What Dave and Tom say make sense of course, but I find a lot of audiance members viewing competitions, especially new members of clubs, take note of what judges say, especially if those judges have been lucky enough to win competitions. It follows then that those members start making shorter films themselves and beleive everyone else should do so as well. I proposed to my club that they have a night for members to show their films that they didn't want to enter into competitions.
Eventually it was agreed and the night was judged to be a great success. Roy
Titles - Your Views
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Brian Saberton
- Posts: 355
- Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 8:00 pm
- Location: Scotland
Although I'm a believer in competitions I agree with Roy and think it's a good idea to have opportunities on a club syllabus to show members films in a non competitive way just for the fun of it. In this way you might, hopefully, encourage members who may feel imtimidated by competitions.
On the matter of the length of films my own rule of thumb, rightly or wrongly (and I'm not sure where I picked up this piece of advice), is that a film should be just long enough to tell the "story" - no more and no less. For practical reasons club competitions usually need to have a time limit if all the films in a contest are to be fitted into an evenings programme and allow time for the judges comments. (That's assuming you have a big membership and get lots of entries of course!). However the temptation can be that members then see the time limit as a target rather than the maximum. On the other hand it could encourage film makers to think more about their scripting/editing and structure.
On the matter of the length of films my own rule of thumb, rightly or wrongly (and I'm not sure where I picked up this piece of advice), is that a film should be just long enough to tell the "story" - no more and no less. For practical reasons club competitions usually need to have a time limit if all the films in a contest are to be fitted into an evenings programme and allow time for the judges comments. (That's assuming you have a big membership and get lots of entries of course!). However the temptation can be that members then see the time limit as a target rather than the maximum. On the other hand it could encourage film makers to think more about their scripting/editing and structure.
Brian Saberton
Two films I have made over 30 minutes in length have both beem criticised by judges for "needing trimming". One reason I admire the BIAFF is that it does have the courage to accept films of any length, unusual now in the world of n-c film contests. I have noticed that audiences made up of n-c film makers are impatient and are visually unhappy with any film that does not develop very quickly. Keep makig the films Roy. keep entering them in the contests.
ned c
ned c
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FILM THURSO
- Posts: 241
- Joined: Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:37 pm
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Lawrence Of Arabia was a fantastic film and really long but have you notice how little dialogue there is in it. It's largely silent with scenery, action and music hauling this picture along. Is it a rubbish film, is it too long? NOPE!
It's pointless a judge saying your film is too long. It doesn't help you in any way. When our team discusses length (see the women roll their eyes) it relates to whether some of the shots need to be in the film even if they are good shots. It is better if the judge would tell you where he/she felt you maybe lingered instead of moving things on. Good judgement is one which is explained.
15 minutes is a good length for a short film, Why people are going down as little as 2 minutes and less is beyond me. Such lengths rely on a situation basis. We equate with the people because of their situation. This is fine for adverts like the Kit-Kat one with the Hare at the dog races (spoke volumes about having a bad day in mere seconds) but there is a limit to how often that can be interesting.
If you put on a show of short films under 3 minutes the audience will get board of all the start-stop that occurs as films begin and end.
We produced "Micro Trip" as a package feature from 10 short films because we didn't want the audience to break from their imagination as the film moved to the next story. All the films are complet short movies but we chopped the titles and with a wee bit of jiggary-pokery (studio interferance with epic films) we made it work and then at the end came a great big title scroll with each films credits in order of appearance. In last years Big Gig we put the films on in complete form but tightend the space between each so that there was no break is audio continuity. It gave the audience time to mentally digest the film they'd just seen before getting into the next. Send your films to our festival, we don't care how long your film is (withing reason, we don't want to have to serialise it).
It's pointless a judge saying your film is too long. It doesn't help you in any way. When our team discusses length (see the women roll their eyes) it relates to whether some of the shots need to be in the film even if they are good shots. It is better if the judge would tell you where he/she felt you maybe lingered instead of moving things on. Good judgement is one which is explained.
15 minutes is a good length for a short film, Why people are going down as little as 2 minutes and less is beyond me. Such lengths rely on a situation basis. We equate with the people because of their situation. This is fine for adverts like the Kit-Kat one with the Hare at the dog races (spoke volumes about having a bad day in mere seconds) but there is a limit to how often that can be interesting.
If you put on a show of short films under 3 minutes the audience will get board of all the start-stop that occurs as films begin and end.
We produced "Micro Trip" as a package feature from 10 short films because we didn't want the audience to break from their imagination as the film moved to the next story. All the films are complet short movies but we chopped the titles and with a wee bit of jiggary-pokery (studio interferance with epic films) we made it work and then at the end came a great big title scroll with each films credits in order of appearance. In last years Big Gig we put the films on in complete form but tightend the space between each so that there was no break is audio continuity. It gave the audience time to mentally digest the film they'd just seen before getting into the next. Send your films to our festival, we don't care how long your film is (withing reason, we don't want to have to serialise it).