Brains?

This week Brains? takes a look at all things screen and marketing, starting with this must read guest post buy the estimable Amy Broadfoot.

‘Oh No! You went over the xyz running time!’ – Amičko Films guide to ideal short film time limits

I hate hearing this, and I hear it a lot.

I know a few filmmakers who have been unfairly psyched out by this statement. I also love short films and I think they are under appreciated as an art form and would love to see greater respect for the medium. So let’s get this cleared up.

The main mistake filmmakers make is they don’t have a clear idea of what they want to achieve with the film, and therefore they don’t understand how an audience will interact with their film. Shorts can run to whatever length you like, that is, if you know you’re audience.

Here’s a rough guideline for running times for short short, medium shorts and long shorts. It can be broken down into three simple questions,
Do you want it to go viral?
Do you want to festival?
And/ or do you want to win an award?

The information in this blog is taken from statistic research, industry panel discussions and my general knowledge of film festivals. Please give me your thoughts if you think otherwise.

Please note a film running time includes credits.

Mirco shorts
Less than 8 mins
Statistically the most watched films on Youtube are films which run less than the 2 mins. This medium can access the largest audience possible, far beyond the power of cinemas/television distribution purely as there are now more mobile phones with internet access worldwide than there are television sets and personal computers.

Think about how people access Youtube, what else is fighting for their attention, and are they limited by download capabilities?

For viral seeding think in threes: You have .3 of second to grab someone’s attention, 3 seconds of visual entertainment to get someone to clink on the link, and 30 sec to prove that it’s worth watching the rest of the film. So what are you three 3′s?

General rule is, the shorter the film the more hits it will receive.

Medium Shorts
8 – 20 mins
This is for the filmmaker who wants to have a more developed narrative than in the above category. This is an appropriate length of film festivals, however please note that if you want to festival you cannot Youtube! If you release more than 10% of your film online you may be disqualified from festivals and distribution, so be careful with those trailers.

If you keep it under 20 mins it’s an easy guarantee it will suit the entry rules for most festivals. However here’s an interesting statistic: shorts 20 mins or less are twice as likely to win awards than ones less than 5 minutes, BUT a 35 minute short is more likely to win an award than 5 minute film if they are competing in the same category. Why? The extra time allows for a stronger narrative, regardless of overall production values, narratives win awards.

Long Shorts
Up to 60 mins
I’ve left it open to the 60 mins mark as this has been the longest time limit I’ve seen defined in the rules and regulations of festivals.

This is probably the most feared category and unfairly so.

As we can see below most festivals have pretty gracious running times for shorts, we also know that in order to attached future funding it’s very helpful to have had a successful short. However, the experience of making a Mirco Short is vastly different from making a feature, so I recommend all film makers to attempt making a Long Short to have an taste test of what a feature would be like in both the production and marketing. Don’t worry if you go over the 20 min mark, many festivals will still love to see your work and maybe even give it an award.

Here’s a list of qualifying times for the short film categories at significant short film festivals:

Flickerfest, Australia – less than 35mins
Toronto International Film Festival, Canada – less than 50mins
Sundance, USA – less than 50mins
Raindance Film Festival, UK – less than 30mins
Kurzfilmfest Straubing, Germany – less than 30 mins
International Film Festival Berlin, Germany – less than 30 mins
Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, France – less than 40 mins
Aspen Shortfest, Canada – Less than 40 mins
Krakow Film Festival, Poland – Less than 30 mins

Awards:
BAFTA, UK – less than 40mins
Oscars, USA – entry via winning at accredited festivals

Awards winners and running times:

Oscar 2010
Live action: The New Tenants at 21mins
Doco: Music By Prudence at 32mins
Animated: Logorama at 18mins

Sundance 2010
The Six Dollar Fifty Man at 15 mins

Berlinale 2010
Incident by a Bank at 10 mins

BAFTA 2009
I Do Air at 7 mins

Distribution:
N/A on the running time – they’ll program what is good and what has a proven audience base.

Finally, I would like to state that there is NO POINT in screening at film festivals if you don’t know how to capitalise from them! If you submit to festivals just to add screenings to the list you might need to go back to your producers handbook and have another read… but this can’t be another rant for another time.

Know your audience and then know your limits. Happy Shorting.
______

Amy has worked internationally in film marketing, sales and festivals. She currently lives in Perth and run a film consultancy business Amičko Films, is the only Australian manager for the short film distribution label Future Shorts and runs mirco cinema events at The Moon and other various locations. For more info contact amy@amickofilms.com

Purists may argue that South Australia is not in WA, but one half of the Binary Space team is here in Westralia, and the game they made is so cool it counts.
Class 3 Outbreak is the game, and you can find it embedded below for your consideration.

