Writing the Short Film

Writing for short film can be challenging, given the short constraints of both time and possibly resources. Most importantly, short films require the utmost conciseness in depiction, as the audience is only expecting to have to stay for 7-10 minutes.

When reading the sample short films from Cooper and Dancyger (2005), the most striking point to me was the lack of dialogue, and the heavy focus on visual narration. For example, instead of having the protagonist Marty say things such as “what can I do to make my date like me?” we see a process of him researching what it is that makes women attracted to men – “TEARS=LOVIN’” – and physically trying out ways to make himself cry, and finally settling on his baseball cards. Instead of any dialogue, the script opts to show him going through his ideas instead.

As a result, the script is overall more captivating as the audience is drawn to watch the story unfold and create their own understanding, instead of being told how the character is feeling or thinking. Furthermore, it allows the writer to tell a deeper story of a character in a limited amount of time: we know a lot about Marty’s love of baseball cards, and his bachelor ways, via the visual language of seeing his apartment and his actions at the funeral.

The other important factor in a short film is to have distinct and succinct characters. In this case, it’s easier to create characters who easily fit into the archetypes – or the characteristics of classic archetypes. Each of the short films also feature very little number of characters, if not only 2 major characters and less than 3 more side characters. This allows deeper character development in shorter time frames, but also allows the audience to not be confused by too many on screen characters at once, especially since they won’t have very much time to learn the names, and so would rely on visual and personality traits (as well as continuity) to remember who is whom.

Similarly, location would also need to be visually succinct and easily recognizable: a funeral parlour; suburban street; train station; Nazi occupied France etc, are all locations with easily recognizable signs, and would require little to no signage for the audience.

These two factors are key in writing a strong short film, which will carry across during production when the director and crew are able to glean from the script the tone and style with which to convey in such a short time.