Show Notes
š¬ Episode Highlights & Filmmaking TakeawaysThe Purpose of a Short: Discover why shorts are the perfect training ground for aspiring directors to learn the technical ropes, and why your film's runtime should always be dictated by its dramatic stakes.Funding & Proof of Concept: Stephen shares the story of how his Oscar-longlisted short SLR came to be after years of rejections, ultimately serving as a BFI-funded test run for his feature film. Learn how to strategically use a short as a contained pilot to prove your directorial chops. Pre-Production & Casting: Why casting is the most critical step you will take. Stephen explains why you should avoid giving line readings, and shares a brilliant tip inspired by Al Pacino: give amateur actors a physical task (like peeling an orange) to ground their performance and keep them out of their own heads. Managing the Set: A lesson in crucial set etiquette. From the absolute necessity of saying "please" and "thank you" to the game-changing morale boost of providing a hot, home-cooked meal, learn how to earn the respect of a crew that is graciously donating their time to your vision.The Director's True Focus: When everything goes wrong on a low-budget set, the director must stay relaxed, accept the process, and let go of the outcome. Above all else, prioritize the actors' performancesābecause nobody else on set is doing that.Post-Production & Festival Strategy: Why you should always stretch your budget to secure a professional sound mix and color grade. Plus, a strategic look at distribution: should you spend years chasing the festival circuit, or leverage online platforms to quickly launch your feature career?The Kinolime Short Film Grant: The episode wraps up with exciting details about Kinolimeās short film competition, where top-voted filmmakers have the chance to win a $7,500 grant to turn their script into a reality.
Full Transcript
[00:00]
When I had somebody say to me, because we had a day where everything went wrong, and they said,
[00:05]
I cannot, I cannot believe you're so relaxed about everything. And it was just like, well,
[00:10]
we're all here, well, well, haven't fun, we're all trying to get something made, you know.
[00:14]
But that came from separating my deep desire to make something great.
[00:18]
Sure. From the most effective way to get there is you accept the process.
[00:25]
Yeah. You let go of the outcome, the outcome will come.
[00:30]
Keanu Limers, welcome to an amazing edition we have today. I'm so pumped. Today's all about
[00:41]
short films. And with us in studio, Steven Fingleton, the director of the wave in person in
[00:46]
Brooklyn, New York. What's up, Steven? How are you, buddy?
[00:48]
It's me. Today is all about shorts. And since we're wrapping up our short
[00:53]
film submission phase right now for the screenplays, I wanted to ask the man who was,
[00:57]
you had a BAFTA nominated short film, is that correct?
[00:59]
It actually made the Oscar, so it was the Academy. So basically, there's a kind of final 10,
[01:06]
well, there was the way it used to be, which would be announced by the Academy. And then five of
[01:10]
those would get nominated. So you have to tune in to the Oscar ceremony to find out if you've
[01:15]
been nominated or not. Well, regarding shorts, because this is something I just want to get out of
[01:20]
the way, it's like, and we'll get it to all the nitty gritty of what makes a short film. How long
[01:25]
should a short be? What is a short to you in terms of like length? Because I just, I never
[01:29]
know where that lands. It's a great question to think about. I've seen, I've seen probably,
[01:36]
you know, thousands of shorts by the stage because I used to do short film festivals. And you can
[01:41]
get all sorts of lengths. You can get anything from a minute long to 45 minute shorts. And I think
[01:49]
the way to think about it is what's the appropriate length for your story, which is usually
[01:54]
dictated by what the jeopardy is. What the stakes are. Okay, so one thing but shorts actually is the
[02:01]
stakes tend to be smaller than in feature films. Not always. There's a lot of like life and death
[02:09]
shorts, but they're usually an episode, you know, in a way that the stakes are compacted. So that's
[02:16]
something to think about. And then there's also your goals with it. As it happens, the shorts that
[02:22]
made the Academy longest, I think, was 23 minutes long. And they tend to be longer. And I think
[02:29]
that's partially because you're able to tell a story with more cumulative emotional resonance if
[02:36]
it's if it's a little longer. But at the same time, short film festivals, if they're one of your
[02:42]
goals, they love programming as many films as they can. Yeah, so they'll. And therefore, you know,
[02:48]
a 10-minute short. So if they can they can they can prefer. So when you're talking about the
[02:54]
I love how you talk about the conflict and like a point that to build around because what we're
[02:59]
finding is and some writers tend to do is when they're writing a short, they're they're almost
[03:03]
writing like a piece of a film and set of like, hey, this is like moment, a slice of a, you know,
[03:10]
pert in a moments of this character's life that they're not, you know, beginning, middle, and end.
