Short Film Genre (Film Festivals & Oscar)

D

DDirector

Veteran
Looking at the trailers/descriptions of short films nominated for the Oscars for the past two years, it seems that they are all drama based.

I'm interested in making some short films and submitting them into film festivals, but I want to know what Genre is best to use.
I have not seen any films that won top prize in a major film festival that were horrors, or some heavy action based films.

What makes an Oscar worthy SHORT FILM?

I know it has to win top spot in a major film festival, but there must be a reason why.
There are plenty of films that are great scripts, and well done technically. But, are not seen winning top prizes.
It seems that the drama/romantic dramas - more realistic stories are winning instead of other genres.
Such things as murders, weapons, violence, etc are not seen.

I like making movies with big twists in them confusing the audience, not knowing what happened (who is the guilty/victim) until the very end.
 
Usually it's a combination of a topical or traditional theme, amazing luck and the usual politics... and that is on top of having a technical and creatively good peice.

Drama's are usually the nominated genre (don't expect comedy, sci-fi or action), having Nazi's, starving africans, or war torn middle eastern children is a plus. Get a really good covert PR person to spread word and get into the ears of academy folk is a big help if done right. There really isn't a formula, those are just things that seem to help. It's mainly just dumb luck of being recognized and the underdog momentum to get them nominated.
 
Fad's go away, so for all you know what has been popular recently won't be next year. In my opinion, if you try to make a film based on what you think will make you successful or based on what will give you the best chance of being nominated for an Oscar, you are doomed for failure. Make what inspires you, leave the awards and success up to everyone else.
 
The ones that are nominated and win all have pretty huge budgets behind them and start with a great story. People want something serious with meat on it when you're going to sink that kind of resource into a short. Slasher horrors and zany fart movies don't quality.
 
I watch oscar winning short films on a regular basis.

They've come in all flavours- though mainly drama, mystery, sci-fi, comedy etc. A lot of them are generally film school graduate films and not all have huge budgets, maybe $1000-$10,000. It's not uncommon that the Nominated Academy Awards share a few of the same lists from the Student Academy Award section oscars.org/saa. A film I directed a few years ago was short-listed in the Foreign Section, but alas, didn't make it to nomination round. If it's not a student film, then winning short film festivals and hoping the Academy Voters are in the mood/in tune to remember to vote again when they see the DVDs making the rounds.

We don't get many action or horror because they're more for commercial show reels rather than a story that makes us go "aaah". I'm sure if you could do a very good story that was action or horror then go ahead, but there's not that many because the skillset to pull it off well generally is saved for features or adverts.

Last year's winners we can buy off iTunes - God of Love is a comedy romance. Shot in B/W on a Red in New York. It's got that indie low budget film chique to it, I like it. This year's nominees a lot of them are also pretty small in budget, and again, a varied bunch.

I agree with jghenderson. We're best just making a film that we can actually do to the best of our abilities.

At the end of the day, who knows what the "collective consciousness" of the art world deems great that year, eh?

The only thing I've seen that are generally in common:

* Longer than 10 minutes
* Has a metaphysical and larger than life analogy/metaphor/visual
* A twist or reversal of some sort that makes us re-evaluate what we just saw
* Ambiguous, but relatable character motivations
* Parable/intercontextual/allegory to more famous works
* Competent technicals
* Great acting


Anyone notice any more traits?
 
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