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Early American actor William Garwood starred in numerous short films, many of which were only 20 minutes in length


Short subject is a format description originally coined in the North American film industry in the early period of cinema. The description is now used almost interchangeably with short film; either term is often abbreviated to short (as a noun, e.g. 'a short'). Although the North American definition generally refers to films of between 20 and 40 minutes long, the definition refers to much shorter films in Europe, Latin America and Australasia. In New Zealand, for instance, the description can be used to describe any film that has a duration longer than 1 minute and shorter than 15 minutes. The North American definition also tends to focus much more on character whereas the European and Australasian forms tend to depend much more on visual drama and plot twists. In this way, the North American form can be understood to be a derivation of the feature film form, usually acting as a platform for aspirant Hollywood directors. Elsewhere, short films tend to work as showcases for cinematographers and commercial directors.

History of Film Making

Early period

The term came to be applied in North America in the 1910s, when the majority of feature films began to be made in much longer-running editions. A typical film program came to be expected to include a feature preceded by one or more short subjects. Short subjects could be live action or animated; comedy was particularly utilized as their style, and well-known comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and others are best known from short subject films.

Animated cartoons likewise came principally as short subjects, as did newsreels. Less frequently, short subjects might be in the form of travelogues, human interest films or concert films. The form was so popular that virtually all major film production companies had fully-staffed special units assigned to develop and produce them, and many companies, especially in the silent and very early sound era, produced short subjects exclusively (e.g. Keystone Studios, Atlas Educational Film Co.).

The rise of the double feature

The death of the two-reel short as a commercially successful product for independent studios put producers such as Mack Sennett out of business. Hal Roach moved Laurel and Hardy full-time into feature films after 1935, and halved his popular Our Gang films to one reel at the request of distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Roach, who could no longer afford to produce shorts after 1938, sold Our Gang at that time to MGM.

After the 1930s, fewer shorts were made for theatrical release, most of which were one reel long, like George O'Hanlon's Joe McDoakes shorts, and the animated shorts of studios like Leon Schlesinger Productions/Warner Bros. Cartoons, Walter Lantz, and Fleischer/Famous Studios. These shorts and others were produced in-house by, or financed by, motion picture companies that either owned their own theater chains (for example, Loews Theatres), or forced theaters to take their shorts by selling them in the same unalterable package as their big-name features. This practice, called block booking, was declared illegal by the US Supreme Court, who also forced the theater chains to sell off their movie studios. By 1955, thanks to double features, the ban on block booking, and the rise of television, the commercial live-action short was virtually dead, and the cartoon short was on its way to being dead. Since the 1960s, short films have been largely reserved for independent filmmakers and special major-studio projects.

The Three Stooges shorts were the only major series of two-reelers to survive the double-feature system, because they were issued by Columbia Pictures using block booking. They continued into the late-1950s, largely by reusing footage from previous series entries to reduce costs.

In the 1950s, television programming, including broadcast of older short subjects sold to television stations, eclipsed the value of all but cartoons featuring well-loved characters; but by the end of the 1960s, the cost of manufacturing these had come to outweigh the return, and short subjects effectively disappeared from the movie screens.

Short subjects in the modern era

Since the 1980s, the term "short subject" has come to be used interchangeably with "short film", an international, academic term used to mean a contemporary non-commercial motion picture that is substantially shorter than the average commercial feature film. There is no clear definition of the maximum length of a short film, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences classify it as 40 minutes, while the Internet Movie Database refer to any film lasting less than 45 minutes as a short subject. The short-film form is to the full length film what the short story is to a full-fledged novel.

Short films often focus on difficult topics which longer, more commercial films usually avoid. Their filmmakers benefit from larger freedoms and can take higher risks with their films, but must rely on festival and art house exhibition to achieve public display. Most short films are better known outside the United States than within, due to less rigidity of audience expectation as to program content, arrangement, and length outside the U.S.

Short films are often popular as first steps into the cinematic art among young filmmakers. This is because they are cheaper and easier to make, usually don't take very long to produce, and their brevity makes shorts more likely to be watched by financial backers and others who want some demonstration of a filmmaker's ability (or, conversely, the format allows for more experimentation since most of them are unlikely to be seen by a wide audience). There are however exceptions such as films like S. Luciani's Dolls, which show how professional/big-name actors and crews still choose to create short films as alternative form of expression.

