What Makes a Good Shorts Program?
What Makes a Good Shorts Program?
+ feat. Brit Fryer, Emily Ann Hoffman, and Tipper Newton
I have had two fantastic short film experiences since I last wrote to you: I attended the fifteenth anniversary screening of Vimeo Staff Picks and saw a collection of Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes shorts at the Metrograph. A short is most commonly defined as a movie under forty minutes long but there are few other parameters. Like animation, it’s often (erroneously) considered its own genre, and like short stories, they often only receive mainstream attention when the filmmaker has made a feature. But the short is so much more than training wheels or a fun-sized novelty.
What I love about shorts is how concisely and intimately they solve the impossibilities of movie-making. A feature film is a logic puzzle, with loops that must be closed and knots that must be untied. The short is an experiment.
I’ve asked three of my favorite shorts filmmakers to talk about the art of shorts programming, what they love about shorts, and why they keep making them. For the Letterboxd crowd, I’ve put together a shortlist of their work and their selections, along with some of my own favorites. In the comments, let me know what your favorite short films are.
Tipper Newton
Tipper is an actor, filmmaker, and musician whose work I first saw at Fantastic Fest in 2022. From the first frame of her short Wild Card, I was sunk. If you have ever enjoyed a movie I’ve recommended here, I think you will be similarly hypnotized by the film’s precision and humor. Her short film The Dangerous Type was a Vimeo staff pick and an award winner at Fantastic Fest.
How did you achieve the striking aesthetic and tone of Wild Card?
I was inspired by neo-noirs and erotic thrillers of the 80s and 90s and I was trying to make something that I’d like to watch as a viewer. Visual style is always super important to me, so I take a long time thinking about shots and storyboarding. I think about the art direction and set direction a lot, what colors would look good together in a frame, etc.
Sometimes if I get stuck in the writing process I’ll think about what would be the most exciting way for me to shoot something and that can help me get unstuck. I guess the tone comes out naturally in the writing without me thinking much about it. I do get a lot of laughs during moments I never intended to be funny, which I don’t consider a bad thing at all. It's interesting to me to see how an audience reacts.
You shot this in your apartment. Can you tell me about the waterbed?
There was always a waterbed in the script for Wild Card and I wanted to keep it that way. To me, it felt like a big part of Toni’s character, and the film itself, plus it’s so great visually. It was something I didn’t want to compromise on but I knew it would be difficult. It’s easy to buy a new “bladder” (that’s the part you fill up with water) but it was hard finding any type of frame that wasn’t either super expensive or insanely heavy. I finally tracked one down on Facebook Marketplace, about a 30-minute drive to the Valley from where I live in LA. When I got to the address I met up with a lady who took me into an empty apartment where her dad was hanging out. The waterbed frame ended up being homemade out of scraps of wood, but hey, if it held the bed up, that would work for me. It even came with the bladder—which smelled of musty old water that had probably just been emptied for the first time in twenty years.
On our first day of shooting with the waterbed, it leaked. I was able to tape it up but I was stressed all night that it would flood my apartment so I kept waking up to check on it. Luckily, everything ended up being fine. As soon as I got the footage back and confirmed that the film had turned out, I threw the bed away.
What excites you about shorts programming? What are you ready to stop seeing?
One of my favorite things to do at a film festival is watch the shorts blocks because you get to see so many different perspectives and stories at once. I personally always try to search out films, short or feature, that take risks visually, feel more stylized, and have fun with camera movements and angles. Of course, not every film needs to be that way—there are plenty of movies I love that aren’t like that—but I do start to get tired of everything looking very similar after a certain point. Especially washed-out colors. I hate that. I’ll watch any movie shot in Technicolor just to look at it. I’d love for that type of vibrant, rich color to come back in style.
Can you recommend a short?
Rat Pack Rat by Todd Rohal. Serious, funny, sad, and totally disgusting all at once. It’s kind of a masterpiece. Eddie Rouse gives an amazing performance. Todd has such a specific vision and sense of humor. There are not a lot of filmmakers who have such a clear personal style, and his movies don’t feel like anyone else’s.
Emily Ann Hoffman
Emily is an animator and filmmaker I met when I moved to Brooklyn. As you will see in her films, she is a queen of multimedia miniatures. I love the careful intelligence of every detail she includes, and how it contributes to her spiky, yet tender, sense of humor. Blackheads premiered at SXSW and was a Vimeo Staff Pick.
What inspired Blackheads?
