How to Write a Short Film Script

Filmmakers have two primary reasons for shooting short films. One is to learn how to become a filmmaker. And the other is to gain exposure to the film industry. Often times, filmmakers will embark upon a short with both goals in mind.

But, in terms of writing a short screenplay, each of those motives influences the process in different ways depending on what genre a filmmaker is most interested in for the long term.

Genres with mainstream appeal such as broad comedies, action and horror are great for hitting both goals at once because each of these categories (in terms of short films) necessitates that the filmmaker proves oneself quickly. An audience needs just a mere minute or two to decide whether or not a writer/director is funny or capable of frightening them or able to put them on the edges of their seats.

Subtle genres such as drama, romance and all angles of “indie film” (indie comedy included) require more time to show a filmmaker’s skill. It is hard to demonstrate subtlety and dramatic storytelling in less than ten minutes. Unfortunately, the most common exhibitors of short films (the internet and film festivals) are more conducive to entries of far less than ten minutes. The optimal length for an internet short is roughly three minutes. Web audiences are extremely fickle and if you can keep a viewer’s hand away from the mouse for longer than twenty seconds (let alone three minutes) you’re doing good.

Festivals, on the other hand, have a contained audience who will watch whatever is put in front of them because their only other option is to head to the lobby. Still, in terms of shorts, festival programmers prefer brief. And funny. Why? Because shorts are not typically the reason a festival audience is sitting in any given theater. Features are the primary draw. And, outside of shorts festivals, shorts are filler.

If a 15 minute dramatic short is not particularly well done, it can seem even longer than its running time. This can become a potential audience eroder for the subsequent features which, obviously, festival programmers like to avoid. The ideal running time for a festival short is five to six minutes.

If you are a broad genre filmmaker, you can more easily get away with combining both learning and exposure within the same project. For more subtle artists, I recommend splitting it up. Do some three to six minute broad genre pieces as you learn your craft and build your way up to the dramatic piece — which you can make any length you desire (or afford). For the record, though, many film festivals have a 15 minute cut-off for shorts. So if you hope to make a subtle, dramatic calling card, I would aim for somewhere between ten and 15 minutes.

Brevity is king.

If you have written features and are about to plunge into your very first short film script, you might think that it’s a lot like writing a full-length script, only shorter.

It’s a reasonable assumption. But wrong.

The difference between short screenplays and those for features are similar to the differences in the sport of “running”. With marathons and feature scripts, your primary focus is maintaining an optimal pace. With sprinting and short films, your goal is to explode off the blocks and don’t let up until you cross the finish line.

Shorts don’t provide a lot of time for expositions and laying foundations. The exceptions are “long” shorts — roughly twenty minutes — but even in these, there is a difference between what you can do compared to a feature. In both cases (long shorts and short shorts) saying as much as you can with as little — and without confusing the audience — is paramount.

The primary methods for creating an effective short film pace are scene economy and dialogue minimization.

Scene economy means using as few scenes as feasible in telling your story. It also means creating the shortest scenes possible with which to do it. The advice here is similar to what is often given regarding features — which is to start a scene as late as you can and end it the moment you’ve set up the next scene.

To illustrate — Don’t start a scene with greetings and salutations followed by chit-chat, followed by the crux of your scene, followed by extraneous closing dialogue. Such as:

Frank walks into the restaurant and sees his date, Lydia. She waves him over and he sits down.

FRANK: Hi, Lydia.

LYDIA: Hi. Frank. Did you get stuck in traffic?

FRANK: Yep, there was a wreck on the 405. Oh, there’s our waiter. Let’s get some menus.

Everything written above is unnecessary to whatever story is going on. And yet, we sometimes see scenes that start this way. Instead, we should join the scene with the two characters already seated. Maybe one of them is in mid-order, just to introduce the setting. And maybe a character can comment on another’s food choice if it serves to say something about the characters. But from there, with that brief introduction, hit the point of the scene. And then end it as soon as whatever information the audience needs to move on is sufficiently conveyed.

Now, the introduction written above could be acceptable if the fact that Frank being late somehow plays into the point of the scene, but even that information could be conveyed without having to see Frank walk in and sit down. Illustrate his lateness by having Lydia amused or angry or flustered by it. Something that connects to the story.

As I said, the notion of starting a scene as late as possible and finishing it quickly is a standard of feature scripts. But effective short films take this idea a step further by reducing entire scenes that might be a page and a half of dialogue in other scripts to a series of simple images. Or maybe even just one image.

This type of ultra scene economy can be found in some features. Especially ones by the more avant garde filmmakers. Some examples:

In the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, William H. Macy arrives by car atop a snowy parking garage where his father-in-law has been brutally gunned down. It’s the culmination of an out-of-control spiral that Macy has caused himself. We get a glimpse of his anguish as he pulls up to the scene. And then a simple shot of the rear of the car as the trunk pops open. And that’s it. We never see the father-in-law again, but we know with this simple action, that Macy stuffed the dead man into the trunk and took him somewhere. Straightforward. Poetic. And, most important for your purposes as a short film writer, brief.

Another great example occurs in Charlie Kaufman’s Synechdoche, New York. Philip Seymour Hoffman is celebrating the premiere of his Death of a Salesman production. Michelle Williams (a stage actress) and Samantha Morton (a theater receptionist) vie for his attention at a bar. Hoffman and Morton banter about getting high in Morton’s station wagon, an altered state which Hoffman confesses gets him aroused. Morton clearly likes this prospect. But the scene cuts abruptly to Morton driving her car alone and clearly upset. We then go immediately back to the bar where Hoffman is still waiting for the play review while flirting with Williams, with no apparent compunction over what must have gone on between him and Morton.

Now, despite the brevity and some obviously key elements omitted from our view, we still know the story of what happened before Morton left. That Hoffman had unceremoniously and, probably with ham fists, lead Morton on before letting her down. Indeed, he boarishly crushed her soul. For that night, at least.

Kaufman could’ve given us two or three minutes to hear the exact words said between the two. But why? Again, a simple brief and poetic moment tells us all we need to know.

Kaufman used the same technique often in Synecdoche, particularly as the more metaphysical half of the script took over. The staccato rythm these brief scenes created, though effective here, would not work well in most feature screenplays.

But for short films, staccato actually pays off quite nicely.

Because short films are almost always independently financed and produced, when penning a short script, you should also take into consideration the factors that play into writing an independent film including budget constraints, character population and set minimization.

Ten tips on writing an independent film script.

I have also published my short film script Gustav’s Brush.

This was a 16-minute film which I directed in 2006. The format of this publishing website is not conducive to illustrating script format. Hopefully you already know enough about proper format on your own, but if you click the “single page” option at the top of the page, the script reads fairly easily.

Read script here

And you can watch how the script translated to film here

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