Comparing Short Films to Feature Films & Our First Set Work

In our past two film studies lessons, we started to look at short films vs feature length films - discussing what a feature length film has the opportunity to show compared to a short film, especially in the aspects of performance, narrative structure/development and character development. 

This discussion has been centred around our first set work - The Fly (2014), directed by Olly Williams - in comparison to the feature length film Baby Driver (2017), directed by Edgar Wright (and the music video for Blue Song by Mint Royale (2002), also directed by Edgar Wright). 

First Set Work:

Title: The Fly

Year: 2014

Director: Olly Williams

Running Time: 6 minutes 

Genre: Dark Comedy

Firstly, we're going to look at the film on its own. Everything is quite simple (for want of a better term), as it must be for a lot of short films due to issues such as a low budget. The location never changes, there's barely any dialogue, there's no non diegetic sound (unless you count the rather out of place title screen) and even the colour palate is quite limited and dull. I think the simplicity works really well here as it amplifies the absurdity of the seemingly completely pointless and avoidable, quickly escalating events, by keeping the environment as normal as possible (well, for a bank robbery), therefore making anything slightly out of the ordinary as stupid and as crazy as possible - even managing to outweigh the bank robbery by not showing us anything other than the door to the bank, and putting all the attention on the fly's "attack" on the getaway driver. I think it's the clever combination of the aforementioned elements, the camera work and the editing - jump cuts especially - that make it as effective as it can be in the space of 6 minutes. 
I think bearing in mind that this is a very short film, it's done pretty well for itself in terms of fulfilling the genre of dark comedy. Yes, it's only one gag extended throughout and really for a genre like that you want more of a progression of comedic material, but I think it's done really well with what its got, and that it would be hard to achieve a 'better' result without extending the length and story arc considerably.

That brings me onto the short film and feature length film comparison.

Feature Film (and Music Video) Comparison:  

Title: Blue Song (by Mint Royale)

Year: 2003

Director: Edgar Wright

Running Time: 4 minutes

Genre: Music Video

Title: Baby Driver 

Year: 2017

Director: Edgar Wright

Running Time: 113 minutes

Genre: "Action, Crime, Music" - IMDB

Baby Driver and Blue Song were chosen as the comparison because they are all centred around a getaway driver. We looked at the opening scene of Baby Driver, along with Blue Song as it was the forerunner to Baby Driver, as a direct concept comparison. We also looked at two other scenes from Baby Driver, the scene where Bats meets Baby and the post-heist diner scene, to further compare character development. 

Obviously, when looking at short films and feature length films, running time is the main comparison. How that effects character development in short films isn't always negative, especially in films of a longer length - say 20 minutes - (an example being PLAYGROUND by Bertie Gilbert which I mentioned in my '4 Short Films That I Love' blog) however, The Fly is only 6 minutes long which you'd think would put a restraint on character development. It does put a restraint on the development of character backstory, but there is still a development in character emotion. The getaway driver in The Fly seems to already be in an agitated and impatient mood. Throughout the film, he gets progressively more frustrated and eventually enraged, but in quite a short space of time, showing perhaps how the character really wants to get out of there but is easily distracted and riled up.

In Blue Song, we encounter a similar situation. Being a music video, it's even shorter at just around 4 minutes meaning we again see a lack of character and narrative development. Character wise, we learn that the getaway driver knows his music and uses it to help him time the situation and cope with it too. We learn he's done this before from the props that he has, but he uses them haphazardly showing how he is still quite unprepared. With narrative we see even less than in The Fly as we never see or hear anything from the bank, and like the fly, we don't see anything prior to the heist and it stops before the story can progress afterwards. (We have to bare in mind though that this is a music video so it's not the main focus of it to have any major character or narrative development.) In Baby Driver, just from the three scenes that we looked at, we learn a fair amount about Baby's backstory as well as his personality, showing how the length and flexibility (financially and otherwise) gives more of an opportunity to develop these aspects of character and narrative within a feature length film.

Making a feature length film is all well and good if you have the means to do so, but for a lot of people this is unachievable. Short films offer a way for new film makers, and those with little resources, a chance to create art in a form they love without the hurdles of money, space, time etc. It allows people to pursue film making from a much earlier stage in their career, or even make film accessible as a hobby. Just Like short stories vs novels, short films and feature length films are two very different art forms that use the same medium to show stories in different ways. It's a very impressive skill, the art of short film making. To successfully achieve character and/or narrative development, however small, that evokes some kind of emotion in a viewer, in as little as 3 minutes, is not an achievement that's acknowledged widely enough.