate a tale which our audience will already
be familiar with. Examples of this are shown in films
such as 10 Things I Hate About You (twist on The
Taming Of The Shrew – William Shakespeare) and
spoofs such as Scary Movie and Vampires Suck, as
people already know the storyline, so they are willing
to invest time into seeing something related to the
story they enjoyed.