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How has the short film industry developed?

All films started off short. This was not noticeable as this is what the
audience was used to. They were surprised and insanely intrigued by
being able to even witness the invention of film just in front of their eyes.
As we began to reach the 20th century, films began to get longer and
longer. The very first film was presented to the public in 1894 through
Edisons Kinetoscope, this device could be used for individual viewing. The
best known film of this early era was Train at La Ciolat in 1895, which
supposedly made audiences flee in terror. Bryony Dixon is a silent film
curator and director of the British Silent Film Festival, during an interview
he said The major outlets for entertainment at that time were music
halls and fairgrounds, where programmes were made up of a variety of
different acts lasting up to about 20 minutes. Most early films imitated
other entertainment media already in existence: magic lantern shows,
illustrations, variety acts, tableaux presentations. So short was the norm.
In the early 1900s, there was a massive change within the availability of
recording and editing technology. This lead to the ability to produce longer
films. For example Georges Meliess - A trip to the moon in 1902. As well
as Edwin S Porters The Great Train Robbery in 1903.
Feature films were regarded as more respectable than shorts. A feature
film is a full length motion picture. They have a much more complex
narrative and this combined with their extended length has allowed them
to become preferred to theatre and opera than with the base pleasures of
the fairground. This led to a richer audiences, which injected high amount
of money in to the film world, leading to it advancing rapidly over the next
3 decades.
In cinema there is no doubt that the biggest attraction was feature films,
however revue-like programming succeeded and short films seem to
continue alongside news reels and sometimes live acts. This pattern stuck
up to and through WW2, where short films were used to present
government propaganda to the public.
SHORT-LIVED SUCCESS
In 1966 there was unpopularity of some of the documentary shorts. In
the Sixties, you would still occasionally get short films in the programme,
things like the Rank Organisations Look at Life series, but most of these
were pretty boring and the audience used to use them as an excuse to
pop to the loo or get some more popcorn. This is a quote from a worker
at the cinema during this era.

The cinema had a sudden twist and became financially motivated to


cramp screenings closer together along with more trailers and adverts. By
the end of the sixties the short films were absent from all commercial
cinema programmes, although some cartoons continued to be shown at
the start of childrens films until the late eighties.

SHORT CONCEPTS
Short films might have fallen in popularity within commercial cinemas,
although their popularity has never decreased among visual artists. Visual
artists first started to experiment with short films in the Twenties.
Short films have always had the advantage of being able to be screened
easily and cheaply. Over time the short films have flourished, and are now
being sued from warehouse parties to live music and performance
collaborations.
At present, the biggest new demand for short film has come from the
internet. Sites such as YouTube can have up to 1 million views on certain
videos.
I think people today are really interested in bite-sized pieces of
information.
This bite-sizeness of shorts makes them ideally suited to the internet,
where users demand short, sharp bursts of entertainment that they can
consume on the fly at work, at home or, increasingly, on their mobile
phones. YouTube is by the far the most popular viewing platform for shorts
online.
While it is doubtful that short films will stage a comeback in commercial
cinemas excepting the delightful animated shorts screened before Pixar
features we are living in a very exciting time for short films. And as
newer, easier, cheaper means of making, distributing and watching films
become available, their current popularity is unlikely to be short-lived.

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