Chris: 0:00

It's a great tool for you know, people with limited resources. For creative people with limited resources, you can shoot a piece of something and give it to an you know, show it to an investor who can give you enough money to shoot a full length feature or a TV series or something else.

Brandon: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the Cup of Tea Critiques Podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Chaisson, and like always, I'll be joined today by the great team that brings you cupofteacritiques.com we are super excited to get started on our podcast where we will share our unique perspectives on several different areas in movies and television. At cup of tea critiques, we encourage critical viewing of cinematic presentations so you can decide for yourself if the care of your cup of tea. Here on the Cup of Tea Critiques Podcast, we will dive even deeper into the productions and subjects that we cover on our website, engaging in conversation and sharing our unique perspectives on each topic. Ready for a deep look with a deep brew. This week's topic, the virtues of short films. I'm so excited to get started on this topic. So without further ado, let's get started. In case you're unaware, cup of tea critiques is a family business, and I'm here with my brother Chris, my mother, Reba, and my father Terry, as today's topic of the virtues of short films. Chris, you wrote this compass article, and I found it very insightful for all the things that short films are able to do, and I came away realizing that it was much more than just some friends with a camera putting together something that was really short. So can you kind of dive into a bit of what inspired you with this article, and just maybe some of your experiences with short films?

Chris: 1:58

Yeah, like short films, it's like a, really, it's a it's a great tool for, you know, people with limited resources, for creative people with limited resources, you can shoot a piece of something and give it to an you know, show it to an investor who can give you enough money to shoot a full length feature or or a TV series or something else, and and with with technological advances, it's only gotten. It's only democratized. It even more, it's now not, not only do you not need to shoot a full length feature with a fancy camera. You could shoot a short film with your iPhone and your friends. And, you know, who knows who knows who sees, and you could put it out, you know, who knows who, whose eyeballs get on it? So it's, it's, um, I love short films as, just like a tool for, for, for people who can't, don't have a lot of money, or don't have a lot of resources, they just have some really good ideas, and, you know, a passion for creating. So I love that short films exist as just a staple for for people like that, but they also serve a function for people who do have means. You know, you might, you might have the ability to make a longer feature, but you still want other funding. So you shoot a short film. It gives, it gives, it gives somebody, a production company or an executive or an investor, some idea of what you're going for, and they can, they can decide what I think, I, I think this will be, you know, a money maker. And they can, you know, choose to invest in it. They can green light it. And so I think it's, it's, it's cool for, for, you know, both sides of, you know, both sides of things, it's like, well, I can only make this short film with the budget I have. And an investor can go, Well, I can't really just green light this blindly. So now we, now, I have something to take back to anyone who wants to invest in it. And you have, you have your, you, you were able to make this, you know, short film that that at least gives us an idea what you're going for. So I think it's, it's, it's great for all parties involved.

Brandon: 4:21

Yeah, that's, uh, that's one of the several things I took away from your article, because I laughed at myself after reading this, because my experience with short films, I always thought about the little short skits, or more like the little short cartoons that are at the beginning of movies. I think it was scrap as the character from Ice Age. And I that was my idea of a short film. Was something a little small, little entertaining, and then moving on to the next thing. But then I also laughed about some other thoughts. So for for example, there is a way they've used short film to connect the matrix movies, connecting the first film to the second film. They made that 10. 12 minutes short, which gave just enough background as to what we were stepping into when we went to see the second film in theaters. And then I also know for myself, I grew up a big Voltron fan, and I remember coming across a short film that was it was an actor portraying Lance and the end of the Voltron Force. And I don't know if the purpose of it was just to kind of touch on somebody's fandom there. But I also felt, since it was a live action one, there was somebody trying to screen out that, hey, we really want to see a live action Voltron film. And so that's when I realized that the potential for these films was a lot more than just some minor bit of entertaining and you were just touching on that now that these short films are being used to actually show proof of concept and become something much more. And you talk a lot about that in the article.