Who are you and what are you doing in my house?

Jay Weston, creative dude and Saxon Druce, coder. We are old work colleagues from Ratbag, which was an Adelaide game developer who made some pretty sweet racing games back in the day.

What was the inspiration for the Zombie Outbreak Simulator?

Jay: Pretty much any and every zombie film and game made up until this point. My favorite zombie game would have to be Left 4 Dead, and my fave zombie movie would be Dawn of the Dead (the remake). In terms of the whole Google Maps thing, I think it came up when I used a screenshot of a Google Map to explain a game design concept to Saxon.

Could you explain the difference between Zombie Outbreak Simulator and Class 3 Outbreak?

Jay: ZOS is essentially a sandbox game where you just watch the chaos unfold. C3O is the playable version, where you can control the police to fight the zombies. Both were coded using Flash/ActionScript. The art and animations were drawn pixel by pixel.

What are you working on now?

Jay: We are currently working on upgrading C3O. Saxon is coding up an Editor that will allow you to enter your home address, paint down a collision map, and then try and survive a zombie outbreak wherever you please.

Where can we find you?

Our sites are:

Class 3 Outbreak: Zombie RTS on Facebook

Binary Space

Class 3 Outbreak

How good is the Perth indy game scene…..why is that?

Jay: I’ll leave that to Saxon to answer!

Saxon: I’m relatively new to the Perth indie game scene – it was already good before I got here, so I don’t know how it got this way. But I do think we owe a lot to the many people who put in their spare time to help promote the local scene, like:

- Nick, Minh, Anthony and Dan from letsmakegames.org, who organise events throughout the year
- Chris from www.pigmi.org, an indie game dev mailing list
- Simon from gamejam.org (weekend game dev events) and planet.pigmi.org (perth game dev blog aggregator)

How’s it in Radelaide?

Jay: Pretty… Rad?

I don’t care to open with apologies, so I won’t. I know it’s been a while, but such is life. I’ve been busy, so sue me. (Please don’t).  Anyway, it’s been a very interesting couple of months in this little town. Widespread chaos amongst industry players of all walks of life, with some very open ugly fights happening. It’s sad to see, but that doesn’t mean it’s not super fucking entertaining. Because, it is. It really is.

That’s one of the fascinating things about our industry and culture. The smallest infraction can be a big deal, a misquoted comment can turn into a feud. I’m not stupid enough to go into details, and if you have to ask; you don’t have the right to know. I guess because there seems to be so many avenues of people attempting to screw one another out of money sometimes, there is always the good chance someone’s nose is going to get out joint.

It’s partly connected to the great deal of actors we have at the moment (it seems). Lots and lots of bright shining stars, all hungry to make it. At any cost. Ambition, pride and emotion all seem to be the same thing sometimes, which is scary.

But enough of that rubbish. There is some great stuff coming up. Now more than ever, people are just getting out there and doing it. Something I am all the more for. Which I think brings me to my primary question: Do you remember when you wanted to make films just for fun? When it wasn’t about ‘making it’, getting a job, impressing your peers (yuck) or any of that shit?

I remember in my first year of ‘film school’, myself and a couple of friends made a pretty horrible zombie film. At my house. With me starring in it.  Can you imagine? It was called ‘Savage Zombie Killer’, because I ever so look forward to my surname being used as punnary until the day I die. It was pretty shit, but Christ, it was so much fun. We shot (and drank) most of the night. Only to get up at 5am and keep shooting. Hell, we did the DVD extras in the afternoon. It was beyond wonderful.  When I feel frustrated about the scene, I think back to that night and laugh. If that wasn’t purist filmmaking, I don’t know what is.

So, I guess, if you feel yourself getting caught up in the bullshit (of which I know I do), think about that time you made something because it was fun and you loved making films.  In the end, there really isn’t anything better than that.

Wade K. Savage works professionally as a freelance film editor and film director. He primarily makes genre films. His last short film ‘The Dead Wastes’ has been accepted to screen at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, this month. He hears banned Gay Zombie film ‘LA Zombie’ is screening there too, though he’s not so sure he wants to see…dudes…well y’know.

Twitter.com/WadeKSavage

Above Image: Jeffrey Phillips www.jeffreyphillips.com.au

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Chad Peacock and I started tinkering with film making in the nineties when I was 12 making really bad short action films with the family camcorder. Making videos/films has been a part of my life in one way or another ever since and has taken me to some really interesting places all around the world.

