In trying to figure out a way to practice filmmaking in an experimental, fearless, and quantity centric fashion—as in: making many films quickly in order to learn rather than to perfect—I’m building an actionable plan to make a large microfilm portfolio.
The thing that often stalls people with short films is that their ideas are usually a little too ambitious for the runtime of a short film. Often, at least for myself, ideas land in the ambiguous plane between the short film and the feature film, which is not what I’m looking for.
I’m looking for bite-sized shorts that are “simple” and made for the purpose of learning, a sort of microfilm.
For a long time my comparison for features and short films has been novels and short stories. But thinking about it, novels are actually more akin to miniseries and short stories are more akin to features.
You pick up and put down a novel like how you come to a series from episode to episode. Short stories, like feature films, are meant to be enjoyed in a single sitting.
So where does the short film lie? What can we compare it to?
In literature there’s a genre subsidiary of the short story called microfiction, which, compared to a short story’s 5,000-10,000 word length, comprises usually of a 500-1,000 word length. Which is significantly shorter.
With such a small format, microfiction is forced to focus on extremely specific details. It might be just remnants of a conversation or a single flash of a moment.
Here’s a link to an example by Elliott Holt called Picnic, Lightning on the Tin House Publishing website. It’s 326 words, and a great little story.
Here’s My Microfilm Plan
- Spend 30-60 minutes free writing a 500ish word story on the first day.
- On the second day, spend an hour or so editing that story.
- After that second day, move on to the next story and begin again.
By writing many microfiction pieces quickly, I’m beginning and finishing tiny projects that can each be used to make a microfilm.
If you spend an hour or so one day writing a first draft and an hour or so the next day editing that story to completion, by the end of a year-long period you’ll have 182 microfiction pieces.
I guarantee you at least ten of those would probably make pretty good microfilms, if not more.
What’s important, though, is maintaining a sense of experimentation. Making sure that you don’t get hung up on a single story, and that at the end of the second day you say “That’s it” and move on to the next one, you’re building a sense of discipline.
This can be a great exercise that really doesn’t take up too much time. You could start your day with it, or end your day with it, or even do it during your lunch.
By breaking free from the desire to solely make big things and by actually finishing small things you’re setting yourself up for success when you eventually work up to the bigger projects.