Chris: 5:46

Yeah. And, I mean, there's plenty of great anecdotes of not only franchises that got launched, for example, saw, which I mentioned in the article, James Wan and his friend, you know, just made, made Saw, were able to show it to somebody, and it spawned, I want to say, nine movies. Now, 7, 8, 9 movies and a huge fan base and and it all started from a short film. So it's not not only launch franchises, but careers. George Lucas got to start off with a short film like, there's, there's, there's examples of different filmmakers who were able to make a name for themselves, and it all started because they were able to just have this on this formulaic proof of concept to show to somebody.

Brandon: 6:38

Yeah, I was surprised reading your article, I didn't realize that a film like 300 started from a short film.

Excerpt from 300: 6:46

Clip from 300

Brandon: 6:53

And kind of take me through a little bit. It's interesting, because what you mentioned is how they use the it was only a minute and a half, if I remember correctly, you said, but they portrayed the way the violence would be portrayed in this film. And I loved how that was done, because I thought that was really amazing and unique when I watched it, and the idea that somebody actually had the forethought to say that, if I showcase this, which to me at that time, was a unique presentation. When 300 came out, they realized, let me showcase something that will differentiate me from the rest of the items that are out there. And they were able to parlay that into a feature film.

Chris: 7:32

Yeah, you captured. He was able to capture the essence of the movie, you know, and like, this is, this is what's going to appeal to our audience, right? He could have shown Leonidas doing something really random, and you've been like, Well, alright, doesn't really give us an idea of what the movie's about, but the fact that you it's about battle, and you were able to show this is what the battle is going to look like. This is what it's going to look like on screen, and this is how we're going to draw people in. And, I mean, it can, in this case, it was the action. It could be something else.

Brandon: 8:12

Now, Mom, Dad, what, what's something that popped for you from the article that Chris wrote, that maybe something that you didn't know going into it, that he kind of shared, that really grabbed your attention?

Reba: 8:21

Yeah, there were quite a few things from Chris research that were fascinating to me. When I thought about short films, I always saw them as a tool for students, that perhaps there was something used in schools to teach film students how to make movies, and that's how they were used, strictly in that way. And so after reading Chris's article, I realized that they had a more broader use, and that they were indeed the beginnings of films and even television series. I can remember one of the first short films that I reviewed was Operation cavity. I guess it was about 25 minutes or so. It's about a kid who, basically, he and his friends can't stand a dentist, and kid has to go to the dentist, and they blame the dentist for all their ales, and so they look at ways for getting back, getting back at the dentist. Anyway, it's a cute little it's, really is a cute little movie, and I initially wrote it up as just a self contained movie. And when I talked with the filmmaker later, what I learned from him is that it was meant to be a proof of concept, that the plan was to indeed parlay that into a television series, perhaps, or I can't remember if it was a television series or a movie, and that's when I really began to appreciate just how short films were, not just with student use and not just for small, self contained films, but they had a much broader use. Another thing I learned was just how short short films can be. I mean, you guys. Just touched on just how short the short film for 300 was, I think you said a minute and a half or something, where they showed the height of the action for that, for that movie, and that was sufficient for it to be green lit. I think the shortest one, the shortest one I ever did, I think was I ever reviewed anyway, was about three and a half minutes. I had no idea that they you can actually make something that short, and it'd be something that you could you can take something away from it, that it would have some strong themes in it.

Terry: 10:33

Interestingly enough, like your mother, I pretty much consider short films the work of students. That's how they learn how to make films. And interestingly enough, the opposite of her finding out how sharp they are or can be, it was interesting to me to see how long one can be and still be considered a short movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some of the ones I haven't been exposed to a lot of shorts sometimes when I'll glob on and watch when, when Reba is watching one. But she mentioned this earlier, sort of half jokingly in another podcast, Thriller.

Brandon: 11:25

Yep.

Terry: 11:26

It's probably like my first short film that I, Michael Jackson's Thriller, that I enjoyed, but others that we reviewed together was Drone. I thought Drone was pretty entertaining. It was a kind of a nice little animated film.

