Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Life is short.
Theres no limit to what you can achieve by starting small and
dreaming big. Updated with new content covering Kickstarter,
Instagram, and new technology, this third edition addresses
the aftermath of the digital revolution, a time when anyone with
a smartphone can be a filmmaker and attract attention.
e road map for making that short film youve long dreamed of.
Matthew Harrison, director, Rhythm Thief
MAKE MOVIES!
KIM ADELMAN
Making
It Big in
Shorts
3rd Edition
Praise for
Making It Big in Shorts
Recommended for anyone about to start their own short film, or who
wants to promote a short theyve made.
Raewyn Alexander, New Zealand Writers Guild
Adelman has a passion for short filmmaking and a deep commitment to
empowering filmmakers with the skills they need. Her multiple teaching
awards are distinctions [befitting] an exceptional educator. This wise,
practical, and humorous guide is a gift to filmmakers ... demystifies a
complex process in easily understandable and instantly applicable action
steps.
Pascale Cohen-Olivar, Program Director, Entertainment Studies,
UCLA Extension
A short but powerful guide to everything relevant you to know before,
during, and after making your first short film or your fifth!
Andrew P. Crane, Special Project Programmer, American
Cinematheque
A no-nonsense, concise, and to-the-point guidebook on how to make
a short film that travels well on the festival circuit.... You can create
something that garners the attention of industry pros, colleagues, and
audiences alike, and Adelmans book is the perfect companion on that
journey.
Rona Edwards, film & TV producer; author, The Complete
Filmmakers Guide to Film Festivals and I Liked It, Didnt Love It
The road map for making that short film youve long dreamed of ...
practical, up-to-the-minute, and chock-a-block with insider tips. Grab
it and shoot!
Matthew Harrison, director, Rhythm Thief, Kicked in the Head,
Bystander from Hell, Sex and the City (TV)
Direct, to the point, and up to date on all the current social media and
marketing trends for shorts. Sure wish wed known about this book earlier in our filmmaking journey. No sidetracks, no fluff, just like a good
short film. Solid ... should help anyone make and market their film
more successfully.
Tommy G. Kendrick, actor / producer, Somewhere Between Heaven
and Hell
Kim Adelman has filled the pages of her latest book with every single
step a filmmaker should consider when sharing their work with an audience. And she does it incredibly succinctly.
Destri Martino, filmmaker; founder,The Director List
Let me be brief:Making It Big in Shortspacks a treasure trove of information into a bite-sized book ... all youll ever need to join the big time
in the short film category.
Devon McMorrow, reviewer, Mobile Movie Making
An essential guide for anybody who wants to make short films, which
is great, because I love the short-film format. Its the best!
Bill Plympton, Oscar-nominated animator, Guard Dog, I Married a
Strange Person
Adelman does a terrific job of surveying the short films landscape with
this thorough and informative guide for filmmakers.
Dale M. Pollock, Professor of Cinema Studies, University of North
Carolina; author, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas
Forget film school; this book is all you need! Adelmans spot-on advice
comes from years in the trenches of indie filmmaking; her expertise
breaks down the process of making your film and getting it seen. Her
can-do spirit jumps off the page; shes the producer we all want.
Andrea Richards, author, Girl Director: A How-to Guide for the FirstTime, Flat-Broke Film and Video Maker
I wish I had discovered Making It Big in Shorts before I made my first
short film! Drawing on her years of industry experience and her deep
knowledge of the short film world, Kim reveals how to make a short
with what you have and how to get it seen ... the smartest, most liberating approach to expressing your creative vision.
Xenia Shin, filmmaker / producer, Women Transforming Media
Essential reading for short filmmakers ... employs experience, intelligence, solid information, compelling anecdote, wit, foresight, and insight
to map out the best start-to-finish path for filmmakers. Its no-nonsense
common sense will benefit filmmakers of every kind.
Jacques Thelemaque, filmmaker; president, Filmmakers Alliance
Has it all: Ms. Adelman covers the why, how, and where to get short
films made. From filmmaking to distribution and getting known, this
book is masterful.
Dave Watson, editor, Movies Matter
MAKING
IT BIG IN
SHORTS
THE ULTIMATE FILMMAKERS
GUIDE TO SHORT FILMS
3RD EDITION
KIM ADELMAN
M I C H A E L
W I E S E
P R O D U C T I O N S
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
TO THE
THIRD
EDITION
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to
the
T hird
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that you can do a lot with very little money. What counts
most is creativity, not how much you spent on your film.
Theres never been a better time to be a short filmmaker. Hard as it is to believe, YouTube didnt exist when
the first edition of this book was published in 2004.
Kickstarter wasnt around when the second edition was
written in 2009. Nor were iPads, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, or Periscope.
Technology continues to give us new and exciting tools.
Today you can shoot a six-second or a six-minute film
on your phone and share it with a worldwide audience
instantaneously. Thats the easy part. The hard part is
getting people to pay attention to your film project. As
a point of comparison, on an average day, 792 film and
video projects vie for funding on Kickstarter. Its hard to
stand out in a crowd.
Lets say you make a short and get it on iTunes. Congratulations, you might actually be one of the rare few to
make money off your short. But why should an iTunes
customer spend hard-earned money on your little film
instead of the latest Top 10 song, binge-worthy television
series, or Hollywood blockbuster? What about YouTube
and the 300 hours of media that get uploaded to that
site every minute of every day? How can your short be
singled out?
