Technically speaking, a short subject or short film, otherwise known as a "short" is a film that runs no longer than 40 minutes. Who decided this? I have no idea. Animated shorts often run about 7 minutes long, but there are a few I've come across that almost hit the 40 minute mark! But a short isn't about length or time, it's about content and story. And in an animated short it's also about the medium. Sometimes the story and the animation are cartoony, sometimes they are serious, stylized and even abstract.
Aside from the technical definition, "What is a short?" is sort of a trick question really. Basically, it's whatever the artist/creator/film-maker wants it to be. Art is very difficult to define... unless, unlike me, you're a right wing Republican ("I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." - Justice Potter Stewart, Jacobellis vs. Ohio) For me, with my current project, it's many different things...
- A chance to share a poem I love.
- A message about facing ones fears.
- An opportunity to push my creative and technical skills.
- and most important of all... a way to have fun!
But what a short is will be different depending on who you talk to. For some it might be a way of getting a political or environmental message across, such as "Badgered". For others it may be a way to explore personal issues, like the Academy Award winning "The Moon and the Sun: An Imagined Conversation", where the film-maker engages in a discussion with his deceased father in hopes of resolving his conflicted feelings about the man. And some are just plain fun. But no matter what, they are a way of telling a story or expressing an opinion, no matter what it may be. But there's plenty of time to get into that. So please keep coming back and keep your shorts on!
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