Short film to feature

Bottle Rocket by Wes Anderson started as a short.
Hard Eight by PTA started as a short called Cigarettes and Coffee
Living In Oblivion by Tom DiCillo started as a short that was just the first act. Then he wrote and got the money to shoot the other two acts.
 
THX-1138, by George Lucas.

The first SAW was done as a short to secure financing for the feature I believe.
 
Cashback was made in 2004 as a short, in 2006 the director filmed more scenes with the same actors and combined it with the original to make a feature.

You guys need to check this one out. Plus it has lots of boobies.
 
How about features that should've been short films--

1) Seven, 90 minutes of setup that could have been done in 10 for an admittedly great payoff.

2) Saving Private Ryan, just string the awesome battles together into one non-stop pummeling experience. The story was pretty disposable.

3) The Phantom Menace, cut everything with Jar Jar, the trade federation, Padme, Jake Lloyd, midichlorians, the Jedi Council, leave the pod race and the Darth Maul duel.

4) The Village, a twilight zone concept stretched into 2 hours with languid pacing, like all of M. Night's films.

5) Van Helsing, cut out that part between the beginning and end credits.
 
Thanks you guys! Now I don't feel like a "cheat" or whatever for deciding to begin re-writting my short film into a full length feature.
 
Michael Anthony Horrigan said:
Blasphemy!

I loved those >90 minutes.
Just watched it again the other week. Great movie. :thumbup:
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What was the point of those 90 minutes of police investigation, when the villain just shows up and turns himself in?...All we needed to know was that some maniac was doing crimes based on the seven deadly sins. Easily done in 10 minutes or less.
 
Batutta said:
What was the point of those 90 minutes of police investigation, when the villain just shows up and turns himself in?...All we needed to know was that some maniac was doing crimes based on the seven deadly sins. Easily done in 10 minutes or less.
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Sorry, no way.

You may not like building up to a climax but I do. Seeing the crimes laid out and witnessing their brutality had a huge impact on me. Besides, the character interaction/development between Pitt and Freeman was excellent throughout.

I would not have cared about any of them if this was a 10 minute movie.

It would have been another SAW movie.

They can be done in a few minutes and easily have the same impact. Zero character development and simply a "gimmick" movie.
 
Of course I like building up to a climax, but the fact that all the time the lead characters spent on investigating and chasing the killer ended up being pointless was extremely frustrating to me. It's a great short film concept strecthed out to two hours. The whole movie was a protracted set up for the final scene. If they had at least made it seem like the killer was caught because of the cops efforts (even if he wanted to get caught), it wouldn't have bothered me so much. But he just waltzes into the police station. I'll give you an example. In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice kind of stumbles into discovering the killer's lair, but she does so in the course of investigating something related to the hunt so it works.
 
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