The History of Short Films

 

Films began short. In 1894 when films where first presented to the public through Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, the earliest cinema audience wasn’t concerned on the length of the film but were amazed by the new technology of the time. The kinetoscope was a peepshow- like device for individual viewing. The audience would admire the second long scenes of glamorous cities, circus performers and even just people going about their day-to-day lives.

 

Films were often one-shot reality or interest films about celebrities, current affairs and scenes from everyday life. The most popular film at this time was the Lumiere brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895) apparently this film had audiences running with terror as the train sped towards them. At this time most films just imitated other forms of entertainment like magic lantern shows and illustrations that only last 20 minutes, so short films and short forms of entertainment weren’t unusual.

 

In the early 1900s, improvements in filming technology allowed filmmakers to produce longer, multi-shot films. One of the most memorable longer short films was a film called A Trip to the Moon (1902). It was a film about a group of astronomers who built an improbable space ship and encountered some acrobatic moon men. Another memorable long short film was called Edwin S Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903). This film is often celebrated as the first Western.

 

From about 1910 onwards, filmmakers started to make even longer films due to audience demand and studio competition. The first feature-length films where from Italy, France, Denmark and the United States, including George Loane Tucker’s equally controversial Traffic in Souls (1913), which had themes of white slavery and prostitution.

 

Short films where less respectable then feature length films as feature length films were seen to have more complicated narratives, this linked them closely to theatre and operas. Whereas short films were more simply shots at for example fairgrounds.

 

Even though feature length films where more popular they where expensive to run and shorts where still shown at the cinema along with other short acts like newsreels. This was the format during the Second World War where short films were used for government propaganda.

 

At the end of the 1960’s short films where almost non-existent in cinemas, apart from short cartoons for children that where shown up until the late 1980’s. This was due to the financially motivated changes to cinema programming where they crammed several screening sessions into one evening and included more trailers and adverts.

 

In the Nineties the number of short films increased as the new lightweight, easy to use and affordable equipment came out. This was also because short films are cheaper and less demanding to make than a feature length film. Even today now it is easy and cheap to screen films, it has made a drastic rise in the number of short film festivals around the world, which means more short films are being made too. However the main reason for the increase in short films is the Internet. People on the Internet today are looking to learn and entertain themselves from bite-sized pieces of information so this makes short films ideal. People lead busy lives so if they can quickly access a short film on their phone over the Internet on their way to work, it makes peoples lives a lot easier.  The Internet is also useful for filmmakers who can’t afford to put their films on DVD, so it works as a great platform to help get them well known. 

 

Since Lumieres’ Train, short films have changed drastically and today they can vary in many ways. Unfortunately it doesn’t look likely that any time soon short films will be reappearing in cinemas but I feel we are the next step for the history of short films. As short films become even easier, cheaper and watching films become more available, their current rise in popularity won’t be over any time soon.