5 Tips For Writing A Short Film - Kim Adelman

should you start a short film by writing a log line I like writing a log line first to say what in the world is your short film even if you don't think you're going to have it written down when you talk to people about having them be part of your film they're going to say what's your film about right so you should have a log line that can tell people what your film is and if you write it ahead of time and have it ready to spew and say easily then that is really a good thing but ultimately you're

gonna have to tell people what your film is about whatsoever when you finish your film and if you want to put it online or send it out in the festival circuit you have to write a long line that gets sent with that film and that log line they print verbatim so one of the short films I produced uh was a film called I'm on fire and it's about a guy who's on fire we had special effects to put them on fire so the filmmaker wrote The Log line and we're like what the hell is the log line going to be f

or this because you know before he comes out in theory you don't know he's gonna be on fire and then he's on fire um so the filmmaker came up to log on with a very short film about a man on fire pretty much said what it was and it was it was like two minutes long it's a very short film about a man on fire so to this day I can easily quote that log line because it is that's what the film is about so um but yeah your log line is going to follow that film on IMDb everywhere in the world so you want

to make sure you write it well but also you don't want to write it so obscurely that people are like I have no idea you know because I'm on fire it could be a manifestation of Love told in a unique way and I want to be it's that film about the Man on Fire you know it's like that's what it is the title is that speaking of blocklines titles are also super important for short films and I love a unique title because again marketing is going to be something you need to think about and so uh you know

are you gonna hashtag it are you going to be a way that people can find it but there's so many short films that just have a generic short title that means nothing and you can't you know there's a hundred of those films and uh you know I'm trying to think of a oh well I have a friend that did a film called Pig and that's a good title and you you know there's not that many films called pigs so we can find it easily in that way but if you do a long title you could totally do a long title too I alw

ays tell people a short film it's never going to be on Marquee somewhere so you can do a super long title if you want although people will always kind of shorten it when they tell you what the version of it is but I love a unique title I think that also shows your creativity and the specialness of the film it makes people interested we also produced a short film called 78 and it was about a kid on a manhole cover jumping up and down and up and down it keeps on saying 78 78 78 and so um the film

is called 78 and people would say to us in the festival circuit they'd see the filmmaker having watched the film before and they're like 78 78 78 it's like how nice look at they're quoting the title and they remember that from the film and there you go so you know yeah if your film is about a man on fire I'm on fire is not a bad title for it and uh people kind of know what it is so writing a good long line totally counts and you should spend time into it it's also if you write a really complicat

ed log line that is hard to follow or it's too obscure you can write it and they'll publicize it but nobody's gonna call it that Thunder Road is a short film that was it's a terrific short film people love Thunderbird interesting enough also versus spring title as this I'm on fire but anyway um oh yeah that's true yeah uh Thunder Road when I looked at his official log line um for it's about a Cop who's uh um giving a eulogy about his dead mother um so that's my log line for it his log line is it

is um officer Arnold loves his mother what okay okay doesn't mention funeral or eulogy which is a big part of that short film but that's the log line that he wrote for it but when most people say about they're like it's that one about the cop giving the eulogy about the mom so your film boils down to what the essence is no matter how much you try to dress it up and do different things with it pig is that Nicholas Cage's movie Pig no pig is oh because it's a terrific film um it's a it's a genre

of urban myths so here I'll tell you the story of pigs often when people sell stories um so it's a woman in a Mercedes driving down a uh and she's super fancy she's driving down this windy road and coming up from the opposite direction no she's coming up and he's going down um coming down the phenomous and direction is a really gross guide of best bunnies picking his nose and he's totally he's like a pig right and so when she passes him she yells out of the window at a pig when we've seen him do

ing specifically gross things and then um we we don't see it but we hear a crash and the move head Falls over and a pig crosses the road so she was warning him that there was going to be a kid it's terrific and people laugh and laugh and laugh when it's online too you can see it online they laugh and laugh and laugh when they're just not expecting to see an actual real pig and she and so the twist was she wasn't calling him a pig she was warning him that there was a pig at the end of the road th

at's fascinating so there's a payoff a great payoff and we don't see her get do we see her getting into her car or she's just already in already driving okay great so we've we've kind of cut to the chase in that part exactly and then I guess do you would they call it muddy middles where we just kind of like don't have enough that's clear-cut in the middle does that happen with short films it does it you know beginning is so important ending is so important so then we're like well what about the