[03:14]
Um, we were you writing feature films before this because I asked this from the writing side about
[03:20]
how do you get from thinking of a 120 page narrative to let's say a 20 page narrative to get that
[03:26]
beginning middle and end. Yeah, I mean, I began, I mean, I think the first screenplay I wrote,
[03:30]
I was 16 and it was a feature. And it's it's an interesting question. I think from the directing side,
[03:40]
uh, shorts are where you should begin, uh, because, uh, you're learning the ropes.
[03:45]
Yeah. You're learning the practicalities and the technicalities of filmmaking. From a writing
[03:49]
perspective, it's an interesting question. I did a screenwriting course at the London College of
[03:53]
Communication, it was a screenwriting MA. And the interesting thing was it didn't really teach me
[03:58]
that much about feature screenwriting, but it really taught me about a short film writing and
[04:03]
hopes kind of a difference. It was different art and it became quite useful. Um, so, uh, it can be an
[04:10]
interesting process if you're if you're beginning to learn how to write is to begin with shorter,
[04:15]
shorter narratives and then extend and Phil Parker who designed the curriculum for that course,
[04:20]
also like the idea of doing a medium length film. So 38 to 45 minutes and again, you're you're
[04:26]
learning, you're learning the ropes and just one more thing about the length issue.
[04:30]
Um, when you when you've got a premise for a feature film or even a short, you might work out
[04:36]
the well, the appropriate length for this, um, is is is a different format or you might realize
[04:41]
actually this is a 45 minute sharp piece of television. Yeah. Um, and it does it doesn't work in
[04:47]
the longer format and actually you can sometimes find a films which feel because of that, uh,
[04:52]
with feature films, for example, that are, um, that are too long. Um, it's because they've mismatched
[05:00]
what they're making. They're not making Lord of the Rings or you know, Lawrence,
[05:03]
Arabia, uh, but they've it's it's that long. Yeah. It's that that could be that can be a common problem.
[05:09]
Um, so you wrote your short, you were able to wrap your head around sort of the beginning of
[05:14]
the line end of it. Once you had your short done, like what was your next step to get that into a
[05:22]
reality of being shot made? So I come from the kind of gorilla filmmaking background.
[05:28]
Uh, the first short films I made were at the UCL Film Society, where they had a camera. Um,
[05:34]
I was writing to have something to direct. Uh, okay, I didn't, I didn't know, I didn't know, um, uh,
[05:39]
people. The idea of writing short scripts, uh, to send out, um, is somewhat kind of alien to me.
[05:45]
I did do it in terms of getting, getting, uh, looking for financing, but it can be really difficult.
[05:51]
And it's very unusual to find schemes, which actually helped you get a short introduction.
[05:56]
Um, SLR, which was the one that made the Academy long list, um, it's, um, I think I had that
[06:04]
on the go for about seven years. Wow. About 15 applications, where it didn't get anywhere,
[06:10]
it didn't even get an interview on these kind of short schemes. Um, and but how was ever in a
[06:15]
position with the BFI wanted to, um, were interested in finance and a feature film for mine,
[06:20]
but they wanted me to make a, um, a more expansive short film to see if I could, uh, I could hand
[06:25]
let the shops. Yeah. And so, so I said, yeah, actually I've got, I've got this script and, um,
[06:31]
you know, we did a bit of development and, and they made it for much higher budget than I thought
[06:36]
I'd ever get for something like 40,000 pounds. Oh, I love it. About, you know, $55,000 is just
[06:41]
something. Um, I made it. They then said, oh, we, we think, tonally, this is two different
[06:45]
from your feature film. And so the next thing I did was a pilot, but I did a pilot for the
[06:50]
feature as a short, okay. And finance by then. Gotcha. Um, and, and then I kind of greenlit the film.
[06:56]
What I would say is, um, it's totally okay to make a section of a feature as a short,
[07:02]
but if you can make it as enclosed as possible and make it so in film, it can work. Um, I find,
[07:08]
it can be easier to make a pilot by analogy. In other words, you're not taking a direct excerpt
[07:14]
from the feature, but you're describing the tone or the way the mechanics of it work, um, in a,
[07:21]
in a short form, in a compressed form. Okay. Um, so for those, so that's interesting because you
[07:26]
had almost like a cocoon program where you had resources to help you build out your short. Um,
[07:32]
and that's what we're trying to do here with Kina Lime with giving the grants to those filmmakers.