Brandon: 11:47

Yeah. I mean, I feel like one thing that this article, Chris, you did, you did a great job of really enlightening us that there's so much more to a short film than what a lot of people may have a narrow perspective on. Another thing that I took away from short films before reading the article, was like, like mom and dad that this was all student led projects. It was meant to be more of like a developmental thing, trying to help me learn the process of creating a story, creating producing a story that and same token, thinking about it from the actors perspective, this is for actors to get a little bit of feedback. I'm big into sports, so video helps an athlete figure out what they're doing well, what they're not doing so well, and use that as a way of critiquing their own performance. And I thought the same thing for actors. And then, lo and behold, I found out that actually a lot of actors really enjoy doing the short films because they give them an opportunity to portray a character that either was near and dear to themselves. It's not just an educational deal. It's another way for them to do something that they just enjoy. For example, like Timothy Omundson is the actor that did the Voltron live action short that I was talking about, and it's a one person film portrayal, but another short film some people might be familiar with, or at least in my age bracket, might be familiar with, was that they had the there was a Power Ranger short film that came out that actually Katee Sackhoff, James Vanderbeek, William Levy, those are all actors that we were familiar with that were all a part of this short film. It wasn't on the big a big screen or anything like that, but it turned out it was a pretty fun short film to watch. What I wanted to get to is that we thought these were more like student led projects. And you also talk in this article about how there are student opportunities for them to be recognized, and they're using this to get funding for these projects. So can you give us more insight into that?

Chris: 13:41

For sure, for sure. There are several festivals for short films and and, you know, a lot of times the, you know, sometimes it's the prize, it's sometimes the prize is money. You know, first prize is, is money. Sometimes it's just an opportunity, a grant, or some, something along those lines. I mean, they're the, The Big Shorts Film Festival I think everybody points to is the Hollyshorts, which, if you win, you could qualify for for an Oscar nomination. It's, you know, so there are different short film festivals that are Oscar qualifiers, which is so you have an opportunity to be, to be recognized, obviously, on the, you know, the biggest at the biggest ceremony, whether it's a nomination or you actually win. And so there, there's definitely, you know, there's definitely more than just Hollyshorts, but I think that's one of the big festivals that everybody points to, you know. And then there's, there's festivals that are, you know, specifically for students and so, so, you know, those are, obviously, those are great opportunities. I mean, I think you need a certain amount of, you probably need a certain amount of vacuum that in, in, say, to even get into those. But the. One called the Student Academy Awards, for instance, that's put on by the actual Academy every year off. There's a gold, silver and bronze medal. You know, there's, there's a categories like live action short, documentary short, animated and so, and they've, according to the site, 63 medalists because they had a gold, silver and bronze medal. There's 63 medalists in the history of it that have been nominated for an Oscar, and 11 of them won an Oscar, you know. And that's, that's we're talking about students you know, who entered into a student, you know, essentially student Short Film Festival, and 11 for 11 of them, and it resulted in winning an Oscar. It's pretty it's a pretty good,

Reba: 15:53

Almost 20%. Yeah.

Chris: 15:55

Yeah. So, yeah. So, I think, to your point, even, even for, for a kid who's, if you, if you're in a, if you're in, you know, a film school, you have the opportunity to get on that kind of that stage, you know, maybe younger, younger and sooner than you probably ever imagined.

Brandon: 16:18

Another piece to it, Chris, that you mentioned in this article. One thing that's weird, I found fascinating, is that these are often used as fundraising projects, and yet, at the same time for these, for these competitions, for the for all of the the fairs, there's a budget maximum that they can have as well that look like am I reading that correctly? Am I understanding correctly how that works?

