statistical study on short film run times in festivals

[steve hyde]

...this is really quite interesting:

http://www.lathrios.com/blog/?cat=9


Like any quantitative study - it comes with obvious limitations...






Steve

[Nigel]

TRT with short films seems to be a constant low-grade hum at pretty much every festival.

All good points but at the end of the day it all boils down to festival programmers and content. If I were to program a festival I would look less at the TRT and more at how the short will fit in and against the features around it.

Good Luck

[Scotness]

Or you could just forget about that and explore ideas and themes and characters and let that dictate how long (and good!) your film will be!

Scot

[CHAS]

Steve,
if you haven't done so already, you might want to check out the Without a Box message boards...a lot of fest programmers (many of whom are current or former filmmakers) frequent these and they will answer questions point blank about this kind of stuff. I seem to recall a conversation last year discussing this exact thing.
Glad to hear your film is getting accepted!
CHAS

[syrett]

As the creator of the blog site in question, I would like to clarify my work, since I think some of the posts here are missing the point.

1) First, I am not asking anyone to abandon their art to numbers. I am just trying to help filmmakers make better decisions.

2) Like the classic rules cinematography, the statistical rules I have noted can be freely and successfully broken. However, it is wisest to understand a rule before you break it. In this way, you can understand the consequences and work to mitigate them. BTW, the latest film I produced fully broke my rules of runtime (and it up for an Oscar this Sunday).

3) What I wrote about here is nothing new (ask any festival programmer and they will confirm the facts as I had written them), however what I have done differently is quantify them. All this was anecdotal prior to my work, which lead me to seek confirmation of these facts.

4) Please prove me wrong. I don't want to believe that runtimes matter so much... however the numbers show a very strong patterning that is not easily overlooked or avoided. It is one of the clearest patterns I have found in my professional life.

--

I would suggest that you take a look at the heart of the site (http://www.lathrios.com), which is a database of films showing at festivals. I am working to build it out so filmmakers can track what films showed where to help craft their own festival runs.

I know many of you are artists, but please don't reject the numbers outright. They can be helpful if you let them.

[steve hyde]

....thanks to the author for joining the discussion and congratulations on your nomination.

I think your statistical study has rigor - with a significant sample size - and is very interesting and useful. It confirms that festivals don't like to program long shorts.

Your study is helpful for starting filmmakers that might assume that making a four minute film is some how less significant - artistically - than making a twenty minute short... The *statistical truth* is that films under ten minutes get programmed at festivals more than longer ones.

Of course there is a time/space compression going on here. Naturally more shorter films can be programmed into the compressed space of a festival program.



Again, thanks for posting your work and making it available for us to link to it.


Steve

[steve hyde]

Steve,
if you haven't done so already, you might want to check out the Without a Box message boards...a lot of fest programmers (many of whom are current or former filmmakers) frequent these and they will answer questions point blank about this kind of stuff. I seem to recall a conversation last year discussing this exact thing.
Glad to hear your film is getting accepted!
CHAS

...Thanks. I'll check the WAB boards. I use WAB, but I've not used the board there..

Steve

[steve hyde]

Or you could just forget about that and explore ideas and themes and characters and let that dictate how long (and good!) your film will be!

Scot

...I don't think anyone would disagree with this. Yet without putting constraints on a work of art, it is hard to know when / how to stop.
Time constraints are nice because it contains the work. I designed my current project to be 10 minutes and the challenge was getting it down to this running time.

I welcomed this constraint because it made me focus on the rhythms of the short-form instead of trying to adopt the rhythms of feature form films. I see a lot of short films that try to evoke feelings like features and naturally ...they often fall short..


Steve

[CHAS]

Time constraints are nice because it contains the work. I designed my current project to be 10 minutes and the challenge was getting it down to this running time.

Steve

That's one of the points of discussion I recall from the WAB message board dialogue -- without going into this man's stats, programmer after programmer emphasized the desire for films around 10 minutes or less (esp. for comedies) if only for the fact that attention spans (thanks to YouTube and the like) are getting shorter.

My first cut of "Westsider" was 34 minutes long! Despite a lot of fests emphasizing the "40 minutes or less for shorts" bit unless your work is the Citizen Kane of shorts I wouldn't try that route.

[steve hyde]

...journalism is no different with word counts. Academic journals etc. too.

by the way - I just picked up a very interesting book from focal press that filmmakers working on shorts might also find interesting:

It's Swimming Upstream from Sharon Badal. Loaded with insightful interviews with film industry types all built around the short film question.

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookde ... escription







Steve

[ccortez]

The first thing I knew about the short I'm working on right now is how long I wanted it to be (5 minutes, though I've revised up to 7 as a target).

I think about it similar to working in meter in poetry -- meter is very restrictive in one sense, freeing in another. One side of my brain can follow the rule/form and the other can fight against it, which hopefully results in satisfying changes in dynamic rhythm.

Anyway, thanks for all the work putting this data together.

[ccortez]

So this must be your movie?

http://freeheld.com/

Looks really cool! Congrats!

Did you have any visibility to genre when compiling your RT numbers? I would guess that doc shorts get away with being a little bit longer, but might be totally wrong about that...

[syrett]

As for the length of short, I would recommend at least 8 minutes, which is the tipping point for winning awards... shorter film just do not win awards often.

The differences between docs and shorts in terms of length are not great... at least in my sample. However, it is often difficult to know what is a doc, experimental, or narrative just from the festival and I had to automate some extraction which makes this determination even harder.

Yes, Freeheld is my film (I am one of two Producers), which was shot and directed by my wife Cynthia Wade. This database was created originally for this film to better understand the goings on along the festival circuit, but took on a life of it own since then.

[ccortez]

As for the length of short, I would recommend at least 8 minutes, which is the tipping point for winning awards... shorter film just do not win awards often.

Very good info, thanks. I'll target 8ish then.

[CHAS]

Yes, Freeheld is my film (I am one of two Producers), which was shot and directed by my wife Cynthia Wade. This database was created originally for this film to better understand the goings on along the festival circuit, but took on a life of it own since then.

Saw the trailer on your site; looks like a fantastic film. I wish you the best of luck on Oscar night.