I Made a Bad Short Film SO You Don’t Have To
During the first semester of my senior year of college, I was conscious of the fact that I was transitioning from one stage of my life to another. I think it was because a semester abroad followed by a summer in New York gave me—what I thought was—a preview of the real world. What my life would look like post-grad. In Vienna, I lived in a small European apartment, rode my bike around the city, and did my grocery shopping on Sundays. In New York, I read my book on the F and L train to work and enrolled in a rewards program at the smoothie shop near the office. My hinge profile said I was a Product Designer at a startup in Williamsburg and I liked the sound of that. So when I returned to USC in mid-August, I felt like I was a real-life adult putting my real-life adult world on pause. And for the next 8 months, I would be a college kid. I would be living with 10 of my closest friends, I would be riding my bike around campus, and my gameday fits would go stupid. Our football team was going to be good too.
In this shrinking window of adolescence, I began to ask myself: “What do I do with this time?” So, as a Business of Cinematic Arts major who spent most of his time in class complaining about how the industry has shamelessly commodified the medium of film, I figured I would put my money where my mouth is. I would spend my senior year making a short film. I would take a stand against the Marvelization of Hollywood and show the world what cinema truly is.
So that’s what I did.
Flash forward to today—over a year since embarking on this journey and my short film “What’s on your mind, Charlie?” has just been released. Although I’m not blocking off my calendar for Sundance or Cannes, I’m proud that I took advantage of that time. The whole process was both an amazing experience and a terrible headache. So, on the off chance that there is someone out there who feels this need to take advantage of the time they have by making a movie, here are three things I wish I would have known before making mine…
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Suggestion One: Watch a lot of movies, but more importantly watch a bunch of short films.
It’s estimated there are around 500,000 feature-length films in circulation. If you add TV shows, that number goes up to 4.5 million. I say this to say, whatever you are thinking about making, it is very likely that it will resemble a movie or show that is already out there. This is not to deter you rather it should encourage you. “Great artists steal.” (For “What’s on your mind, Charlie?,” a short centered around memory and death, my collaborator Jake and I watched a lot of Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kaufman, Linklater, and pretty much any movie that we came across that had an existential, spiritual atmosphere.)
But what you have to understand—and something I didn’t realize until after making a short—is that a movie and a short film don’t play by the same rules. A movie is anywhere from 1 to three hours. A short film is only a fraction of that time. Plus, most movies are made by professionals while most shorts are made by amateurs. So by also watching a bunch of shorts, you can get a good idea of how to structure your story so that it fits the medium best.
Tool You Can Use: shortverse.com
A platform I would suggest signing up for right now is shortverse.com. This is both a streaming platform for short films and a digital community for aspiring filmmakers. The same team behind “Short of the Week” is behind this product and it is truly a great tool because it is both a library and community dedicated to short films and aspiring filmmakers.
Suggestion Two: Use a browser-accessible editing software
Getting a film from pre-production to production and from production to post-production is a relatively straightforward process. The real challenge is getting the film out of post-production. Pre-production and production took a total of four months while post-production took around seven. So in order to not fall into "post-production purgatory,” I would suggest investing in browser-accessible, cloud-rendered editing software. Here’s why:
First, you won’t be tied to an external hard drive. For “What’s on your mind, Charlie?” the entire post-production process hinged on an external hard drive that housed all of our footage. We couldn’t do anything without it. In fact, on the way back from my post-grad trip in May, I had to make a detour to New York City just to retrieve the hard drive from my editor so that I could deliver it to the colorist in LA. If I had used an editing software that offered cloud-based GPUs, my footage would have been stored in the cloud and accessible from anywhere. It would have made my life immeasurably easier.
The second reason is that the way I provided feedback to my editor could have been more efficient. It involved a constant back-and-forth of sending screenshots from my notes app or sharing Google Doc links. A browser-accessible editing software would’ve allowed me to give feedback in real-time in the timeline.
Tool You Can Use: sequence.film
Sequence is a video editing software that is browser-accessible, utilizes cloud GPUs, and is designed for all types of video storytellers. In other words, it is exactly what I wish I had for “What’s on your mind, Charlie?” I find the Sequence team interesting because instead of approaching filmmaking from the traditional waterflow workflow of pre-production to production to post-production point of view, they are building software that reimagines the production process—from script to screen—in its entirety.
Suggestion Three: Know what you want to get out of this.
“The Parable of the Pots” goes something like this. A pottery professor gives his students their final project: make a pot. There are two options in how they can make it. They can either spend the month making 50 pots as fast as possible and be graded on the 50th pot or spend the month making one pot and being graded on that pot’s quality. Conventional wisdom usually favors the one-pot approach, however, year after year the professor found that it was those who chose the first option (make 50 pots fast) would always end up with the better pots.
The idea is that by focusing so much on making one thing perfect, you miss out on the lessons learned from iteration and imperfection. Those students who were constantly creating new pots were able to experiment, figure out what works, figure out what doesn’t work, and ultimately get the craft of making a pot.
Coming back to short films, you have to ask yourself, what do you want to get out of this? Do you want to become a better filmmaker, or do you want to tell a specific story really well? If you answered yes to the former, you don’t need to make a short film. Rather creating short-form content such as Instagram reels and TikTok is the 50-pot approach to filmmaking. You shouldn’t feel discouraged because social videos aren’t simple videos. There are plenty of creators out there who are making professional content in the short form. Start making quality short-form videos and even grow an audience while you do it.
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These tips put you well ahead on your journey to making your first short film. With that said, here’s a brief blurb about my movie:
“What’s on your mind, Charlie?” centers around a college kid having a conversation with his therapist. Charlie has just come back from his semester abroad and is trying to settle into his last year at USC. Charlie went abroad alone—leaving all of the friends he made at school. In that isolation, Charlie learned a lot about himself. But now being back for his senior year of college is unsettling. Not only does he have to deal with this rocky transition, but Charlie also has to deal with his relationship with his grandpa, who is slowly dying. It is in this state of mind—coming back from utter isolation and dealing with the looming death of a loved one—that the whole short takes place.
Making a short film was brutal and I hated most parts of it, but I’m itching to do it again. There’s truly nothing like the high that comes with creating something that means something to you. If I can do it, you can too. So just do it. You only have so much time.