Chris: 16:42

Yeah, well, generally they classify, it's kind of in how the Screen Actors go classify as a short film, what they view a short film as, and what they view a low budget scale as. So there's like different I'm guessing there's different ranges, but the what they view, they the Screen Actors Guild defines a short project as on a low budget, skill as being entirely shot in the US, and the maximum budget being $50,000 and also running no longer than 40 minutes and so, so that kind of, I mean, I guess you could read from that what it would typically cost to make a short film. Obviously, it's concept dependent, and, you know, and however, however you're able to whittle down your your budget. But if it's, if it's 40 minutes long, it could potentially be up to 50k you know. So, so that's, that's one parameter. I mean, obviously, however much, however much of a budget you have, and however many resources allow you to, you know, to get down to the lowest number possible, you know, is going to help you in the long run.

Brandon: 18:02

Dad, you talked about the the length of a short film, and it's funny, because Chris just shared that in this competition, we're talking about no longer than 40 minutes. Isn't it funny to you to think about this, it could be no longer than an episode of a sitcom, and it's essentially and even though a sitcom, we consider to not necessarily be long, but when you hear the term short film, that feels longer than what we would consider short.

Terry: 18:25

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Brandon: 18:29

Chris, if I'm not mistaken too, or I shouldn't say if I'm not mistaken, because I know better, you actually have experience with short films directly that you've tried putting together. Can you kind of share some of your experiences on trying to be a part of that process.

Chris: 18:43

Well, the first, I mean, the my first experience with this was when, when I was in film school, we shot, me in a group shot a short film called The Watchmaker. And I guess you can call it kind of a horror, I guess, but we, I think what I learned from that was not only working around kind of limitations, like we shot it entirely in, in an like an abandoned, like farmers market building, and we kind of had to just use different angles to make it seem like there were multiple settings. And so you've learned not only to work around limitations like that in terms of time and location, but also, I think, you just learn compromise. If you've never done it before, you learn how to compromise with with your vision and what others want. We went through the script when I was co writing it, it was someone else's idea, but I was co writing it, and you just kind of learn, you learn to compromise like you're not going to get everything you want. They're not going to get everything they want. And you come to an. Uh, you kind of come to an understanding, and you move forward with it. And it's kind of the same thing when you're when you're shooting it. You might not, one person might not get everything, everything they want out of it, and the other person might not, either, um, and so, but you just kind of try to leave space for people to do whatever, whatever their particular job was like, for instance, we were, one of the problems we ran into was the director was kind of trying to rush the lighting guy a little bit, and he's like, this takes time. So just, just, if we want to get the best look we can you got to give me a little bit of time to work with this. So it does require patience. There is kind of a hurry up and wait on a lot of films. So that's even, even with way better resources than we had so and yeah, you learn to deal with curveballs that get thrown your way. You know, food doesn't show up on time, or something like that, like there's there's a lot of things that can happen that can throw you off schedule and but I think those are the two main things. You just learn how to learn how to deal with unexpected circumstances, and you learn how to compromise.

Brandon: 21:18

Mom, as we've added short films to Cup of Tea Critiques, and you've gone through you've done feature length, you've done short films. Are you finding that there are some short films where you were surprised that a story could be told so complete in a short amount of time? And the second part of that question is, are you finding also that there's some of these productions where you are excited, hoping that maybe we get to get more of that story or become something bigger.

Reba: 21:47

Yeah, both. Actually, I I'm astounded at how strong a story can be told in so little time. The shortest film I reviewed was about a five minute film about a jazz group in London in the 1960s and there was a lot of racial strife at that time. And one of the members came in beat up because there was some rioting out on the streets, and as a result of that, there was a little bit of, I won't call it discord, but discombobulation among the members of the band. some of them very upset and about him coming in to play saxophone when he looked the way he did. And this was all told in a matter of five minutes. It was very powerful. It was very well done with great film stock. The actors were excellent. The makeup was incredible. It was, it was, it was exquisite, and it was all done in just five minutes. The other film, Life After, the filmmaker was Jesse Edwards, I think was about 30 minutes long, and it was an action film. I mean, it's felt like a movie. I mean, it felt like the high adrenaline movie that you will go to the theaters to watch.

