Last summer, a filmmaker friend asked me to write a short film for her to direct. Her only guidelines were that she wanted it to be filmable on a shoestring budget in a single weekend (one location, no more than 2-3 actors, no special effects or period costumes) and she wanted it to be no longer than about 8 minutes (because films under 10 minutes have a much greater chance of making it onto festival programs).
This turned out to be incredibly hard! Every idea I came up with either had too many characters or unusual locations or required complicated effects or was just too complex of a story to tell in eight minutes. I’d also never written a short film before and hadn’t even really watched that many, so I was really starting from zero.
I started by watching 40 or 50 successful short films that were under 10 minutes. I define “successful” here as getting into well-regarded festivals, making it onto “best of” lists, or achieving some level of viral popularity online. I took notes on how each film was structured and any similarities and differences I noted between them.