Why Short Films?

My wife Nancy and I co-founded the McMinnville Short Film Festival back in 2011, and as our festival team stampedes toward the finish line for our 11th Annual MSFF (Feb 10-13, 2022), let’s see if we can answer the question we get asked all the time: Why short films? This question really comes in two different flavors – one from artists in the form of “How can I be a successful filmmaker by making short films?”, and from audiences as “Why would I go watch a bunch of short films?”

In the early days of the film festival, I had a harder time answering this question. 

Some quick history: After working in the software industry during the 1990s, Nancy and I moved to McMinnville in 2000 to raise our kids, and took a stab at our “dream job” of running a video rental store by buying Movietime Video in 2001 which we ran until 2016. 

In 2011 when we dreamed up the festival – over a few glasses of wine, from whence many stupid-yet-great ideas flow – it could have more appropriately been titled “Dan and Nancy’s Wacky Video Contest” that year. But we saw the potential, we got enthusiastic support from lots of filmmakers and audience members that first year, and the festival has grown by pushing it further every year, to where we’ve now been rated multiple times by FilmFreeway in the Top 100 Best Reviewed Festivals of over 8,000 worldwide.

So, to you the potential audience member, here’s what I’ve discovered: You probably already love feature-length films, which are great and we all understand that pattern; we've grown up being used to that immersive long-form story. 

But when you come to the festival and watch a block of short films, let’s say a block of 10 short films in a 90-minute screening, you’ve just gotten an intense immersion in the artistic outpouring of TEN different authors/filmmakers/teams, and a smorgasbord of emotions, experiences and exposure that you just won't get when watching a feature film.

Then at the end of the screening, some or all of those filmmakers come up to the front, and you realize you were sitting right next to them as you reacted to their work. Get the microphone passed to you during the audience Q&A and ask them "How did you do THAT?" or "What inspired you to tackle that subject?" or whatever you were dying to know as you watched. The best part is that once a viewer attends our festival for the first time, then they know why we do this, there is no longer a question as to why, and often the conversation at the awards dinner at the end of the weekend, or at the after-parties is "Oh, NOW I get it and can't wait for next year!"

To the aspiring filmmakers, why make short films? Well for one, that's what we're ALL consuming now, and it's fair to say that Netflix and YouTube have effectively been rewiring our brains to prefer “short films” as we binge watch our series, and to seek OUT this short-form storytelling where we get more intense bites in a shorter amount of time, and we have the ability to sample WAY more content than just slogging through one long direct-to-video feature (with all due respect). The short film is a cost-effective way for filmmakers to sharpen their skills, gaining audience feedback, testing their work and shopping it to film fests, gathering those laurels and building their resumes, and perhaps exploring an idea that they want to expand someday into a feature film. Put more plainly, it’s market research. But the true brilliance comes through when a filmmaker takes their idea of what might have been a long, plodding feature film and compresses the entire thing into a laser-focused story told in 20, 10, or even 5 minutes.

And as for how to monetize your work and build a successful career as a filmmaker? Come listen to our 2022 Keynote Speaker Kelley Baker talk about his experiences on that topic (stay tuned for more details as the Festival Schedule gets announced!)

Finally, now that Nancy and I have transitioned from running a video store to running an art gallery (The Gallery at Ten Oak in McMinnville, which the festival helped inspire because of our love for working with artists!), it makes me appreciate even more that film is the "meta-artform", it's the accumulation of all the art forms together: Acting, Direction, Photography, Music, Sound Design, Set Design, Costumes, Editing ... ALL of it coming together and when it all clicks and everybody did what they set out to do and captured that incredibly slippery "something" in just a few minutes of now-digital film, the result is MAGIC. And a great short film is one that reveals itself to you in multiple viewings or keeps you thinking about it after it’s done. Another advantage of adding virtual screenings and getting to watch some or all of these films online after you've seen them in person at the theater!

Come join us this February 10-13, 2022. We can’t WAIT to get together and talk about this more in person! Join our email list (we promise we’re not spammy) or follow along on social as the excitement wraps up over the next 2 months!