Short film history-18th January 2010

In the year 1895, the first ever Short Film was created. The first films that were ever created, are short, which are due to technological reasons, meaning that technology in the 1890's was no where near developed as in 1950's and onwards. These short films were also seen as experimental sequences. This allowed directors to creates something very short, and experiment with different ideas. The Lumiere Brothers are one of the first filmmakers with the first film: La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers leaving the Lumiere factory, which is 46 seconds long).

SHORT FILM AND HOLLYWOOD

Short film was very popular with short, quirky sequences. The Classical Hollywood narrative came into action in roughly 1910, and wiped out Short Film. The style of Classic Hollywood narrative consisted of:

• A narrative
• Actions in chronological order
• Protagonist with an antagonist in conflict with the protagonist
• Equilibrium, disequilibrium, equilibrium. Closure to a narrative.
• Continuity
• Mise-en-scene
• 90 minutes long
• Genre's of film

When Hollywood was introduced, Genre's were produced. This meant that viewers could watch different films depending on its genre. The Hollywood Studio System was also introduced which was most dominant between the 1920's to 1950's. The studio system referred to Motion picture studio's creating their own films, with Human Resource's signed to a long term contract, persisting on vertical intergration. This would mean them having total control over cinema's/theatres and distrubutors, increasing sales of movies. In 1954, any connection between production studio's and theatre's was broken due to the 1948 Supreme Court ruling.

Cinema exhibits required the films to be no longer then 100 minutes long, allowing cinema to have 2 hour blocks for food, advertising and trailers. By the 1930's and onwaqrds, short film was hardly interesting to anyone.

PRESENT

After the 1954 Supreme court ruling, Hollywood no longer follows the Studio System. Now, Short film is seen as a cheap way of experimentation and room for innovation, taking risks with minimal finance. The studio's have developed a system of scouting directoriall talent using film festivals. One director successful from this system is Martin Scorsese. One of his most famous Short films was The Big Shave, 1967. His brutal, American gangster style was involved in the short film. The film was directed to America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

Scorsese uses shots establishing that the short film is set in a bathroom e.g. shots of the toilet, tap, bath tub and mirror. The colour of both the bathroom and the clothes of the protagonist is white, signifying purity. The sense of clean and purity opposes to the vast amount of blood seenin the short film. The blood also stands out amongst the white background. Close up's are used to show the audience the protagonist shaving his face. The idea of him shaving repeatedly taking away layers of his skin, relates to the idea that in the Vietnam war, group's of people's lives were taken away, repetitively. Gradually, more blood starts to pour from his face whilst shaving, especially at the end. Again, this signifies the more war there is, the more people are going to die. From the protagonist's facial expressions, you can see that shaving his face this violently, seems like a normal thing to him. This again relates to the soldiers that fought in the war, as they seemed to think that this was 'normal', when actually, by going to war, they were basically killing themselves.

EXPERIMENTAL/AVANT GARDE/ARTHOUSE

Because Short film couldn't compete with Hollywood and Mainstream, it found its own home with the art. Experimental cinema is a style that is the opposite of mainstream. The use of techniques such as out of focus, non-diegetic sounds and non-linear narrative, with out of chronological order shots playing on structure are some of the noticeable traits of Experimental cinema and are used to keep viewers active rather then passive watchers. There is usually a low budget involved with a small crew. One example of Experimental Cinema is 'Mothlight' 1963 by Stan Brakhage. Mothlight is a 3 minute long film and was made on a 16mm film.

Brakhage used bits of grass, bug and moths to cerate this naturalistic short film. As there is no sound to the film, the silence allows you to soley concentrate on one thing, which is the film itself. When watching Mothlight, it made me think of the cycle of seasons because of the use of leaves, moths and other garden bugs. There is a shot with small particles falling, which reminds me of a moth in its catepillar stage and the cycle of the life of a catepillar/moth.



‘Meshes of the Afternoon’ 1943, created by Maya Deren, located a place for USA Avant Garde film making. Deren created Avant Garde films between 1940-1961 and displayed a highly individualistic sensibility towards short film. As well as an Avant Garde film maker, she was also a film theorist, where she’s criticised Hollywood cinema and created her work to oppose Hollywood.


Art house film, is relatively similar to experimental and Avant Garde. It differs to Hollywood mainstream, with its social realistic style, concentrating on the characters ideas and dreams. Art house films are usually directed towards a niche audience, meaning a small budget with less finance to market the film, employ professional actors and experiment with special effects. Producers usually show films at Art house cinema’s/speciality cinema’s and film festivals. One famous Art house film festival is the Bethany Art house film festival. Because the budget is so small for Art house films, it depends on magazine reviews and Art house authors to ‘rake’ in a larger audience.