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SHORT FILM STRUCTURE SECRETS: Creating Film Festival Ready Short Films
SHORT FILM STRUCTURE SECRETS - SHORT FILMS - There's no secret that structuring a short film can be a difficult process because of how condensed short films can be in relation to feature film. Author Chike Camara has done it again. This book demystifies the process and gives you a breakdown of some of the most common short film types, how their structures work, why their structures work and how to take your own short film idea to the next level. In a way, it teaches you how to create a short film as well. Enjoy, let us know what you think :)
43 pages, Paperback
First published August 5, 2013
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October 31, 2021
A very short book with some interesting thoughts about short films
There are plenty of books on how to structure a screenplay for a movie. I have read lots of them, from “Save the Cat” to “Punching Babies”. However, short films are not just regular films crammed into less time, they need different construction and planning to make the most of the lesser duration, especially if they are hoping to impress judges at film competitions and festivals. The aim of this book is to highlight those differences so that a reader can put together a solid basis for a short film and not, for example, end up with just a traditional act one followed by a panicked finale.
At around 5000 words, this is a very short book. I have read longer blog posts. The author does try hard to be economical with the structure, though, in an echo of the advice for planning the structure of the films themselves. A short film, just like a full-length one, needs to tell a story, and that means it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end, and it also means it needs to be satisfying to an audience. When you are limited to just a few minutes rather than the 90-120 of a typical movie, you need to be clever. Camara suggests several techniques for this, including the notion that, rather than trying to hurry a full film plot, you can instead concentrate on a single moment or scene and expand it, telling the “story within a story” and allowing the viewer’s imagination to fill in the rest
Camara then completes the book with a short list of other possible approaches to structuring a short film, with each one getting a page or two of description, and some ideas for coming up with short film ideas.
There are certainly some interesting ideas in this book, but I read it less time than a typical short film, and I feel as though it might have been better as a blog post or a section in a more comprehensive book.
There are plenty of books on how to structure a screenplay for a movie. I have read lots of them, from “Save the Cat” to “Punching Babies”. However, short films are not just regular films crammed into less time, they need different construction and planning to make the most of the lesser duration, especially if they are hoping to impress judges at film competitions and festivals. The aim of this book is to highlight those differences so that a reader can put together a solid basis for a short film and not, for example, end up with just a traditional act one followed by a panicked finale.
At around 5000 words, this is a very short book. I have read longer blog posts. The author does try hard to be economical with the structure, though, in an echo of the advice for planning the structure of the films themselves. A short film, just like a full-length one, needs to tell a story, and that means it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end, and it also means it needs to be satisfying to an audience. When you are limited to just a few minutes rather than the 90-120 of a typical movie, you need to be clever. Camara suggests several techniques for this, including the notion that, rather than trying to hurry a full film plot, you can instead concentrate on a single moment or scene and expand it, telling the “story within a story” and allowing the viewer’s imagination to fill in the rest
Camara then completes the book with a short list of other possible approaches to structuring a short film, with each one getting a page or two of description, and some ideas for coming up with short film ideas.
There are certainly some interesting ideas in this book, but I read it less time than a typical short film, and I feel as though it might have been better as a blog post or a section in a more comprehensive book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review