I currently teach high school media studies and find it a challenging yet inspiring job (plus I get to live vicariously through my students who have been finalists and winners in the WASA’s in the last few years!). My most important job though is being a Dad to three young girls, and it is really them who got me back into making short films again.

All the techniques I had been messing around with in our family videos came in pretty handy for the last few jobs I have done – the most notable being the ‘Creepy’ job.

What was the brief for the ‘Creepy’ vid and how did you approach it?

There was no real brief except to capture the three main phases of production of the biggest section of the artwork. The film only documents 14m of a 45m job – the final piece is really going to be amazing and will be installed at Murdoch University in the next few weeks.

I basically filmed a few hours each day for four or five days and set up another camera shooting time-lapse as Kyle (AKA Creepy) worked throughout the day. I had been experimenting with shooting on DSLR’s for about a year prior and had a pretty good grasp on what did and didn’t work – luckily this particular subject really suited this type of film making which does have it’s limitations.

In terms of gear though it was really pretty simple. I shot 90% of the video stuff on the Panasonic GH1 using a variety of cheap lenses (Nikon e series 28mm and a $40 eBay security camera lens that was really fast and great in low light).

Out of all the DSLR’s I love the fact the GH1 has a flip out screen to do the low and high angles – the Canon’s are currently pretty limited in this regard and I just used the 7D to shoot the time lapse stuff (tracking done in post) and the tracking shots at the end of the video.

The dolly shots were done on a ‘wally dolly’ and also on a ‘glidetrack’, which is a really simple but innovative piece of kit that I borrowed for the shoot. In terms of music we were stoked to get ‘Explosions in the Sky’ onboard as I am a really big fan of their work on the film ‘Friday Night Lights’.

It was a really enjoyable experience and everyone is happy with the final product, which is always nice.

What’s the story with the HK Airport vid? What was the hack?

I was traveling to Canada for a family wedding and had a 12 hour stop over in Hong Kong. I thought it would be fun to test out my little DSLR camera with limited gear in a confined space. I spent a few hours shooting, using things like the airport trolleys for my tracking shots and then edited the piece on my flight to Vancouver.

I found out later on my way back home that the airport is way bigger than I had thought and I could have shot a whole lot more interesting stuff but it turned out OK anyway. I enjoy the challenge of using limited equipment – I’m a strong believer in using constraints to foster creativity.

In terms of the hack that is a firmware update this guy has released to increase the capture bit rate on the Panasonic GH1. It is a really interesting time for filmmaking in terms of new these DSLR’s with a lot of people pushing the technology to it’s limits and getting some pretty cinematic looking results.

What are you working on at the mo?
I will be doing a really short promo piece for Kyle (Creepy) at his upcoming gallery show at Turner galleries, a corporate job promoting Perth to overseas education institutions/students, and later in the year I will be heading to Zambia to shoot a documentary with our School which I am really looking forward to.

Where can we find you (online or off)?

Online I can be found at Vimeo, musically at Sundaysaway.com, and the Zambia doco will be landing on swanmissions.com early 2011.

Offline I can be found playing in parks around our great city with my kids (and occasionally you will find me playing in dingy pubs with my mates in Sundays Away).

The fine gentlemen from Nakatomi Pictures are releasing their 2nd feature, ESOTERICA, so Brains? sat down with them to talk film, Perth and spiders.

With the release of their first feature, NO THROUGH ROAD, Nakatomi experienced the magic of Balinese graphic design. Royalties would be nice, but really its more eyes the merrier.

In case you missed it, the trailer for NO THROUGH ROAD…….

And on with the interview….

The fine gentlemen from Nakatomi Pictures are releasing their 2nd feature, ESOTERICA, so Brains? sat down with them to talk film, Perth and spiders.

Sit at the feet of grandpa while he spins you a yarn of times past.

The fine gentlemen from Nakatomi Pictures are releasing their 2nd feature, ESOTERICA, so Brains? sat down with them to talk film, Perth and spiders.

Shooting in Perth, with all its pro’s and con’s, is still a viable option for people out to produce their own features, says Nakatomi Pictures.

The fine gentlemen from Nakatomi Pictures are releasing their 2nd feature, ESOTERICA, so Brains? sat down with them to talk film, Perth and spiders.

Dizzy Lamb Park – torched by arsonists or reclaimed by Satan? You decide.

The fine gentlemen from Nakatomi Pictures are releasing their 2nd feature, ESOTERICA, so Brains? sat down with them to talk film, Perth and spiders.

Its really rare for Aussie filmmakers to follow through with a sophomore feature effort, but in WA it’s next to unheard of. With this release Nakatomi Pictures has entered the pantheon of WA film gods, so to those who are about to make a third, we salute you.