[07:35]
But once they get that check, right? Once they, okay, we, we have the financing, we're going to
[07:39]
make our short. Well, we're some of the, like, the challenges you faced in making your short,
[07:44]
in that, I want to talk about pre-production first. So before you start with the role in the cameras,
[07:47]
like getting your things set up, finally managing your crew for the first time, tell us some
[07:51]
things that you encountered during that phase in particular. Well, it depends on your background.
[07:56]
For me, I had never been on a film set. Um, and so I didn't know the roles. Yeah. I didn't know what,
[08:02]
what you're meant to do. Sure. Um, for example, a classic conflict is, where, is the line between
[08:10]
director and camera person, you know, to many years to kind of resolve. That's really great.
[08:14]
That's interesting. Well, that would be, I mean, it's actually, it's, because sometimes you'll get,
[08:20]
you know, a director of photography as they're known, or a letting cameraman who
[08:26]
wants to decide where the shots are, or will want to know where, um, you know, where the lights,
[08:31]
you know, will want to decide where the lights are going, that can be creative conflict,
[08:34]
you know, in terms of this. So pre-production, it's, you know, it's about finding the right people
[08:39]
to work for it's, by finding the right location. It's about making decisions around the technical
[08:45]
aspects of how you're going to shoot what you're going to shoot on. Much, much of which will be new to,
[08:50]
like, you know, what lens, what format, what type of movement are we going to use. It's kind of,
[08:56]
it's kind of the planning stage where you're working backwards from what you're going to be shooting
[09:01]
and you're making sure that you have all the elements. So the principle issue without this
[09:05]
experience and, you know, and stuff like learning how to hire the right people. And sometimes the
[09:09]
right person is not the person with the most experience, it could be the person who's prepared to work
[09:13]
on something in the right way and they've got an enthusiasm and so on. That's useful to you.
[09:18]
What was, so what was your alarm curious where you more, did, were you more cameraman that you were
[09:23]
trying to step on the toes of the camera? What were you like, I got on terribly with, with crews for
[09:29]
a very, very long time, like really terribly. One time one, it was my first feature. There was
[09:39]
so many work in the camera department. It wasn't the head of it, but they picked up a piece of
[09:45]
equipment and told everyone, if I said an overword, the equipment was going to go into my face.
[09:53]
Oh, that was the level of tension that could emerge.
[10:06]
And on an over occasion, I had an actor who said to me, you're going to start saying,
[10:10]
please, and thank you to everyone on the set, or you're going to have a problem with your actor.
[10:13]
Oh, wow. You know, and stuff like that. Which was great advice. That's great advice.
[10:16]
It was great advice. That sex made into my into my, now we're in the production of it all.
[10:20]
What are some obstacles that you face? Now you're set up, you have your shooting, what's some of the,
[10:26]
Well, particularly on low budget, you've got to be very respectful to everyone because they're
[10:29]
giving up their time. And even if they make mistakes or whatever, it's, you know, it's a collaborative
[10:35]
process. It's a great tip. I just want to like, like note that for all the filmmakers out there
[10:38]
that are thinking about their first film is like, yeah, it's we're thinking technical, learn the
[10:42]
camera angles and the lighting, but no, be respectful. These are people that are like giving their
[10:46]
time and being paid barely anything to go help you with your vision. Like, yeah, like the simplest
[10:52]
comment, be nice. I love that. And yeah, and if you've if you've gratitude towards them and you
[10:56]
can separate the goal of trying to shoot the best thing possible, with the fact you do have people
[11:01]
bringing together a vision for you, people really respond to that. And so I've very good relationships
[11:08]
with crews now, because they they they sense and they know and they hear my gratitude a lot in terms
[11:14]
of what they're doing, the enthusiasm that I'm having. In fact, in my most recent one, I had
[11:18]
somebody say to me, because we had a day where everything went wrong and they said, I cannot,
[11:24]
I cannot believe you're so relaxed about everything. And it was just like, well, we're all here,
[11:29]
having fun, we're all trying to get something made, it's, you know, but that came from
[11:33]
separating my deep desire to make something great. Sure. From the most effective way to get there is
[11:39]
you accept the process. Yeah. You let go of the Archon, the Archon, the Archon.
[11:47]
Another thing, I mean, I'll give some practical tips. Please. Please. Is food is really important.
[11:53]
Okay. Feed your crew. And you know, you want it to be a heart meal. Okay. You want to give them the
[11:59]
time to have that time. And you don't want it to be lit. You know, the amount of problems that
[12:05]
come from the food not being right. If it's one good thing about it, about it short is you can
[12:10]
actually make the food in advance. Okay. You can, you know, like I used to do this, you make it,
[12:16]
you freeze it. And you know, you hit the microwave on Saturday, something like this.
