SHOOTING PEOPLE - UK SCREENWRITERS NETWORK
Supported by The Script Factory

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From: Hugo Heppell
Subject: How long is a short?

There are no hard and fast rules, because exceptions will always be made for outstanding work. BUT... why handicap yourselves before you've even started? Festivals don't like long shorts for all the obvious reasons: if they're playing before a feature then they don't want the audience to get restless; odds are they've come to see the feature, not the short.

If you're selected for a Shorts Programme, then there's a bit more flexibility, but again they want to programme six or seven shorts, so a 25' film sticks out like a sore thumb and limits the numbers.

Cannes is not alone in this. In any case, there are very few shorts that justify being longer than 15'.

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From: Andrew Morgan
Subject: How long is a piece of string?

I've always been told a short is defined by being less than 45 minutes long, however, if you seriously want a good crack at having your short distributed with a feature, or getting the best kind of TV slots, you really need to be coming in at just under 10mins including credits.

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From: Kevin McMullen
Subject: how long is a piece of string

This is the question which seems to cause most consternation for short filmmakers. A question to which there is no answer!

Sure certain film festivals will only accept shorts of less than 15 minutes i.e. Cannes in competition, and that theatrical distributors may prefer shorts of 10 minutes or less so as not to distract from the main feature. It would be folly if a filmmaker didn't keep at least one eye on where they intend their material to end up, but this is a certain case of putting the cart before the horse. The important question is what is the least amount of screen-time you will need to translate your story from paper to celluloid?

The discipline of short film making requires you to condense your narrative and characterisations with as little dialogue as is necessary, to the shortest time-span possible required to convey your story. No mean feat!

Therefore if your short is twenty-five minutes long but could have been told in ten, it's time to go back to the drawing board. Filmmaking is such an expensive medium that we must be constantly economising and cutting back to the bare essentials to get the story told. As the old adage goes if it doesn't move the story forward it shouldn't be there.

This is the beauty of short films. It teaches us to be ruthless, callous even. There are no sacred cows! Once you have mastered this discipline you will be well positioned to advance to feature length material. This is your training ground. Use it wisely and you will have these foundations solidly in place for the rest of your career. Ignore it and you are missing the point!

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From: Leslie Lowes, Penultimate Films & Features Ltd
Subject: Long Shorts

As far as screenings for cinema are concerned, your short needs to be ten minutes or less. This is because cinemas programme a number of feature screenings over the day and shorts squeeze out some of that feature screening time and do reduce revenue, because they reduce numbers of fresh bums on seats over the screening day.

20-minute short x 4 screenings = 80 minutes = 1 feature = lots of ticket sales lost, popcorn, hotdogs, whatever......

Increasingly, cinemas are acknowledging that shorts have a place within their programmes. Effective shorts are appreciated by audiences, so programmers will include good shorts as bonus, as part of a screening package at their cinema- "Added Value". It brings in the punters next time.

Sharp attention span for most people is three minutes, which means plot turning points at three minutes and six minutes. These suit audience attention spans and there are only three such spans needed. (Mustn't tire the audience before the feature!) In contrast, an 18-minute short might run for 6-minutes to reach a first plot turn and lose audience attention half-way to it, with still another 15-minutes to go! It may seem a bit s-l-o-w zzzzz....... Oh! Your audience just nodded off......

So, for an 18- or 20-minute film, getting a place in the cinema shorts market may be difficult. Ten or less and an effective short has a fighting chance. I notice Tartan Shorts, financed through BBC Scotland and Scottish Screen, seem to have taken this to heart. After six years of 15-minuters, they have shortened duration to 10-minutes. As a result, future Tartan Shorts will find it much easier to earn a place in cinema programmes.

Hopefully, he'll see that it is just a way of analysing markets so that writers can use the information creatively and potentially, pulling more good writing into the cinema market.

Personally, I think good shorts are great and I would love to see more of them in cinemas. And before my mailbox gets deluged with scripts, let me say there is no shortage of good scripts..........it's finding the money to make good shorts that's a b****r!

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From: Jason Doggett
Subject: Short film auteurs?

"can short films be an artistic medium in their own right rather than simply a calling card? And if so.. mighten the short film medium offer scriptwriters a unique opportunity to exploit other types of writing then the traditional 3-4 act structures we aim for in features..? I'm not interested in the pros/cons of whether writing for shorts is a waste of time or not - but what can be possible/original in this medium that we ignore when working for 90min..."

