If 2013 was the year of the selfie, then 2014 is the year of the hyper-short film. Today, people don’t just watch films in cinemas or living rooms. Instead, the term “movies” takes on a new connotation, as people download and consume on the move: on foot, or on the train, sometimes with just seconds to spare, as the content flows through their Facebook or Twitter streams on their mobile devices.
This new form throws up many questions – what kinds of creative opportunities arise from these time restrictions and mobile environments, and how these platforms change the way we fund, make and watch film. Are there new kinds of creative sensibilities that filmmakers require to create truly remarkable hyper-short films? I am not sure that the movie industry knows yet, but there are some great talents out there already, such as Zach King, Vine magician, whose stop-motion illusions reach millions of viewers.
Yet there is some degree of creative resistance to this innovation and uncertainty about its value as an art form. After all, what can one really achieve creatively in six seconds? This seems an unreasonably short amount of time in which to express something important and lasting.
Six Seconds
But Vine’s six-second limit isn’t finite. They’re designed to be repeated, watched on loop. So, while the film may last just six seconds, any single user may watch that loop repeatedly ten or more times before moving on to something else.
The idea of an infinite loop within a film is also a novel feature of hyper-short filmmaking that distinguishes it from other formats. Unlike other films with their beginning, middle and end, the hyper-short format is often set up in a way that its beginning and ending – at least – are indistinguishable. We have got used to non-linear story lines in film, but a circular narrative may be something quite different. Perhaps Christopher Nolan’s Memento took us close to that world, but not quite.
