Ben Watts
Making a great short film requires a certain kind of alchemy; because there are no hard-set rules in regards to running time, subject matter, or even medium, filmmakers traverse a tricky path on the road to festival — and online audience — acceptance.
I was lucky enough to sit down at the San Francisco International Film Festival with a few of the shorts filmmakers that were in attendance and get insight into their process, ask what lessons they learned on their latest productions, and find out what they believe makes a good short film.
THE FILMMAKERS
Kate Tsang (New York, USA), So You’ve Grown Attached – An imaginary friend is forced to consider retirement when his creator starts to grow up. Nominated for a Student Academy Award, this black-and-white short is a mash-up of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Drop Dead Fred, with plenty of creativity and visual flare.
Alexander Carson (Canada), Numbers & Friends – 16mm film and photographs (taken while on a road trip across the United States) collide in this experimental cine-essay about sports fandom and cultural identity.
Rob Richert (Berkley, USA), No One But Lydia – A scheming teenager, along with the help of his stoner friends, hatch a plan to win back the heart of his ex-girlfriend, Lydia, in this playful romp through the streets of suburban California.
Yoav Hornung (Israel), Deserted – Two women, on their final assignment for officer candidacy in the Israeli army, get lost when one of them loses her most prized possession in the middle of the desert. Beautiful cinematography marries with a terrific sense of dread in this morality tale shot on location outside Tel Aviv.
Luke Lorentzen (Stanford, USA), Santa Cruz del Islote – An intimate documentary about one of the world’s most densely-populated islands located off the coast of Columbia. With only three-acres of land, the residents of this island community struggle with their isolations as resources become scarce.
Serge Mirzabekiantz (Belgium), The Birds’ Blessing – Gorgeous cinematography and production design anchor this tale of two brothers who are both competing for their father’s affection on the day of the traditional family hunt.
What were some of the challenges you faced in bringing your short film to fruition?
AC: Because I make films in a fairly unconventional way (without using expensive gear, locations, crew, or professional actors) I manage to avoid most of the obvious challenges like scheduling or financing problems. I write, shoot, and edit concurrently, alternating between phases with no definite game plan sort of like cooking without a recipe. I also like working with an extremely small creative team, and I take a lot of time to edit, so the biggest challenge for me is always finishing a project, discovering the emotional heart of the content I’m working with and making that legible to audiences.
YH: I wanted to shoot in the desert only, but shooting in the Israeli desert brings a lot of challenges: it’s isolated, theres no electricity, its not easily accessible, and its very hot. Our days were pretty short (with only 9-10 hours of usable daylight), so it was a real challenge to shoot a twenty-five minute film in four days. Shooting hand-held really helped us; we didnt have to waste time putting the camera on sticks for each set-up.
KT: A big challenge was finding the right actor to play the lead imaginary friend character; it’s not the most appealing role for an actor on paper because you don’t see his face and he never speaks. After auditioning a lot of actors, mimes, and puppeteers, we got really lucky and found the wonderful actor, Simon Pearl. After we locked picture, the VFX Supervisor (Nick Barber) spent six months tracking and animating Simon’s eyes, then I spent another two months rotoscoping out his face which was difficult, but a definite upside is that I got pretty decent at After Effects.
RR: The biggest challenge and the biggest blessing were one and the same: finding great teenaged actors in the area. My sister and I scoured the park by Berkeley High (where we both attended long ago), looking for anyone that would come in and audition. A masse of kids came in for the part and, while the story originally called for a wannabe thuggy white kid who was misusing quotes from The Autobiography of Malcolm X to justify stalking his ex-girlfriend, the best talent that came in didn’t fit that bill whatsoever. As such, I rewrote constantly during the casting process to make the script fit the cast.
LL: If I had to pick one challenge, I think the ethics of “proper representation” are always the hardest for me when dealing with real people and places. It’s always so difficult to find my own sense of fair representation – to be loyal to that personal sensibility – and to not let myself get distracted by the many other pressures that try and taint the ultimate goal of reconstructing and presenting something that exists in the real. But the ties to reality are what make documentary film so powerful, so it is always a challenge worth working through.
Where did you receive funding for your project?
KT: The film was funded through Kickstarter, student loans, and money I saved from working as a makeup artist during school.