There's no reason why the short film can't be a platform for artistic expression in itself. I think, though, that screenwriters may need to look at the masters of the short story (O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant, Raymond Carver etc) to see that new skills are required. You don't just cut a ninety minute film story down to fifteen and you don't stretch a two minute idea (or ten second 'hilarious' punchline) out into ten because someone said that's how long a short film is.

Many short films I've seen (especially the calling cards) contain only one idea, the story slowed down to pad out the running time. This might be why I often find myself drumming my fingers in impatience two minutes into a short film but happily sit for fifteen minutes in a feature length movie.

Finally, about calling cards, I don't think the three guys above ever wrote a short story in order to advertise the fact that they could write a novel. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Sorry, haven't really addressed your question of what is possible in short films. I'm not brainy/experienced enough for that one.

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From: Leslie Lowes, Producer, Penultimate Films & Features Ltd
Subject: Re: shorts without much dialogue

"Why do directors ask for short screenplays without much dialogue?"

--------- Because they are thinking about markets -----------

Abroad, English language needs to be dubbed or subtitled = extra distribution cost. Makes your talkie-talkie short very expensive to take to this market.

An almost-no-dialogue short is a different proposition altogether. The language used is visual so universally understood. That's why Charlie Chaplin plays on TV around the world.

The low dialogue short is not an easy option. Try writing one! But it can be sold, .........internationally.

My advice to writers would always be...

1 Think about the market and write for that market

For the international market......

2 Make sure your short has universal appeal

3 Write almost-no-dialogue shorts if you can

4 Keep the narrative very visual

5 Keep it uplifting

6 Keep the short, short. 10 mins or under (To satisfy market requirements)

Finally, Beware!

Ten pages of visual action script may play out to be much longer in duration than ten pages of dialogue script. Time it with a stopwatch in your hand. Visualise the script like a director, with the narrative presenting you with pictures. Visualise the camera shots that are needed and how long the shots need to be held to work well. You may discover that your beautifully crafted ten minute, visual, non-dialogue short, packed full of international market appeal, plays out at twenty minutes!

Films used to be called Pictures. Put crudely, Pictures are meant to be seen, not heard.

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From: Morna Findlay
Subject: Dialogue in shorts

"So what do people think? What is the successful formula on a short script - lots of dialogue, none? (I realise the answers will be by necessity a little generalised, but then its a debate)"

Maybe it depends how short "short" is?

Personally, when I write shorts I imagine them as "silent movies with sound". The story's the thing for me, and if you need dialogue to explain the story then the story probably needs more screen time.

Look how many adverts tell funny stories in 30 seconds.

An example - that one where the woman goes out of her flat into the common hall to get her post, wearing only a pair of knickers. Her front door slams! She's trapped in the hall! The main doorbell rings and she hears feet thumping down the common stair. Where can she hide? She picks the cupboard under the stairs.

But the guy at the door has come to read the meter! Which is in the cupboard under the stairs.

And that took much longer for me to type in to type than it did to show on TV.

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From: Mark Grant
Subject: Re: Dialogue in movies

Combination reply:

"As much dialogue as is pertinent to the short is surely the right amount. That could be a lot or none at all."

Absolutely, but getting the right amount is the tricky part. In general I'd say making a good movie with minimal dialog is usually easier than making a good movie with lots of dialog; Tarantino/Avary, Alex Cox and a few other writers and directors can get away with dialog heavy movies, but most can't (though many have tried since Tarantino became famous).

The best short I've seen for quite a while is '405', which has no dialog at all other than a couple of voice-over lines over the titles... and is what, two minutes long? 'Desserts' is another very good short and again both short and dialog-free.

"If there is a lot of dialogue and it is good then that will only lift the piece combined with the vision of the director.

But rarely as much as a movie with a lot of visuals which are good. Most of the bad shorts and features I see consist of shots of people standing around talking to each other (or, for an occasional bit of variety, sitting around talking to each other), just like a cheap soap opera; now, if you're trying to get a job writing or directing soap operas then maybe that's a good thing, but I imagine most of us want to make movies. I doubt too many people would line up at the cinema for 'Eastenders: The Movie'.

"A criticism that can be laid at the feet of some shorts is that too much emphasis is placed on establishing what is going on."