[12:21]
Microwaves are very useful, having food with them around the house, they don't throw them out
[12:26]
for things like sets. And that can make a big difference because you want stuff around the side of it
[12:31]
to be a better, to be a kind of, you know, a better experience for everyone.
[12:36]
The other thing is obviously your focus should be on your, if you're directing, your focus should
[12:40]
be on the actors. And the smaller film is with the lower budget it is, off from your firefighter
[12:46]
you're doing over things. But the primary thing to get is the performance times to watch them
[12:51]
and to help because there's nobody else on set doing that. Right. That's that will, you know,
[12:58]
the most important thing in my, in my opinion, about short films is quality performances
[13:04]
because that's really sacrilege. We'll get into festivals. What people recognize from, from
[13:08]
anything else. So is it about make, because chances are for people making the shorts are not having,
[13:13]
and I hate to use this word, but they're not having like the high sag professional actors on their
[13:18]
sets. They're having like people potentially, you know, in film schools or theater schools, you know,
[13:22]
yeah. And then that's not to disparage them because we're all off the start or a journey somewhere.
[13:26]
But what would be some advice you would give them is about making the actor comfortable? Like,
[13:31]
what did you find? The first thing is the cast right. And there's lots of people who, who want to
[13:38]
work, even on, even on shorts, for example. And if you can't call in a favor with somebody who's,
[13:45]
who's a seasoned professional, you try and cast right, not to time consuming process. So you go
[13:51]
to CTAPs and you're going to see something like this. And also you may not have the ability to know,
[13:56]
you know, what a good actor is or what a good actor isn't, to take time to develop that knowledge,
[14:00]
to say, actually, I like this person's look, but there's something with the performance. It wasn't
[14:04]
there. So casting super important because there's a limited amount you can do if you've got somebody
[14:10]
who's, for example, not the right type. I don't, it's very difficult to get somebody to change
[14:16]
directions. You're also, you're not meant to give line readings. I would give line readings to
[14:21]
everybody on my early shorts, but that was partially a kind of a casting issue, which is, have I,
[14:27]
have I, if you know, if you haven't cast quite the right person and you know how to say the lines,
[14:31]
or you know the emotion for the line, you can make the, ideally, your cast should have better
[14:36]
line readings than you have. They should have an idea and internalization for what they should be.
[14:41]
But if you're working with amateurs, one piece of advice, so this probably comes from Shane Corruth,
[14:46]
is give them something to do in the same, like give them an orange, you know, give them, give them
[14:51]
some activity they can be doing, to distract so they're not thinking about acting. And they're being
[14:55]
more naturalist. It's a great tip. I love that. So for those at home that are going to make
[14:58]
their short and have an actor, give them something to do. I always see, you know, in the
[15:04]
oceans of love movies, I'm, Brad Pitt's always eating. And I think it's maybe written in, but it's
[15:07]
just he's always eating or Matthew Perry and friends always says, Hannah's pockets. I always felt
[15:11]
that that was like some sort of actor tick that they would do to help them maybe not think about
[15:16]
acting. And that's a great piece of advice is give them something to do.
[15:20]
Peel an orange, open the blinds, read a book, you know, turn page or whatever it is,
[15:23]
but give them something to do. I love that. Yeah, it's in the golf favor if you watch
[15:28]
Buccino and the way he uses oranges. Golf River 2, for example, there's the scene where he's
[15:32]
planning the climatic assassinations. Yeah. And Buccino would use it as a way of dominating scenes.
[15:39]
He would take an object and use it to imbue his part because he was very low-key in those films.
[15:44]
Sure. And he had to find some way of expressing his extraversion. And so there's something very,
[15:49]
very interesting in the way he, he, he deploys those objects. I love early Puccino because when you
[15:54]
can dress him with like the heat Puccino, he's a very different actor, which I love.
[16:00]
All right, you now have your short film. It's completed. Big piece of advice next.
[16:05]
Well, post production, I would say, is try and get a professional greed and try and get a professional
[16:12]
sign mix. And you can call up these studios. You can call these post production hoses and they
[16:19]
will often help you because what all my shorts they would do for free and what they, what they would
[16:25]
say is, or like a hundred bucks or something. And they would often use it as an opportunity to
[16:30]
tree and up somebody internally. Okay, it's interesting. So try and black it as we say in in in in in London.
[16:38]
So once you've got it done, you then have to say what through because there's different strategies.
[16:43]
One is one is the festival route. The other is online.
[16:46]
So the solution. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know how important Vimeo staff picks are.
[16:53]
It's this, but for me, it was massive. So with my I start putting films directly online because
[17:00]
Vimeo was a really great route. Yeah. I don't know how great a route. It is, it is these days.
