Colin Trevorrow | A.D. Croucher

When you first start writing something, it can be hard to know what it is.

You might have a line of dialogue in mind, or a character, the beginning of a scene, even just an emotional atmosphere. You might write a few more lines, but still not know… is it a primetime sitcom? An edgy cable sitcom? An indie movie? A webisode? It’s only as you keep on writing (and keep on writing, and keep on…) that you realize what shape your story is… e.g., is it novel-shaped, movie-shaped, short-story shaped, just a single scene… or maybe, is it short movie-shaped?

(This is why the best way to write something is to write it… if you don’t start putting words next to other words, you’ll never get to the words after that… eh, that sounded better before we wrote it — but you get the idea! You won’t write if you don’t write. Boom!)

What counts as short-movie shaped, you ask? (Thanks for asking!) Well, we’ll tell ya.

Firstly, you don’t really have room for the traditional three act structure of movie storytelling. If you’re on the (ideal) shorter end of the spectrum, up to 10-15 mins, you don’t have a lot of runway to set up a story, develop it, and pay it off. Everything in a short movie has to be brutally efficient: each line, each beat, each shot has to work hard to propel your short to its (hopefully awesome) ending.

So a short movie will usually drop you into a situation, which means your writing has to be extra sharp, and your characters have to show themselves quickly and organically. If you want to think of your short movie in acts, each act might only be around 1-3 minutes.

The key to short movies is the reveal, also known as the punchline, or the twist, or the pay-off. A short movie is basically one set up, and one payoff. You can structure that any way you want. As we saw in our last post, Eric Kripke balanced his set-up and pay-off pretty evenly, Colin Trevorrow’s set-up was in the first 30 seconds, and the rest of the short was all pay-off, while Neil LaBute’s short was 99% set-up, with a brilliant pay-off right at the end.

So, as you can tell, the other key characteristic of a short movie is how flexible it can be. That’s the beauty of shorts.

Sorry. Again.

Their lack of formal structure allows you to be truly experimental and bold in your storytelling; the smaller canvas rewards bolder strokes.

Your short movie story could be real-time, or a day in the life, or have massive time-jumps and cover years, or even centuries. What makes it a short movie is that set-up, and pay-off.

You’re usually playing with one idea, or one concept. It could be a war between neighbors that gets resolved in an unexpected way, or someone having a really bad day, or something that’s a set-up and pay-off at the same time — one joke or idea played out to its conclusion, as in Jay and Mark Duplass’s 2003 “$5 short” This Is John, which got into Sundance, and opened a lot of doors for them. It’s the simplest of ideas, executed inventively.

As with all writing, there needs to be tension, conflict, something the lead character is fighting against, or fighting to get. Things need to go wrong in some way. In This Is John, all John wants to do is leave a successful answerphone greeting (remember, it was 2003. Old!). And it’s the one thing he can’t do. It’s the tension between dreams and reality played out to escalating, tragicomic effect.

Your short can be simple, like that, or it can be grandiose, like Neill Blomkamp’s Alive In Joburg (which was later developed into District 9), which obviously has a bigger budget, but it still uses guerrilla tactics to create the impression of scope and scale.

It doesn’t hurt that he had the CGI skills to pull it off. Don’t worry if you don’t. Remember, This Is John was literally just one brother pointing a handheld camera at another brother talking into an answering machine. And it got into Sundance, and it did great there.

As Jay Duplass has said, “the best thing to do is just make your stuff, and make it as best you can at the level you can make it at… and it will speak for itself.”

Fun fact! If you want to make a short film, a good first step is to watch short films. It’s a great way to see what cool things other filmmakers have come up with, and also to see just how endless the possibilities are for what short films can be. You’ll see so many different ways of opening a short, of setting up a story, of telling and resolving a story, all within the space of a few mins (sometimes shorts are more like 20-30 mins, but most are 15m or under). And you’ll realize, you can do anything! Yay! Also? You can do anything! Argh! What will you do??!

We’ll cover what makes a great short movie story next time, but for now, let’s focus on seeing what’s out there, and how some great directors got their starts.

Eric Kripke, creator and showrunner of CW’s Supernatural, got his start with short movies. His second, Battle Of The Sexes, was at the higher end of the short movie budget spectrum ($28,o00), but it showcases what short movies can do best: the reversal. We start with a low key situation (man hitting on a woman in bar), which partway through is flipped entirely into a more sci-fi comedy direction. Many short movies depend on a twist/punchline/reveal of some kind, since they are more in line with short stories, or even jokes. Your time and space are generally limited, meaning you have to deliver a setup and payoff, fast. In this case, the payoff is the super-elaborate and over the top scenes in the restroom, as compared to the sedate atmosphere in the bar. Check it out:

One filmmaker who has had a meteoric rise is Colin Trevorrow. His first short was Home Base. This led to his first indie feature the much-loved time-travel romance Sundance hit, Safety Not Guaranteed.

And that? It led to FREAKING JURASSIC WORLD (not the official title, although that would be really cool if it was).

And what did that lead to?

FREAKING STAR WARS EPISODE IX, BITCHES!!! (again, oddly, not the official title…)

The power of shorts, huh?

Sorry

Home Base is a more classical short is some ways: establishing shots, a quick set up, and an extended payoff. It’s more domestic than Battle Of The Sexes, although that could be Home Base’s subtitle, since it deals in a darkly comedic way with the fallout of a breakup. Take a look at how Trevorrow sets up his scenes, and how he uses the majority of his 8 minute running time to develop the payoff of the promise made by the guy in the first couple of lines. Fair warning: it’s completely NSFW!

These shorts are both somewhat elaborate in the way they payoff their twists. But there are other ways to do this, simpler, more low budget ways. Julia Stiles gives a brilliant performance in Neil LaBute’s short, Sexting (also probably NSFW). Here’s the trailer for it:

It’s very, very simple, one scene, mostly one take close on Stiles, and has a brilliant reveal right at the very end. It’s the reverse of Home Base — the entire short is the set-up to one quick sucker punch of a twist at the end. It’s a fantastic example of how a short can be incredibly simple — one locked off camera on one actress for one take. It’s a great way to showcase an actor (Stiles is excellent in this), and potentially an incredibly cost effective way to make a short that has real impact. It’s only available as part of the bundle of short movies called Stars In Shorts, which is available on iTunes; however, watching that bundle is highly recommended, since it contains a huge variety of different styles and approaches.

These are just a few examples of different shorts. Take some time to watch as many as you can; it’s eye-opening, inspiring, and lets you know — anything is possible. You just have to think of it.

We’ll focus on that next time: finding your story, and writing it!