middle the middle is so important too isn't that terrible at every single part counts but yeah the middle is really tricky and sometimes people put too much in the middle and we've kind of lost the thread of what's going on um or they don't put enough in the middle and it's kind of like you had a great beginning and a great end but we don't really there was no middle to make it really work so the middle is where people fall apart too Beginnings middles and ends all important does a short film ha

ve to have a hook feature films and short films benefit from having a hook and filmmakers hate to hear that they're like I don't want to do something crassic commercial and something that has a hook but hook just means is there's something we know what it is and the hook sometimes can be genre um but it's so much easier if there is some kind of quick way that we can say what this piece is about without destroying what it is you know obviously you don't want to give it all away with and that's wh

ere log lines are tricky if the hook is something that is given away you have to craft around so that people don't know what that twist is going to be um but it really does help to have a hook and it also shows you have kind of a a good storytelling sense and people like that and so they're like this person knows how to deliver something that really hooks the audience and um is commercially kind of in that sense it's not in my world it's not a negative thing I'm coming from someone who's from Ho

llywood so you know maybe the NYU filmmakers are the Columbia filmmakers are like hook no don't even talk about the world hook but you know to me hook is not a negative thing it really is um it gives you a hook for so we made a short film called I'm on fire it was about a guy on fire that's the hook right now there's a story that happens there and I'm not telling you about that story but I say to you it's a film about a guy on fire would you like to see a short film about a guy on fire hopefully

people say yes yeah I'm interested to see what happens then what happens is what's going to I've hooked you into wanting you to make you want to see it but what why you would like it and tell other people about it is because there's a story that you like in it well with PEG what was what's the hook the hook is that you think that it's going to be um uh that he's a pig and the trans the switches that oh no there's an actual Pig at the end I see okay right right so the the hook is like sort of di

verting the audience's attention in a sense actually though I'll tell you the hook of that is kind of like it's an urban myth or it's a joke so you know she's uh dramatized something that is a urban myth I see okay so typical sort of Hollywood and disdain and then you find out oh no there's an actual animal that's Crossing okay right well Thunder Road is a terrific short film and it's about a guy who's doing a yoga for his mom that's the the hook I guess would be that he's doing usually for his

mom the actual not the room on the short film for people but he actually starts singing along to the song Thunder Road and so it's very um heartfelt and yet tricky and weird and uh um it's a delightful short film but so you know is the hook like it's eulogy is the hook that he actually does a dance and sings along to the song Thunder Road there's two hooks maybe it also is a One-Shot film too so is that the hook that we've done a One-Shot film and with short films you can do these really weird t

hings too like the hook is that it's all shot with security cameras you know or it's all shot with a drone or the hook could be we shot this in IMAX format um so sometimes it can be the format it can also be like um the hook is a vlog that is being dramatized that's the hook for it sometimes it's the storyline that it is um also a format I love is a mockumentary and so the hook there is that we're kind of thinking taking you out to thinking it's like a real documentary but it's really a mockumen

tary um there's so many terrific hooks with short films primarily because they have to be about something so there's a terrific documentary I love that was part of the New York op docs called pickle and so pickle is the world's worst title right pickle is it gonna be about a pickle maker whatever turns out pickle is the name of a fish and it's about this couple that have all these uh pets that have something wrong with them and I can't remember what was wrong with pickle but maybe couldn't swim

or something like that um so it's a very very Charming doc about this couple that have pets that have all these problems so um that's kind of the hook of what the film is but it's so touching and so um moving and uh but yeah pickle is a terrible name for it how much conflict do you need for a short film conflict and drama is everything in storytelling right so I think you have to have it in a short film as well and by conflict I think it just means um tension right so you could have one person b

e in the entire film but as long as there's some kind of tension in what the storytelling or the situation is you don't have to have two people you know battling or something like that when we mean conflict I think it really just means tension or tight storytelling um and that's what moves things along so I think for feature films boy conflict is essential for everything for a short film you can Define What conflict means to you but we uh we want it tight and so sometimes you know why it films 2