[17:08]
You know, I'd like to see what sort of impact the times or agents still watching it and things
[17:12]
like this because you used to have the agencies, but have people who are dedicated for watching the
[17:16]
staff picks. I know. Last week we had Micah Browey who is a mutual friend. Yes. It was amazing. And
[17:21]
he was talking about the year and he'll be on our, by the way, Micah Browey will be one of our
[17:25]
panel judges for the short from a short screenplay competition. We have a keen align. He'll be reading
[17:30]
the top 26, which is amazing, but he loved how when he was coming up, that was your way in as a
[17:36]
director, right? You would get your short done. The agents would look at the shorts and they would
[17:39]
sign that that's how you got your movie through the short. And you know, for obvious reasons. And now
[17:44]
we seem to have sidestep that short feature, right to feature, which is amazing if you can get there,
[17:50]
but also a little bit problematic. So it's you have to think about what you're making.
[17:55]
So for example, my most recent shorts, I found it was very difficult to get them into festivals.
[18:05]
And it made me think, okay, what's the purpose in terms of what I'm doing? Because what I used
[18:12]
to do was I actually used to work with the BBC. And there's meant to be like a purchase ledger clerk,
[18:18]
but actually a lot of the time I was, you had to physically send DVDs to these short festivals out of
[18:23]
a massive, at a massive spreadsheet of like 250 festivals. So like every day I was done,
[18:28]
post office sending these DVDs off. And I got a chance to go to festivals and I got a chance to
[18:33]
see a lot of really interesting filmmakers, some of whom never went on to make features, but had
[18:39]
an amazingly expressive style. And that process I found really useful, I found the process of
[18:42]
seeing my own work projected and seeing an audience. Yeah, really accepting. But these days,
[18:48]
it's very expensive and I don't know how much utility there is to do that idea for like a one-year
[18:55]
or two-year campaign. The idea is your first year is you're going for big five festivals. And then
[19:00]
your second year, once you've got your premieres and all this, you just go with everybody else.
[19:05]
That's the kind of traditional route. I guess if you've the money, it's worth the approach, but there's
[19:10]
always an opportunity cost. The thing that the big issue of shorts, you have to have a kind of clear
[19:15]
idea is to what you're doing with them. What you want them to achieve for you because you can
[19:19]
get lost in that world. It's ultimately, it's about feature films. Like I still make shorts.
[19:25]
Even though I've made feature films because I like the form. Sure. But with some people, for example,
[19:32]
I've a friend of mine who made a couple of friends who made a great short film called Spur.
[19:38]
And they were talking about making another short and I was like, you should go straight to feature.
[19:43]
Like you don't need to prove yourself anymore. This is a terrific film.
[19:48]
And there's a kind of a comfort zone that can emerge.
[19:52]
Being in the many world of shorts when it's actually really disconnected from the world of
[19:57]
features. Obviously, the keen online competition isn't. There's many reasons why you're doing it
[20:01]
among them is to find people who are really interested in filmmakers and you're making feature films.
[20:05]
So that's really great. But for example, this is even the studios don't have short skin.
[20:11]
And there's limited ways of getting eyeballs from the people in the future world
[20:17]
onto you from shorts and those roots are stuff like Famous Nathpicks, whether it's top-tier
[20:23]
festival. But even then, a can, for example, it's rare to hear somebody saying, I'm going to go see
[20:29]
the shorts program. You only make, but to be at can, physically and you're at the gender is all
[20:36]
of this and you're part of the official competition. Yes. And it'll be easier to get your feature in there.
[20:40]
That's a big deal. So that's one of the ways of thinking about it is you have to think in terms
[20:47]
of chess. What I want to do with this move. Even the issue with festivals is you have to keep it
[20:52]
offline for a long time. So it can't be viral. It can't be viral. So there's all these kind of
[20:57]
decisions you have to think. Well, Steven, thank you so much. You were as huge help today.
[21:01]
Everyone at the keen online random applause receiving the amazing insight today. We have the top 26
[21:07]
coming out shortly where you can read, rate, and vote on your favorite short screenplays
[21:11]
for the keen online short competition. We have some amazing ones. There's thousands of submissions.
[21:16]
There's some great ones. The one you pick, the one that you vote on, we're going to write a check.
[21:20]
Well, eventually if it wins, we'll write a check to get that movie, that short film made,
[21:24]
which is amazing. We're offering $7,500 to the winner plus $500 for festival entry fees and all that
[21:31]
good stuff. So it's a great, great, great way to reach out to filmmakers and we want to thank you
[21:36]
and get ready to vote. Steven, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it again.
[21:39]
And we'll see you soon.
