One of the first things that popped up was a website called shortoftheweek.com, and you can more or less imagine what they feature. Every week or so, they post a new short film, either one that has been doing especially well in film festivals or one that was submitted straight to the site that they thought had some kind of potential. So far, I haven't been let down. Topics range from everything from conquest to puppetry to film noir with absolutely everything in between. So far, I've watched one about an Australian man who gets wing-manned by G.O.D. (the light and funny "Glenn Owen Dodds"), one about a woman who starts to get fed up with her husband's annoying mannerisms (the horrifically dark comedy "It's Not You, It's Me) and one about a high school boy and the adventures that he has in his car (the bittersweet and creative "Orange Drive"). And I can't wait to watch more.
The fact that I'm starting to take more writing and video production classes has really given me this unique insight into how short films are made, and more importantly, how hard they are to make. Taking a long time to introduce a character can be fun, and the experience of really getting to know them is something in and of itself, but you can't do this in short films. I want to be a writer; if you know me, that's not really a huge secret. And right now, one of the most important things that I think I need to learn is how to not only introduce a character and plot in a matter of minutes, but also how to flesh that out and tell a whole story in a very short matter of time. I could be wrong, but I think the key is to start very small and work my way up from there. Watching short films is really helping me out with that.
I couldn't be more excited to take a whack at this with our fiction field project, and it's so cool to know that everyone else feels the same way. I know that everyone is going to work hard to create some awesome projects, and I can't wait to see how everything turns out.
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