The initial seed for this film came several years ago when I was in a long distance relationship and my partner at the time told me popping blackheads was bad for my skin. He left to go home the next day and I started popping my blackheads in his absence out of spite. I thought it was funny that this spiteful act really only hurt me, instead of him. When I was asked to make a short film by The Eyeslicer in 2019, I returned to this little kernel and expanded the idea from there.
When I was commissioned to do the short, I had also been exploring painting in photoshop, and this gave me the opportunity to explore painterly technique in 2D animation in combination with stop motion.
What was an exciting moment during production?
The opportunity to hire additional animators and fabricators as collaborators. It made my life easier, but it was also cool to bring other artistic voices to the film and see how they approached animation and fabrication, and how that added to the richness of the film.
I was able to hire these collaborators because we ran a Kickstarter for the film. It was a whirlwind. I was constantly promoting it and ended up fully addicted to social media because every time I posted, I got money. After the Kickstarter ended, I had my pal and producer Lucy Adams change all my social account passwords as a self-induced intervention. I’m fine and well-adjusted again now!!!
What do you hope to see in shorts programming in 2024? And—potentially spicy—what do you hope to STOP seeing in 2024?
I’d love to see some earnest comedies. I think comedy can be really difficult to pull off in short form, so short comedy often hinges on gags and goofs (which is still v funny). But yeah, I’d love to see something that really makes me laugh while grounded in an authentic narrative. (Dare I say akin to Caro Comes Out???)
Okay… I’ve been seeing a lot of short dramas in the last several years with extremely minimal dialogue and an excessive amount of meaningful glances paired with stylistic cinematography. My spicy take is that everyone wants to be Andrea Arnold, and that, well, they’re not. Which is okay! Be you. But also, silence does not equal deeper meaning. Words are powerful and so much of life is about communicating and attempts at communicating.
I’d like to see short filmmakers try to rise to the challenge of writing sparse but impactful dialogue that doesn’t leave us hanging on an enigmatic interpretation of some wistful looks and tight, handheld shots.
Can you recommend a short?
Agua Viva by Alex Lim Haas. The beautiful watercolor animation is comfort food for my soul. The film follows a nail tech and aesthetician in Miami, originally from China, trying to wade through feelings of loneliness, disconnection, and questions of identity, all in a second language. I love the way the main character parses English words to try to express feelings that even native English speakers struggle to communicate. I love the wholesome watercolor technique, the sprinkles of pop culture moments, like a subtitled soap opera playing in the nail salon background, or the hot Gen Z customer with green hair and an “alien” t-shirt amidst the poetic narrative. I watch the film at least once a year.
Brit Fryer
Brit Fryer is a nonfiction filmmaker who has been my friend since 2011. His latest film, The Script, is premiering at NewFest on October 19, but if you’re not in New York you will be able to catch it streaming soon. Brit’s movies engage with the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, and the tension that arises upon the introduction of the camera. His work reminds us that genre stops being useful when we let it limit us, that the short is an inherently experimental art form that lends itself to his style of invention.
Where did you get the idea for Caro Comes Out?
Caro said "wouldn't it be funny if I came out to everyone in my family?" The irreverent, comedic vulnerability was exactly what I was looking for after making my previous film Across, Beyond, and Over (co-directed by Noah Schamus), which similarly put the main character (me!) into a self-motivated emotional rollercoaster.
I was really interested in the comedy element because of how it invites conversation around the idea of a “coming out narrative.” I also knew that queerness was complicated in Caro's family so we knew that the conversations would have some relevance to other people. Also, Caro's really funny.
What were some of the limitations of making this short, and how did you work around them?
I knew I wanted to incorporate a score, but ended up editing the film with Beach House tracks. It worked so well, but I couldn't afford to license Beach House. Learning how to describe a Beach House song to a bunch of composters via email without saying "you know, like Beach House" was a crash course in music vocabulary. Helpful to know now!
What do you hope to see in shorts programming in 2024?
I want to see shorts played before features! Literally why not? Pixar is a golden example. We also need to figure out a way to program experimental shorts that don't make it seem like experimental films are some alien creature that must be kept away from narrative films.
Can you recommend a short?
T by Keisha Rae Wetherspoon.
Okay, this is Celia now: Brit showed me this movie as an example of the difference between documentary and nonfiction. It’s an unexpected examination of spectatorship and grief through participants of a T Ball, where people make elaborate costumes to honor their deceased loved ones. Like Caro Comes Out, it’s also set in Miami, but that’s just a coincidence.
