Keeping It Short

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Keeping It Short

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By Ben Elliott

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“Keep it short” is a piece of advice Hollywood tends to ignore.

In 2023, the top 10 highest-grossing movies had an average runtime of two hours and 23 minutes. As we endure more and more three-hour-plus movies, you can’t help but wonder: Do they have to be this long?

No, of course, they don’t.

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All you have to do is watch some of the Oscar Nominated Short Films coming to The Triplex this week to see how a filmmaker can tell an emotional, impactful story in just a few minutes. Short-form filmmakers make every frame matter — when you only have a limited amount of time (and money) to tell your story, you quickly learn how to get the most out of your shots.

As a medium, short films offer filmmakers a host of different opportunities, too. It’s where directors like Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, and Chris Marker experimented and pushed the boundaries of filmmaking. Where young directors establish their voices or get funding for their first features, as Wes Anderson and Damien Chazelle did with their shorts Bottle Rocket and Whiplash, respectively.

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Creating a short film is also one of the only ways filmmakers can afford to make movies that take on difficult subject matter. This year’s Oscar nominees for Best Live Action and Animated shorts cover a wide range of topics — Nazrin Choudhury’s Red, White and Blue tells the story of a single mother forced to cross state lines to receive an abortion; Jared and Jerusha Hess’ Ninety-Five Senses explores the sensations we feel as we pass away; Misan Harriman’s The After follows a man as he recovers from witnessing an act of mass violence.

These are stories about war, death, and trauma — heavy stuff. But they’re also stories about embracing what it means to be alive, that inspire us to explore new perspectives. And if they make us a little uncomfortable, well, at least they’re short.

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