Between the devil and the deep blue
A short film is of course is a film that is short however it's exact length is not clearly defined. While some fall below five minutes others can last well over half an hour and the lack of clearly defined characteristics don't end there. As a result of only having the length of the film to define the genre we also see a massive verity in the types of films that are produced for example we can see a three minute animated action film and a half an hour documentary on toads both be presented side by side and both being called a short film. Despite this there are common themes that run through out the genre of short films and those are what we will be focusing on in this blog post. First of all is the protagonist, for the most part there is only one protagonist in a short film because as a side effect of the medium it is almost impossible to properly develop more than one character to a point where the audience is really rooting for them. A second common theme is narration as taking on an omnipotent point of view makes it very difficult to explain the massive amount of back ground information and the characters motivations. Naturalism dominates the short film form as it allows creates very human characters which are easier to construct in a shorter period of time. Finally there is the point of view, the POV, and the tone of the film. Typically for the duration of a short film we follow our protagonist and experience the film from their perspective. The tone of the film is really dependent on the film it's self as it is of course impossible to define the tone of an entire genre let alone one as ambiguous as the short film. As a result understanding the tone of any given short film is of massive importance as it is what provides the emotional link from the film to the viewer.
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