AC: I started working on Numbers & Friends with no funding; because I didn’t have many fixed ideas of what the film would be at the outset, there was no way to set up funding in advance. Paying out of pocket, I carefully kept my costs low during a period of part-time work (approximately six months) as I built a rough assembly of the film and a draft of the voice-over. With these materials, I was able to apply to the Toronto Arts Council for a small project grant ($4,000 CAD) that would allow me to repay myself for certain expenses, and also offer small fees to my post-production collaborators.
YH: I received most of the equipment and the basic $3k from my university. The rest I raised through crowd-funding on Indiegogo.
RR: The Berkeley Film Foundation gave us a student filmmaker’s grant that really was the boon to the production. Without it, we never would have made the film.
SM: We got our funding from Belgian television (RTBF) and government funding (Le centre du cinéma de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles).
LL: The film was funded with a Kickstarter campaign, which worked out wonderfully for me.
What was the biggest lesson you learned during the filmmaking process?
KT: Choose your crew wisely and surround yourself with talented people who really care about the project. Listening to and implementing other people’s ideas resulted in a film that was better than anything I could’ve thought of on my own. Also, midday ice cream surprises are a great morale booster.
LL: This is my first film, so there were endless lessons throughout the process, starting from the tiny technical aspects to big questions of methodology. I think the most important thing I learned had to do with the process of interacting with characters and finding that space of intimacy with each individual as we filmed. I really became close with the people in the film, and hope to continue making these kind of close relationships with my future work.
AC: Numbers & Friends is pretty experimental on a formal level, and it explores a pretty specialized amalgam of subjects and themes. In the most selfish way possible, I made a film about things that have touched my life, so the lesson I learned was to take risks and trust my instincts. I think all filmmakers benefit from making work about topics they find meaningful or surprising. Audiences are pretty smart, and if they sense that a film is coming from an honest and heartfelt place, they’ll open their hearts in return.
YH: I think the biggest lesson that I learned was probably the fact that you can pull off any production you want with enough motivation. That’s how I raised the funds for Deserted, it’s how I got my amazing actors to sign on to the film, and it’s how I got my film selected to great festivals – persistence in every single phase of the production.
SM: I learned to try without the fear of being wrong. There is no magical formula; it’s only hard work and perseverance that pay off at the end of the day.
What qualities do you believe make a good short film?
KT: The shorts I admire most have a full story with an ending and get a lot done within a short period of time. Some shorts that I really dig are Luke Matheny’s God of Love, Nat Johnson and Greg Mitnick’s The Kook, and Chell Stephen’s Crystal.
RR: I tend to appreciate work with a voice. That’s where I believe good work begins. I think so often with shorts, there is such little time to bring an audience through a full range of emotions that a tendency towards minimalism pervades. Filmmakers who have crafted a story that comes from a desire to call something from a rooftop and yet still know how to whisper it has more of a chance of making work that continues to linger in my head.
SM: A good short film is one that has me immersed completely into a deep universe from the get-go, and when it’s over, it has me still thinking about it. I can imagine everything that has not been shown – what happened before the story began and what happens after the story ends.
LL: It’s so much easier to keep an audience interested for fifteen or twenty minutes than it is for ninety, and that frees up the process into so many realms of otherwise inaccessible creativity. A good short film always leaves the viewer quite surprised that he or she could be so moved so quickly.
What advice would you give to other short filmmakers?
KT: 1. The shorter your film is, the more crazy stuff you can get away with. 2. Find what really interests you (visually, story-wise, thematically) and make films that reflect that in a truthful way. 3) Also, listen to Charlie Kaufman’s lecture on screenwriting/life.
AC: I think education is really important. Not to suggest that all filmmakers have to attend film school, but I do believe that a solid formal education is extremely valuable. Finding people you can work with and party with is invaluable–these people will be honest with you when your work isn’t good enough and they’ll help you make it better. If you can build a network of colleagues where you share in each others’ successes, you’re on the right track. Having a solid community is essential, and it benefits everyone involved.
RR: Surround yourself with people you really enjoy. I have been lucky with every one of my projects, finding not just talented, but warm and interesting people for my cast and crew – people I would love to be stuck on a desert island with. It makes such a big difference on set in terms of morale and creating that atmosphere of creative energy. It sounds cheesy as hell, but I want a set to feel like a kindergarten art class, where all ideas are welcome.
LL: Don’t feel like you have to stick to the standard forms of narrative storytelling. A short film has so much space for stylistic experimentation, and you should push that limit in ways longer forms do not always support.
SM: Trust your crew. Value the work and qualities that each team member can bring to the table and use that to your benefit.
YH: Just do it. Quick making excuses for not creating something.