Excerpt from Life After: 23:24

Clip from Life After

Reba: 23:29

It ended with this villain and this cop in the room, and we need to know what is going to happen in this room. But instead the movie ends. And I screamed, how can you possibly end a movie like that? And I read later where Jesse Edwards, the director, wrote it to end that way, because he said he likes to lead the audience with something essentially to stew on. You decide how it ends. When I was young, my sister, and your dad even bugs me about this, I like things to resolve. I like a resolution. So I I didn't like what he did here, but I admired that he decided to take this route with his story. It was a very strong story, very well done, well acted. So, yeah, I'm just amazed at what what filmmakers are able to do with such little film strip.

Chris: 24:38

I, and what's interesting, it's, I mean, I kind of wanted to circle back around to just what do you want to accomplish with your short film? And we spoke about how the objective of, Die Free is the name of the short film for 300. It was to convey what the violent. Would look like for other films. It could be something else like, to me, one of the best examples is like Whiplash. Damian Chazelle, director of Whiplash, he made a short film in 2013 which I think was about three years before the feature came out. And it's he the short film is this drummer. It's just kind of similar to the movie. This drummer goes into verse first rehearsal at music school. And what he perfectly conveys is like the the the music teacher, you know, for those who haven't seen it, is, is a bully. He pull these kids to the point of them wanting to quit and, you know, do self harm and things like that. And it's questions, how far is too far? How much passion is too much passion? And I mean, in the short film, what I thought was interesting is that he this this teacher, gives off this great deal of charisma initially, when he meets this drummer, and he talks to him in the hall, and he learns kind of his personal, some of his family issues. And you think, oh, what like, what an empathetic person.

Excerpt from Whiplash: 26:11

Clip from Whiplash

Chris: 26:42

And then when he goes in, and when he when he subs into to play, you know, a drum beat in the middle of the song, the teacher berates him and uses some of the things he said to him in the hallway to embarrass him in front of the entire band.

Excerpt from Whiplash: 27:01

Clip from Whiplash

Chris: 27:09

And it's like perverse, if you if you had no context going in, you know, it completely catches you off guard. You're like, that was, that was pretty diabolical. He talked to this kid in the hallway specifically to embarrass him in the middle of of rehearsal and and I think if you're an investor watching it, you're like, oh, I want to see more of this character. This is a a good, villainous character. And he was able to get the actor that he ended up using in the movie, JK, Simmons, to play in the short film, which I think is pretty it's probably pretty rare that you're able to get, get an established film star to play the role and potentially play in the in the future. So I think that's a great example of of of a director just figuring out what the hook for his movie is and building his short film around that.

Brandon: 28:38

Um, we've also had the privilege a cup of tea, critiques of being able to interview some of these creators of the short films, and I was hoping that we could share a bit of like if they've given the inspiration for the films and what they wish to accomplish with those and if you took away anything about their journey on in the process and where they could potentially take these projects.

Chris: 29:01

Um, yeah. I mean, I guess the the what I would take away from, from the interviews that we, that we've had with, with certain creators, is just, yeah, that the, you know, they're the margin for errors is, is is tight, basically, and they have to get the creativity isn't just what you write on the page. It's, it's how you're able to even get through the shoot, you know, you it a lot of times. It's, you get thrown a curve ball. It's, you know, something you thought would be there isn't there. And it's, it's, it's a different surprise, you know, every time, and you just have to be creative with getting the shots you want, getting the people there when you want, managing around different people schedules. And I think it's like it could be, it could be very rewarding, even if you don't get the the exact product you wanted. And you kind of, you learn to. It, to live with the imperfection of it, and maybe even embrace it and and I think that's, that's, that's a cool thing for for anybody who you know, dives into doing a short film.

