10 Cliches In Short Films

[Music] so I want to talk about uh cliches and short films because uh I think we all do it if you're if you're a filmmaker if you're an aspiring filmmaker if you're a writer you end up uh writing into cliches especially earlier uh in your career just because it's what everybody does I'm a big believer that the first five or ten things you make are gonna be just chock full of cliches because you got to get the you gotta get the poison out before you can start writing the the real stuff this is the top 10 short film cliches as viewed by a guy who works in the biz uh film festivals agents managers blah blah blah screenplay reader screener I've seen I've seen everything and there's sort of an ebb and flow of what the cliches are at the time the flavor of the week but these are the ones that I still see every single day um short films and student films so number 10. uh YouTube's gonna punish me if I say this wrong so it's the puff puff scene um it used to just be the regular the regular stuff you you know Farmers grow and now it's everything um there's a time and a place for the puff puff scene but uh I see a lot of movies uh short films especially that are just about the puff puff scene and you know try harder that's that's all I'm trying to say about that I'm not I'm not too school for cool I'm just saying try harder number nine endless dialogue uh this is I think the best way to describe this experience is uh you watch a movie and it's really fast talking and there's a lot of dialogue and then the movie ends and you go oh nothing happened um yeah sometimes sometimes writers just fall in love with the dialogue and they forget that you actually have to have a narrative story that takes place especially if you're doing you know any kind of movie that you want to be a sample or you know something that's going to help your career uh just talking for the sake of talking is not is not a story necessarily so yeah number eight bad special effects or bad visual effects but more importantly leaning on them um you know I I point to Spielberg don't show the shark uh until the last moment because especially in short films especially student films the budgets are so low the special effects or the visual effects or the the creatures the monsters whatever they're gonna look bad um the best way to get around that is just to shoot around it but the second you show whatever your bad quality thing is The Jig Is up so just just don't show it just just avoid it at all costs because it's gonna look bad hopefully the story is strong enough that people can forgive it but yeah if you show the monster in the first 10 seconds people are going to click away on the on the 11th so moving on uh number seven confusing the mundane with the interesting a movie about nothing uh Mumble core which I will get back to in a second improvised dialogue you know it's really cool now to because of Curb Your Enthusiasm to have an entire movie that's improvised um or just a day in the life a daily life story just because it's interesting to you you got to make sure you test it and make sure it's interesting to other people because a lot of things in life are mundane and the the solution to figure out if it's a mundane is to pitch it to people and if they glaze over if they check their phone in the middle of the pitch you blew it so make sure what you're doing is interesting and if it's actually mundane you've got to figure out a way using tricks or something to make it interesting because uh you know even Mumble Court you see the you see these filmmakers they came up in sort of Mumble core that's where I came up uh now they're all big Hollywood bigwigs but they're not doing Mumble core they're doing regular movies because at a certain point Mumble core doesn't offer anything because you still have to have you know dialogue and directing and action and things happening so yeah uh number six fancy camera stuff I'm talking about super shallow depth of field with you know sparkly bouquet in the background I'm talking about uh Haze Haze seems to be really common one lately it's just everywhere every scene has tons and tons of smoky Haze uh what else neon lights are really cool now um long long shots complicated camera shots um Runners one long takes all that kind of stuff if your movie is four minutes long and it's a three and a half minute long one take uh you probably have a pacing problem because you it's just unlikely you nailed it unless you're unless you've mastered this and you're just now applying it to your film so fancy camera stuff on a short film probably not worth your while definitely not worth time on set and then in post uh you're probably gonna have to dice it up and so whatever all that fancy stuff is gonna get lost in the edit anyway so moving on uh number five and YouTube will definitely punish me if I say this wrong person's expiring so either the story is about a person expiring a person's expiring or a major critical plot point is a person expiring a person's expiring uh yeah it's a well you can go to because it's it's free emotion but it is kind of a crutch like because you know a person's expiring equals sad emotions uh dig deeper you can get those sad emotions if the plan was trying to elicit an emotion there's much simpler more nuanced ways to do it than just showing expiring um it's kind of a cheat so moving on number four and YouTube will definitely punish me for saying this wrong doing it scenes uh Newton up dropping clothes that kind of stuff I guess you can argue for you know like high-end TV and definitely movies especially because they'll go out to theaters or they'll get distribution they'll make money that's when that's when the losing