My Mumbai International Film Festival 6th Edition Shows Lot Of Promise
A short film is motion picture not long enough to be considered a feature film. The US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits".In the United States, short films were generally termed short subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35mm reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels. "Short" was an abbreviation for either term.
The increasingly rare industry term "short subject" carries more of an assumption that the film is shown as part of a presentation along with a feature film. Short films are often screened at local, national, or international film festivals and made by independent filmakers with either a low budget or no budget at all. They are usually funded by film grants, non-profit organisation, sponsor , or personal funds. Short films are generally used for industry experience and as a platform to showcase talent to secure funding for future projects from private investors, a production companies or film studios.
With this backdrop, you may now understand the importance of platforms like My Mumbai International Short Film Festival. This year the festival received more than 1500 films from 80 countries and provided opportunity to new comers as well as experienced hands to reach bigger audience. As this year the venue was MKS College of Ritambhra Vidyapeeth, Juhu it attracted more and more established names from film fraternity. It was a 3 days event from 19th to 21st October 2018, apart from showcasing shortlisted by jury members, workshop on technical subjects were also arranged.
Festival completed 6 years of its existence and growing bigger and bigger every year. The person behind show is Ajit Jadhav actor and director. He leads team of dedicated workers Amritraj Nirmal, Paresh Kadam, Rupesh Dalvi which worked on 24X7 for many days.As this year MKS College joined hand together another dedicated team of professors and students of MKS under leadership of Prof Chetan Mathur helped to make canvass of Festival larger.
I could be able to catch up few outstanding work from budding makers. I would like to especially mention The girls Are Not The Brides, Sameera, Shamshan, Carry On, Ladu, Phad, The Underground Agent.Disable to Different Able. 18+ Trisha.
This year new sections music video and animation also shown promising works. God Damn under animation finds my special mention.
Finale of the festival did have presence of celebrities from film fraternity. Harish Bhimani better known as Samay of epic serial Mahabharat came despite his illness. Deepika Chikhaliya better known as Sita of epic serial Ramayan was also there, after a long gap of time, Deepika recently acted in Super Duper Gujarti Hit Nat Samrat . Standup Comedian Navin Prabhakar , Actor Kanchan Pagare, Director Jayant Gilatar , Trustee of MSK Kishor Sanghvi, Ritambhra Vidyapeeth President Ashwin Mehta, Dr Krushna Gandhi Principal MKS and host of other luminaries graced the event. Kishor Sanghvi assured to continue their institutional support in the coming years. So it would be interesting to watch the Festival growing bigger and scaling bigger heights.
Now if you are keen to showcase your talent than read further.
Now a days unknown or little known names are scaling heights of Oscar as they have taken route of short films to showcase their talent. Writer Director Damien Chazalle made Whiplash as short film with little investment of US Dollar 1500 and took it to Sundance Short Film Festival USA in 2013, The show was attended by financiers who loved the subjected and funded him to make full length film. In 2014 Whiplesh , story of a ferocious and bully music teacher who trains a dedicated student, a full length feature film could become reality and gone to Oscar. You may find many more such stories.
So be ready and make a short film for next year competition due to five strong reasons :
1. Short films protect you from over-investing too early in your career.
Now that shooting and editing in HD is so inexpensive, many first-time directors jump right into a making a feature without first developing their craft. Their goal is to make a breakout feature and hit the big time on the first go, but instead they end up spending more time and money than anticipated and are often left with only a poorly-made feature film, frustration, debt and a bunch of congratulatory Facebook wall posts to show for it.
If you make a short film and screw it up it will be, quite simply, a shorter mistake—and one that you can probably afford to throw away. You can go back to your failed short at a later date and make it again (but better), or you can use the lessons you’ve learned to make something brand-new.
Make your first couple of short films as inexpensively as possible. Then, once you’re confident in your skills, increase your budget a bit and make a few more shorts that look more like features.
No matter how affordable image acquisition has become, the extended run time of a feature makes all the associated costs—hiring a crew, renting equipment, etc.—exponentially higher. A lot of people have a micro-budget HD feature they made a few years ago that’s probably going nowhere. Why not be the one person who has made a polished short film and is now ready to make a solid feature that will go somewhere?
Mark Ruppert, creator of the 48 Hour Film Project, which challenges movie-makers to create an entire short film in just two days, says that a well-made short “can serve as a calling card, showing future funders or partners what you can do.”
2. Short films give you valuable film festival experience.
When you’re navigating the festival circuit with a feature, the end game is usually to sell it, which can add a lot of pressure. That’s simply not the case with a short ?
3. People want to see—and invest in—short films.
As a new filmmaker, your number one goal should be to get in front of as many eyes as possible, You’ll have an easier time getting one million hits on YouTube than you will cramming one million people into a theater. Of course, nothing beats a live audience. Short films win there too, because film festivals can schedule a lot more shorts than features.
Shorts are the sideshow at most of the festivals—excluding those devoted exclusively to shorts, like the L.A. Comedy Shorts, D.C. Shorts and CFC Worldwide Short Film Festivals—but audiences still come out to watch them, because festivals program several shorts together in one screening block. Most movie makers bring their family, friends, cast and crew to the screening, so each short benefits from being seen by a larger audience.
Once you’ve proven yourself with one short, you’re more likely to attract investors to another. “Making a short is not about making money,It’s about showing what you can do so someone will fund the next one.
4. Short films allow you to work with professional actors and crew for little to no cost.
If you want to write, produce, direct, shoot and edit a short film yourself, with your friends and family cast in all the main roles, then your film will probably not be very good (unless you’ve mastered Italian neorealism at some point). If you want to have a better chance of making a quality film, you’ll have to hire professionals. By definition, this costs money.
So how do you get a professional cast and crew to work on your short at a substantial discount? Start with a great script and a strong vision, as these elements will help attract talented professionals to your project in spite of its low budget. Say that you know that you’re asking them for a favor, and tell them the maximum amount you can afford to pay.
Tap into your existing relationships to connect you with professionals in your area (this works better than cold-calling people you find via 411). As you approach potential crew members, be clear about your goals. If you know you want a long master shot on a Fisher 11 dolly, or if you only want to shoot with Zeiss prime lenses, let the DP you’re approaching know about it. Serious specifics will help you get serious commitments.
Offer your pros incentives in the form of credit on the film, work that you can do for them in the future, festival exposure, etc. These sorts of benefits have the added value of establishing long-term working relationships.
Be patient and flexible with your film. A professional producer or DP who has a few days in between high-paying jobs will be much more likely to work with you if you can shoot within that particular window. Flexibility is especially important during post-production; if you let a post house know that you’re cool with working during off-hours and being repeatedly kicked off the schedule for higher-paying jobs, you will get high-quality post work for a fraction of the normal cost. It may hurt your ego, but if you only have a few hundred dollars for color grading to do a 4K DI and rotoscope an actress’ eyes, you’re just going to have to put your ego aside.
5. Short films allow you to explore your creativity.
Unless you’re a big name, any feature movie you direct has to follow some traditional rules of structure, storytelling and continuity. With a short film, you can break from tradition and be more innovative, since shorts don’t have the same commercial pressures as features. You can make a short just to say something you’ve always wanted to say, without worrying about its marketability to a potential audience. You can make a short film as a way to practice shooting in a style very different from your own ?
Making a short can re-invigorate your creative drive, since the short film medium is one where anything is both possible and acceptable. The biggest benefit of making short films is
to help the filmmaker find and hone his or her voice. A short is an inexpensive way for filmmakers to experiment and learn what works; that knowledge can then be used when the filmmaker moves on to a feature film.
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