Conventions of a Short Film
Before we can even work on creating a short film, we must first understand what a short film is expected to do for an audience and what codes & conventions lie within short films. These are some of the aspects of a short film I looked into:
Length
In terms of length of the films, they tend to be between 3 minutes and 20 minutes although there are some that have been made that last just a minute and still have a powerful effect. It's all about the artistry of the film and what the effect on the audience is. The short film competition known as Depict! expects participants to enter films that are 90 seconds in length; this is playing on the idea that most full-length films last around 90 minutes. For our film, however, we are expected to create something in approximately 5 minutes.
Storylines
When looking into storylines of short films, they tend to be with much less dialogue involved and with a great deal more action in order to further character development. The narrative itself is often very condensed in comparison to that of full-length films (for obvious reasons) but that means that you have to create a much more powerful effect in far less time. This often leads to a lack of backstory in place of faster paced action. From this, then, I can determine that my film will be focused more on a sequence of events rather than an in-depth story that develops characters in a lot of detail.
Characters
Characters in short films don't have much time to be introduced with rich backstories and have even less time to make any substantial development throughout the short time span they are on screen for. As a result, there aren't often more than 2-4 main characters which keeps it simple for the audience to keep track of them and feel connections in a limited time frame. If too much information and backstory was introduced then it'd be too difficult to keep up. Judging by this, then, the film myself and my group will create will have very few main characters so that we can create a focus on a single person's story.
Target Audience
Due to the low budget that many short film creators have to work with, the stories told are often very abstract or creatively inspired and, thus, the audience becomes far more niche. Genres are also often very specific and so a much more unique group of people will want to actually want to watch as opposed to massive blockbuster films which often fall into multiple genres to reach more people. It's also generally aimed at niche audiences because people simply just aren't aware of the existence of short films and don't know where to find them which means there's obviously far less demand.
Artistic Style
As I've mentioned before, short films are often very stylistic and reflect the director's personal flair as opposed to aiming to reel in large audiences in order to make a huge profit. The shots and soundtracks in these films are frequently quirky and portray a signature visual that the director wants to put across to his audience. It's not unusual to see massively renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton create these short films as it's a far lower amount of pressure on them to create them and they can do exactly what they want without any outside influences from film studios etc. The films themselves often have a deep emotional effect on people and cover real moral issues faced by real people which makes them come across as very artistic at times.