0 minutes long and it's just you feel like there's nothing going on let's tighten it and find where the conflict is in it right let's just go for the parts that are dramatic and storytelling and leave out the stuff that seems to be um extraneous and just character but it gives them characters like we don't have time for character in this we gotta go for what what's the conflict here what's going on here how much do antagonists factor to short films so for feature film it's like the protagonist a

nd the antagonist for short it's great if you can do a protagonist and antagonist but there's no reason that you absolutely have to do that it could be that might not be the story that you're telling uh it could I've seen a lot of great short films that have one person is the story so you know where is your antagonist in there the antagonist could be something like time you know or it doesn't have to be a person per se that is battling the protagonist the protagonist has something that they're w

orking through or whatever so it's not like features that we need to have you know the protagonist and the antagonists and they have their low point and their High Point and then the antagonist learns at the end of the protagonist learns and no for a short film you really don't need to do that but I think it's more interesting if there is something that your hero is dealing with do main characters in short films have goals so in a feature film yeah you definitely want to have a goal you know tha

t's always like what's their uh want and their need and what are they trying to do for short films I do think quite often to follow along you kind of assume that you're going to this person who doesn't even need to be a person right it could be a dog or something like that is your lead character but your lead character is trying to do something or something is happening to that person and then we'll feel satisfied at the end when it is complete but it isn't like the the um you know the myth tell

Joseph Campbell's myths or something like that with the short film you know your favorite film could be two minutes long it's pretty hard to do seven stages of the tahiro's journey or whatever in two minutes long and that should be a feature you know like if you're trying to do that maybe move it on to the feature part of it for this one let's just do the training sequence or something like that so uh you know I think every character it's great to have some sort of goal um it might not be as co

mplex of a goal or as deep as a goal it could be totally just as little as much as like trying to figure out what's going on here or whatever backstory should you write into the film I think as much as you as the writer of the film you should put all your effort into as many ways as you can right and so and actors want to know about all this backstory so nobody's going to stop you from doing all of that but you don't necessarily need to put it into what we actually see on screen it could be all

this information that helps that character be unique when we see them on screen so you know you don't you could do backstory like he loves bowling so when I'm gonna dress him I'm gonna have him dress in the bowling shirt but I don't need to see him in the bowling alley because this is about a story about you know when he murdered his mother or whatever um so you know you want to uh it's great to have all that backstory stuff in it but unlike a feature we don't have to see a lot of it actually ma

nifesting on the screen it could just be to make them you know and that's what makes the character special and unique right it's not just another killer it's a killer who loves bowling so that sets yours up from different one of like if hey do you want to see this film about a killer who was just wearing a suit looks like a Quentin Tarantino ripoff or do you want to see one who's the bowling guy was wearing a bowling shirt it's like I'd rather watch the bowling shirt guy that seems different I h

aven't seen that before and maybe the bowling ball will come in and play later on or maybe it won't maybe you'll just be a shirt he's wearing right right and maybe he has like this bowling bag and you think it's his shoes and he's keeping them meticulous but it's really whatever he is he's hiding and so yeah we've just made a short film hell so you're saying we don't necessarily go into a long backstory of course because we don't have time but there'll be little things that'll signify that could

make it more Rich you know and that's what we want too we want things that are special and unique and have depth to it and that's why I do think when you go back to see older short films the ones that stand out have all those layers and have all this unique elements to it and are interesting and are not just generic you know we're crossing off these points to make this happen in seven minutes look we did it okay good congratulations you did and that's hard I don't mean to dismiss that it is har

d to make a good story that works in seven minutes but you know we're not necessarily going to stand up and give you a round of applause just because you did it ten thousand people submitted short films to the Sundance Film Festival last year 10 000 people did it it's not so much anymore like you get a ribbon because you did it um a lot of people are making short films so you want to make something that's so special and unique it was worth your time and worth your effort and with your money and

worth everybody else's effort of putting all this time into it so put as much as you can also you know sometimes you're not ready to shoot yet so now why not wait while you're waiting for to get enough money to shoot or get the right people to shoot spend that time doing backstories and developing things more and you know figuring out to make a set more unique and you know put it all in there put everything you want to do under there but just don't waste time on it and storytelling time sure and

you had mentioned uh music videos previously do you think that storytelling currently with music videos has gotten better or worse well for a long time music videos were almost stories all the time right that they would either build something into it and then have the music video be just a little part of it and continue on um but like Beyonce she's just music stories that uh and they've shown her stuff in film festivals um and quite often there's a beginning middle and end in the story that she

's doing and quite often um her music videos are heavily influenced by other films that exist so she's taken and um you know she and her director she doesn't direct them all um you know synthesize all these elements that are influenced and have put out visual albums and visual storytelling um and uh I used to program short films by women at the American Cinema Tech and we would always like to include a music video because that's another way that directors direct through music videos and there we

re it was very often very easy to find a music video that actually had narrative storytelling in it sometimes they weren't like lip syncing along to the music the music was kind of in the background um but you know they're very expensive music videos that are made that are literally short films and and more power to them it makes them interesting and not you know your standards performance somebody's just standing on the stage and we've captured it