the clothes thing maybe could make sense as long as it works with the story for short films I find it kind of icky and honestly you know it's it's one thing to have an actor or an actress let's be honest uh drop the clothes for a short film it's another thing for them to do a student film because that student film probably is gonna have to end up you know it might end up in a semester of editing so instead of instead of just having the editor and the director seeing it you might have a whole class having to watch that for an entire semester and did the actor or actress know that going in um you know it's very uncomfortable and it's not worth it usually you can you can get the same stuff with the clothes still on honestly uh sometimes it works better that way because again don't show the shark moving on number three the getting ready sequence uh sometimes it's cooking sometimes it's on the way I feel like right now it's like riding the the train somewhere or walking somewhere uh the one that drives me nuts is the brushing the teeth in the mirror or doing the makeup in the mirror um yeah if the beat is they get ready that's not worth an entire scene or sequence it's not it's mundane I think the only reason that would be worthwhile at all is if it's a tooth brushing sequence and the person doesn't brush their teeth like this is the first time they've ever done it that might actually be interesting other than that it's just it's mundane but it's also like sure mirrors are fun but you know it doesn't it doesn't help anything it's it's very boring and it doesn't Advance the plot it kills the kills the pacing so uh number two record scratch how did I get here uh just don't do it yeah so I know a lot of people have a real problem with like narration like a narrator talking uh yeah the one that the one that drives me nuts because I can I can kind of forgive a narrator depending on what the movie is but if somebody goes oh man how did I get here cut to three weeks ago uh why why wouldn't you just start there then so so before I get to number one I want to talk about some honorable mentions so feel free to guess what number one is in the comments I'm pretty sure you'll get it right uh some honorable mentions bad sound the reason it doesn't get a number is because a bad sound is a deal breaker if the sound sucks people will turn it off your boned film festivals will say no people will stop watching the sound has to be good yeah another audible mention bad acting or Bad actors uh I don't blame the actors you know it's a short film uh or it's a student film so there's very low resources it's probably not much money involved um and there's low experience level so it could be the director didn't get the performances out of the actors it could be the director wasn't even paying attention it could be you just got your friends off the street yeah I don't pick grocery actors but yeah the thing about bad acting is as long as the story is good as long as the you know this the movie's compelling you can sort of shoot around or cut around the bad acting and kind to save it so I'm not I'm not it's distractingly bad acting he's not usually a deal breaker so and the last honorable mention is incomprehensible so unless you're doing an art film unless you're doing an abstract film For Art's Sake uh you're trying to tell a story you're trying to have a narrative you're trying to communicate something to the audience that means things have to be clear things have to be simple I very much look into the edit instead of adding things in the edit taking things out simplifying clarifying usually taking major things out that would derail the what is trying to be accomplished which is the narrative and the emotional experience so simple is better if it's incomprehensible um people will argue that the incomprehensible films are great yeah okay but how many people how many like how many TV shows get made that are completely incomprehensible so and that's honorable mentions so here we go number one let's see if you got it right uh it's the bang bang shoot shoots and the slice slice poke pokes because YouTube will punish me um yeah it's it's a crutch it's a narrative crutch it's a MacGuffin it's uh it's usually when I see that when I come on to a short film set or students that I get really uncomfortable because it means they probably didn't do the time they needed to in writing the story and making sure the the story The Narrative which is what's most important actually works and instead they're going to play with toys um toys are fun but for the sake of a short film you're trying to elicit emotion and story and an experience and if you bring a bang bang shoot or side slice poke poke it becomes about that uh weirdly enough um my film school because the production insurance was through the school they had all these rules and one of the rules was you couldn't have any of that stuff and if you got caught with it you lost your insurance and therefore your production got shut down so yeah I I ain't mad at that honestly just it's it's not worth it you know there's always going to be cop shows there's always going to be you know sandals in the other word shows uh and movies but for the sake of your short film you know telling a story is much more important than actually like having a good time doing this all day so uh yeah what'd you guys think which ones did I miss uh have you seen a bunch of cliches that just drive you crazy and I completely blew past them uh yeah let me know like share subscribe catch you next time

Channel: A Matt Black Filter

Views: 20,170

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Id: hEic5TmjpaI

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023