Brandon: 30:15

Yeah, I think you also, at one point, I can't remember which specific short film it was, but I remember you interviewing the director and also discussing the challenges that he had to go through because of the timing when he tried to do the film, it was during the COVID crisis, and how that made it very difficult to find different opportunities for how to film it. We were trying to deal with safe distances, also budgeting all that kind of stuff going on at that time. So when it comes to short films, we can't discredit, or not to make a pun here, but short change, just all the things that they go through to try and put these on. And then your article really helps us bring to light not only where they have to come from, but just the potential for short films budgeting, the limitations where versus where, eventually they can go with it. I just I loved everything you brought in here about how a short film can go from some small proof of concept to something large. I also like that you went back and forth between something large turning in the small saying, from the big screen to the to the small screen. So we now can see through your article that it goes both ways.

Reba: 31:23

I think it's important to know too that these are not that these are not purely technical projects either, for the filmmakers and look two things, they're not purely technical projects, and they're not and their goal is not always to make it into something larger, I think, for example, about Life After, the short film I mentioned, that's like a movie. The filmmaker had no aspirations of making that into a theatrical release or made-for-TV movie. He wanted it to be a short film. The purpose was not to go beyond that. So I think that's one, and in terms of the technical though, I think, I think it's important to realize that even in their short versions, for most, for many of the films that that we reviewed on the site especially, even in their short form, they have some very, some very powerful themes. They give us some great insight into things. I think about the film, for example, by Lila Aviles, called Eye Two Times Mouth. And she's a Mexican filmmaker who made this, I think it's about a 20 minute short about two opera singers who really are opera singers in real life. At the time I watched this, I didn't know. And one of them, one of them is blind, and one of them happens to be a, I think she's a security guard at a museum. And when things are idle, she kind of sings. She sings, walks around and just sings beautifully. And her teacher, one of her teachers, or mentors, turns out to be this, the opera singer that's blind, and there is a point in the film where she has just this incredible conversation with him. They have a private moment before she's getting ready to go on stage, what kind of a recital, and and he's giving her some encouragement, and she uses that opportunity to ask him some pretty poignant questions. And among those questions is how he sees music, even though he's without sight. And what I love so much about that exchange over the period is she asked him questions that many of us have a difficult time asking people who are disabled, people who are blind in this instance. We don't ask them anything about their blindness. And so I just found that exchange very moving. And so it was a film that I felt gave, gave us as an audience, especially me, I should just speak of me. It sat me in that space next to him so I can just hear what is it like to be you. Anyway. I just, I just found that very, very moving. And it was the same with with Operation Cavity. And I have a particular fondness for this for this movie with the kids, and it was just a lot of fun. There was a scene where one of the kids has to go to the dentist to get some work, and sitting in the dental chair, there's and we're seeing things from his point of view. And so the dentist is coming toward him with these drills, getting ready to go into his mouth.

Excerpt from Operation: Cavity: 34:52

Clip from Operation: Cavity

Reba: 34:58

And I found that to be, be a very interesting point of view, because we get to see from his point of view why going to the dentist is so scary. And so knowing that, what can people think about ways to prepare their kids for the dentist? I mean, that is their fear, and even though the filmmaker didn't write it that way to convey that, that is something that I got from that, and it can make people think, well, how can I prepare my kid for the dentist? So anyway, I said I was pretty long winded there, and I apologize for that. My point is simply that these are some very, very strong films, just as short films.

Brandon: 35:45

And I think that's where we can go ahead and wrap it up there. I mean, it's we've we've learned in this article and in this conversation, just that, like our preconceptions of short films are one thing, but their potential is exponential, both from a storytelling aspect as well as what it can do for launching a career with that. We'll wrap up this edition of Cup of Tea Critiques Ppodcast. We hope you enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed sharing today's conversation. We look forward to you joining us again next week for another great discussion. You can stay in the loop on all things COTC by subscribing on our website, at cupofteacritiques.com. You can also find us on Facebook, check out our Instagram, at Cup of Tea Critiques and on Letterboxd at COTCritiques. For Reba, Terry, and Chris, I'm Brandon. We'll see you next week for another deep look with a deep brew.