Agreed again, many of the bad shorts I've seen had 3-5 minutes of setup (even in a ten minute short) which could, and should, have been cut; though others have had no setup and I still don't know what they were about. As always it's a case of finding the right balance.

Personally I write my scripts with lots of dialog in the first draft then replace every line I can with something visual and rewrite the remaining lines to eliminate every word I don't need. The last short I wrote was, I believe, six minutes long with six lines of dialog, and we eventually cut out the final line in the edit. It did, however, have a lot of sound effects, so much of the story was told in the soundtrack even though there were few words; I'd say that's another area where many shorts fall down.

Similarly, when I'm editing I routinely cut out half the dialog in a scene because it merely slows things down; no matter how good it may be, if it doesn't serve the story it has to go. So far I haven't had any writer or director turn up at my door intending to lynch me for it!

"I don't know about you (lot), but I tend to lose concentration if I'm just watching."

I think it really comes down to how the movie is made; for example, the first few minutes of 'Payback' have hardly any dialog, but tell us all we need to know about Mel Gibson's character so quickly that I think it would be hard to lose concentration. I've had the opposite problem recently watching a lot of 70s movies and I find many of them hard to get into because so often they're dialog heavy and have scenes shot as a combination of a few long wide shots with no thought to telling the story through cuts.

"There's only so long you can linger over a particular shot before it becomes self-indulgent!"

Agree again; as with dialog, the shot should last as long as it has to last, and not a frame longer. However, some directors can get away with very long shots without seeming self-indulgent... it all depends on how the shot fits into the film.

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From: Alex
Subject: Screenwriting Software

Although there are a few others out there, I swear by Final Draft. I have used it for years. Of course, there is a lot more to writing scripts than having great software, but it helps.

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From: Oli, The Screenwriter's Store
Subject: Screenwriting Software

Looking for Final Draft Screenwriting Software? Try The Screenwriter's Store in London for the UK edition of this excellent program. Includes UK English Spell Checker and UK TV templates for Eastenders, The Bill etc. (www.thescreenwritersstore.co.uk) Prices cheaper/ delivery quicker than the USA. Plus we're friendlier too. Call Oli on 020 7287 9009.

The Screenwriter's Store
10-11 Moor Street
London W1V 5LJ

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From: Rinaldo Quacquarini, The Screenwriter's Store
Subject: Final Draft - Is it Worth It?

"Final Draft vs my Word Template - Which is better?"

I get asked this question A LOT, and I always reply with the same answer. If you're serious about scriptwriting, invest in professional tools.

Word is a powerful piece of software, no doubt about that, but don't lose sight of the fact that it has not been designed to write scripts. Although templates will give you a perfectly formatted script (as will a typewriter), what they will not give you is flexibility and control over your screenplay WHILE YOU WRITE.

The best way to demonstrate this, would be for anyone interested, to download a demo of the programs, and compare them to either your Word Template or Typewriter. I've yet to come across anyone who after having made the commitment to either Final Draft or Scr 2000, has decided to return to using a Template.

As for the comparison between Final Draft and Screenwriter 2000, while Final Draft is more popular amongst writers, Screenwriter 2000 has stronger production features and integration with MM Scheduling and Budgeting. Other than that, it's usually down to personal preference. Both are excellent products.

The Screenwriter's Store

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"I've seen postings in the past where people have been after final draft. As many others i'm looking for a cheap copy, or if it's possible to download it from the internet for nix."

Let me tell you about piracy. Some scrote in the Eastern Bloc cracked the copy protection on _our_ niche product (no scheme's unbreakable). As a result, the firm I worked for went broke. I lost well over GBP 5,000 in unpaid salary and pension, and a great job. A hundred others, seventy in the UK, suffered likewise. I've only now just about recovered from that financial hit. Others weren't as lucky getting a new job as fast.

So ... If you want to try-before-you-buy, go to and download the exaluation version.

If you want it to use for real, give the developers their due, _buy_ the damn thing and don't whinge about it -- or alternatively get any of the freely available script macro sets for that pirated copy of Word.

If you simply want to be a leech -- well, I sincerely hope that agents, managers, producers and studios treat the intellectual property in your scripts with the same respect, and that you earn from them as much as the writers of Final Draft earned from you.

Writers or programmers, we all make our money from the sale of intellectual property. Crapping on each other and disrespecting the value of each others' work is not appropriate conduct.

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