In this era in which anyone with a smartphone can
be a filmmaker, you cant invest your time, money, and
dreams of glory in the theory that if you build it, they
will come. Its not enough to know how to make a short.
You need to know how to make a short that will attract
viewers and launch a career.
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CHAPTER 1
SO YOU
WANT
TO MAKE
A SHORT
elebrating his twelfth Academy Award nomination (for his performance in About Schmidt), Jack
Nicholson confessed a shocking secret desire in
an Interview magazine profile. Jack Nicholson of Easy
Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and The Shining
fame wished he could come up with an idea for a great
short film. Even Jack Nicholson is not immune to the lure
of short filmmaking! Of course, in Nicholsons case, it
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isnt surprising. Sure, hes a big old movie star. But hes
also a graduate of the Roger Corman school of low-budget
filmmaking, a longtime reader of O. Henry stories, and a
fan of the student films that play occasionally on cable or
public television.
Whats stopping Mr. Nicholson from making a short?
Certainly it isnt money. And it isnt because he doesnt
have any ideas. Jacks been around long enough to know
that ideas come to you all the time. No, Nicholson wont
be making a short anytime soon because he has too much
respect for the format. Acknowledging that making a good
short is something to be proud of, Jack is going to stay out
of the pool rather than recklessly jumping in feet first to
see what kind of splash he might make.
S o
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Practically speaking,
anything over 20 minutes is on the long side.
Those films are sometimes jokingly called
mediums. For festivals,
online, television, and
even potential theatrical Publicity still from Devil Doll, courtesy of Jarl Olsen /
distribution, shorter is Director: Jarl Olsen / Photographer: Phil Parmet
definitely better.
In my years of reviewing shorts for Indiewire, Ive realized the majority of shorts that really worked had a running
time of 12 minutes. When I was making shorts for Foxs
movie channel, we aimed for 10 minutes or less. At that
time, there was an American short that played in competition at Cannes called Devil Doll it was 50 seconds long.
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RECAP
Making a short is something to be proud of. Just ask
Jack Nicholson. The hard part is making a good short.
Everyone makes shorts famous directors, movie stars,
entertainment industry professionals, feature filmmakers, students, and regular folk from all over the world.
No one can stop you from becoming a filmmaker. All
you need is motivation and money.
Shorts can range from less than a minute to less than 50
minutes. Shorter is better. Twelve minutes seems to be
the sweet spot for festival films. Ten minutes or less is
something to aim for.
Pick up a camera and shoot something. Make something
weird and unique. Title the piece. Congratulations, you
are now a filmmaker.
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CHAPTER 2
YOUR
SHORT &
YOU
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to show off his acting chops. He credits the short for getting him cast in his big break, Steven Spielbergs Saving
Private Ryan. Another Spielberg story: A young U.K. filmmaker named James Curran posted his own version of
the Tintin title sequence on Vimeo. Spielberg spotted it,
called him up, and hired him, reports Vimeo Festival+
Awards Director Jeremy Boxer.
Its not just actors and directors who demo their talent
in shorts. Writers get gigs off shorts, as do producers
and crew.
YOU: Have a unique voice
YOUR SHORT: Is an expression of that voice
Dont regurgitate what youve seen before. We dont
need more Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson wannabes. Its your unique voice (or vision) that will get
you attention.
We are constantly looking for new talent, new voices,
doing things in a stylistically different way, says Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer Kim Yutani. She
uses as an example the web series Drunk History, an episode of which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
Try to figure out who you are as an artist and what you
uniquely have to offer the world, Jay Duplass reminded
filmmakers at a Sundance ShortsLab.
Animators, in particular, need to make their own mark.
Whether its the animation style employed or the type
of story told, its that voice that attracts attention and
future work. Norwegian-born Canadian animator Torill
Kove has both a distinct animation style and narrative
voice, which has resulted in two Oscar nominations (My
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Y our
S hort
&
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Grandmother Ironed
the Kings Shirts and
Me and My Mouton)
and one win (The
Danish Poet).
Speaking of being
unique, try to come
Publicity still from The Danish Poet, courtesy of the National Film
up with a unique Board
of Canada / Director: Torill Kove
title for your short.
Youre creative, your shorts title should reflect this. It also
helps your short stand out from the crowd. The wonderful thing about short film titles (as opposed to feature film
titles) is there is no fear of having one so long that it cant
fit on the movie theater marquee because short film titles
never appear on marquees! Your title can be as long and as
funky as you want. In fact, a unique title sparks interest.
Would you want to see a 15-minute-long short called I Killed
My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have
a Three-Picture Deal at Disney? Probably so. And I didnt
even have to tell you that Ben Affleck directed it. Not that
your title has to be a block long. It just has to be memorable. Noah Edelson made a short in which a kid spends the
first minute of the film jumping up and down on a manhole
cover chanting 78. Noah called the piece 78. Andrew Busti
and Sebastian del Castillo made a super cool experimental
film consisting of faces and hands pressed against the Xerox
machine glass. The title deleriouspink (delirious intentionally
spelled wrong) makes that short even more memorable.
Having a unique title also helps with hashtag promotion of your film. For example, I once donated to a
Kickstarter short film project, Snow. I usually tweet about
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RECAP
Work begets work. By making a short, you are making
opportunities come to be.
Your work brands you as a filmmaker. Make sure its a
brand that helps you rather than hinders you.
Everything about your short should reflect your creativity, especially the title.
Having a unique voice will attract notice.
Even before you make a film, you have a level of buzz
as a filmmaker.
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