Short film making is also growing in popularity among amateurs and enthusiasts, who are taking advantage of affordable equipment. "Prosumer" or semi-professional cameras now cost under USD$3,000, and free or low-cost software is widely available that is capable of video editing, post-production work, and DVD authoring. Such films can also be easily distributed via the Internet; Across the Hall, for example, was solely distributed on the Internet. Certain websites which encourage the submission of user-created short films, such as Youtube, BritFilms, and Newgrounds have attracted large communities of artists and viewers. A television station in Canada called BITE TV is trying to become the world's first user generated television station, trying to get viewers to send in their videos.

Categories

The form itself splits into several sub-categories, mainly:

See also

External links



North America is a continent [1] in the Earth's northern hemisphere and (chiefly) western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the south and west
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The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and
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Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.
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Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea,
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Latin America (Portuguese and Spanish: América Latina; French: Amérique Latine) is the region of the Americas where Romance languages, those derived from Latin (particularly Spanish and Portuguese), are primarily spoken.
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Australasia is a term variably used to describe a region of Oceania: Australia, New Zealand, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes (1756).
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Anthem
"God Defend New Zealand"
"God Save the Queen" 1


Capital Wellington

Largest city Auckland
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A feature film is a term the film industry uses to refer to a film made for initial distribution in theaters.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,[1] the American Film Institute,[2] and the British Film Institute[3]
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live action refers to works that are acted out by human actors, as opposed to animation. Live action is the norm in film and video, and thus the term is usually superfluous.
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Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways.
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In common, present day usage the word comedy almost always refers to the creation or presentation of humor with the intention of provoking laughter. Most comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations,
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A comedian, or comic, is a performer who entertains an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting the fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy.
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Sir Charles Chaplin

Birth name Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr.
Born 16 March 1889(1889--)
Walworth, London, England
Died 25 November 1977 (aged 88)
Vevey, Switzerland


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Buster Keaton

Birth name Joseph Frank Keaton
Born September 4 1895(1895--)
Piqua, Kansas, U.S.
Died January 1 1966 (aged 72)
Woodland Hills, California, U.S.
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Laurel and Hardy were the American-based comedy team of thin, British-born Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and heavy, American-born Oliver Hardy (1892-1957). They became famous during the early half of the 20th century for their work in motion pictures, and also appeared on stage
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For the band, see .
A cartoon is any of several forms of illustrations with varied meanings that evolved from its original meaning. A cartoon (from the Italian cartone
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A newsreel is a documentary film that is regularly released in a public presentation place containing filmed news stories.

Created by Pathé Frères of France in 1908, this form of film was a staple of the typical North American, British, and Commonwealth countries (especially
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Travel literature is travel writing considered to have value as literature. Travel literature typically records the people, events, sights and feelings of an author who is touring a foreign place for the pleasure of travel.
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A human interest story is a news story that discusses a person or persons in an interactive and or emotional way. It presents people and their problems, concerns, or achievements in a way that brings about interest or sympathy in the reader.
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concert is a live performance, usually of music, before an audience. The music may be performed by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band. Informal names for a concert include "show" and "gig".
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Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story idea or commission through scriptwriting, shooting, editing and finally distribution to an audience. Typically it involves a large number of people and can take anywhere between a few months and several years to
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Story:
Ron Clark
Screenplay:
Mel Brooks
Ron Clark
Rudy De Luca
Barry Levinson
Starring Mel Brooks
Marty Feldman
Dom DeLuise
Bernadette Peters
Sid Caesar
Music by John Morris
Cinematography Paul Lohmann
Editing by Stanford C.
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Keystone Studios was an early movie studio founded in Edendale, California in 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman, owners of the New York Motion Picture Company.
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Mack Sennett (January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960) was an innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy.
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Hal Roach, Sr.

Birth name Harry Eugene Roach
Born January 14, 1892
Elmira, New York, USA
Died November 2, 1992 (age 100)
Los Angeles, California, USA

Spouse(s) Marguerite Nichols (1915-1941)

Awards

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Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a long-lived series of American comedy short films about a troupe of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together.
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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.

Subsidiary of Sony, Comcast and their equity partners
Founded April 16, 1924
Headquarters Los Angeles, California, USA
(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc.)

Key people Harry E.
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George O'Hanlon (November 23 1912 - February 11 1989) was an American screen actor, comedian and voice actor. He was a native of Brooklyn, New York.

He is best known on-camera as the star of Warner Bros.
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Joe McDoakes is the protagonist of a series of 63 black and white live action comedy one reel short subjects released between 1942 and 1956. The Joe McDoakes shorts are also known as the Behind the Eight Ball
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Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was the animation division of Warner Bros. Pictures during the golden age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in American media history, Warner Bros.
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