The Power Of Six Minutes

The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about a brunch of silly things, trying to make sense out of some aspects of life; and I don't know how the conversation turned to filmmaking, particularly "short films", but it happened. As a short film junky, I was a bit surprised when my friend told me she did not know that filmmakers also work hard to make this type of films that only last few minutes. I first started to educate her on the subject - teaching her the different aspects of it; and then, I did what every good teacher would do, I had her experience it. In fact, we went online and watched three or four shorts for a total of about twenty minutes. We had some reactions about the different stories. We had questions with no clear answers. That was it.




Two days later, the episode came back to my mind. So, I decided to watch few more shorts. I turned on my computer and sat back for a ride in the world of quick magic. I watched the first one, a second, a third, and by the time the forth came on, I was already in the deepest zone of my thoughts. I knew that films were powerful. Now, I realized that short films could sometimes hit with a bigger punch! It is so easy to think that five, seven or ten minutes of film cannot be that hard to make. Usually, the budget is not a fortune, the actors are not crazy A-listers, the set is no hell on earth and the list goes on... However, when you really look at "shorts" you will find out that they are very complex and sometimes even more difficult to make. If in a feature lenght you have room and time for unworthy dialogues, holding back actions, unnecessary material (don't add these to your film even if it's feature), fortunately, you don't have the privilege (?) to do that in a nine-minute film. You have a story: you tell it and you tell it well. No curves, no dancing around, no circonvolutions.




The other day, I watched "Offside", the second short in the trilogy by Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv regarding the Middle East conflict... and it made me think. It made me think seriously about myself as a man, about my family and friends, about humanity. In less than six minutes, it taught me one lesson. It taught me that we are human and we all should have one purpose: sharing love and happiness. To me, this short fulfilled its purpose. Isn't that what every film is aiming to do? That's why I am a filmmaker.

Note: The first piture is a scene from "Offside", a short film by Israeli filmmakers Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv. The second picture is a scene from Academy Award nominated short film "New Boy".