The film industry is full of lovely people. But it also attracts some narcissists and blowhards who say too much, too loud, and never ask questions or shine a light on anyone else. Their egotism comes through not just in their words, but in overlong, tiresome films.
To these people I say: We know, you’re an artist. You’ve been told to express yourself. Perhaps, for years, you weren’t allowed to express yourself, and now you have your chance. That’s great.
But keep it short.
Not just because overlong speeches and movies are annoying, but also because they hurt your career. A great seven-minute film has a better chance of being programmed in a festival than a 20-minute film, because the tight film will also allow programmers to fit in two or three other efficient, economical shorts, and to share other voices besides yours.
In Praise of ‘Golden Hour,’ a Short Film That Delivers
One of the best shorts I’ve seen recently — and as the editor of MovieMaker, I see a lot —is “Golden Hour,” by Maureen McEly. In under five minutes, it introduces us to a mother who keeps visiting her dead daughter in a virtual world, at tremendous cost in the real one. It movingly handles grief, parenthood, and the way businesses mine our emotions.
It breathes, it has a twist, it makes points you may think about months after you see it. McEly is making it into a feature film I’m sure will be great, because she knows how to tell a story: “The Golden Hour” looks fantastic, but wastes zero seconds on pointless things like long show-offy shots of dew on leaves.
McEly learned storytelling through years of working in a field that she knows “some people in the filmmaking world may look down on: reality television.”
“What I did on a regular basis was listen to two-hour conversations and pinpoint the most vital two minutes — the crucial interactions where everything changed,” she says. “That ability to winnow a story down to its most propulsive and consequential moments has been invaluable… as has the other dictum that runs through all reality TV programming: Never let people lose interest.”
She also understands that “as a first-time filmmaker trying to get eyes on my work, I’m an unknown competing with thousands of other films. So I wanted to make a truly short short that never takes a break in terms of tension or engaging the audience. Asking people for five minutes of their time is a much easier sell than 25 or even 15, and it was an exciting challenge to pack so much intensity and emotion into a very short time frame.”
At a recent panel at the beloved genre fest FilmQuest, two distributors talked about how long they’ll give a feature film to grab them.
“In the first 30 seconds I can tell if you know what you’re doing,” said David Lawrence, of Glass House Distribution. “Impactful beginnings are so important.”
Gato Scatena, of Scatena & Rosner Films, added that he gives a film “a legit 10 minutes.”
“Set the hook in the first five or 10 minutes and you’ll keep your audience for 90,” Scatena said.
That philosophy applies to scripts, as well, he added: “If we’re at a script level, the inciting incident needs to take place inside of 10 pages.”
But there’s also the matter of respect. Kurt Vonnegut once said that a story should “use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”
That approach applies to life, too.
Main image: Daphne Steele, left, and Becca Howell in “Golden Hour.”