How to make a short film: A guide

How to Make a short film idea and script

As we only made a two minute introduction to a film in our first year, it was vital that we researched how to make a short film as there are many more components that are needed in order to make a successful short film. Within a short film there has to be a sense of a beginning, middle and end which in comparison to the two minute introduction means that our shooting schedule will be longer, there will be more shots per minute and the development of our cinematography and editing needs to be far more advanced. The film guide I used suggested that there are eight steps in order to create a short film. 

The steps:

1. FIND A SMALL IDEA

                                                                       

2. EXPLORE THE IDEA/STRUCTURE

3. DEFINE YOUR WORLD, CHARACTER AND PROBLEM

                                                   

4.BEAT IT OUT

                                                                     

5. WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT

6. FIND A CRITICAL FRIEND

7. WRITE THE SECOND DRAFT

                                            

8. FINAL DRAFT

Step 1: Step 1 involves creating a small idea which has the potential to branch off. 

Step 2: Within step 2 the idea must contain how the beginning links to the end and how the end links to the beginning. It involves exploring the structure of the idea in order to successfully create it. 

Step 3: Step 3 involves defining the protagonist and other surrounding elements. The elements are a character, in a world, with a problem, they act as the building blocks to develop a structure for a short film. To define the character you must define who they are, what is the problem and what must they do to overcome the problem. 

Step 4: In step 4 you must identify how and when you will introduce the character, the world and the problem. For example introduce the world in scene 1, the character in scene 2 and the problem in scene 3 then chooses to solve the problem, has a set back in scene 5, protagonist almost defeated in scene 6, the character rejects a solution in scene 7, and finally in scene 8 solves the problem. 

Step 5: Write the first draft and try to keep it concise. 

Step 6: In step 6 you must find a critic to assess your first draft of the script and then make adjustments to it based on the critic. 

Step 7: Write the second draft based on the critics comments. 

Step 8: Write the final draft of the script ready for filming. 

This guide will benefit us during production, we aim to follow this guide to create a successful short film. Drafting the script will ensure that we have carefully thought about the characters and the plot. The final draft will allow us to create a polished final short film as we are able to expand on our first draft and improve and apply. With reference to our As year, we only had one draft of the script which we can now identify as a problem as we did not follow the script and constantly changed the plot. The final draft will be a guide to follow during production and post production. I feel this guide will be a good platform to follow in order to be successful, as well as the film guide.

I have also used the media platform, YouTube to research how to make a short film, the video below explains the necessary process of how to make a short film as the above guide can be used as a guideline of making a feature length film, I wanted to identify key aspects of a short and what I should know about making a short.
The video states that a short must be 40 minutes or less, this is important to remember during the production of the short film as we have a maximum limit of 5 minutes to create an interesting short film. The guide explains that the exposition of a short film must be efficient. Within our short there will be contextual background that the audience needs knowledge of, for example, my film idea 1 featuring the Playback tapes could take up a lot of expositional dialogue that will take up too much time for our short and is boring, in order to follow this guideline, I believe the background of the important and key aspects in order to understand the plot can be demonstrated in the title sequence or a voice over. Rather than having a character/characters discussing an important aspect to the plot or another character I will demonstrate it via a series of shots so that it is much more visual for the audience and less time consuming. 

In the video below it is a step by step guide of how to make a film, there are aspects within the YouTube video that I will consider using and will use, for example, it states that a treatment of your idea must be written up, a treatment includes the essentials to the film such as the title, the genre, the duration and a brief outline of the plot. The guide also has some useful tips on how to generate money for the short film, it suggests using a technique called Crowd Funding to make money for the production of the film, this can cover the cost of editing software, camera equipment, actors and the costumes/locations. I found this to be a useful tip as I know that the cost of our short film will be a low budget, however it will be interesting to use a technique independent film companies may use in order to fund a project they believe in.