More than any other category at every year's Academy Awards, there may be the most confusion over how you can see the nominated shorts. To a general audience, this isn't quite so easy and, save for usually Pixar and Disney features, you aren't likely to catch the short videos played anywhere until it pops up online or as an inconsequential DVD extra. With The Secret Life of Pets promising a new Minions short, here's an appreciation for the art form that doesn't get enough credit because there's no way for it to. The short is a powerful piece of film making, and an art form that is often unappreciated due to its limited accessibility; especially in an age where Vine stars can dazzle audiences in six seconds. It's a medium that needs to come back with style, if just to show the potential of what cinema can be and help to give voices to up and coming talents.
Depending on how old you are, there is a certain nostalgia that is heard alongside cheap gas and the advent of typewriters. It's the Looney Toons shorts that played before features. Director Joe Dante recently discussed the appeal on an episode of WTF with Marc Maron that reflected the excitement of his peers, even as the animation often depreciated. While one could easily turn to TV's Boomerang channel to see the Looney Tunes, one cannot help but wonder why this isn't more common. Anyone who has been to a theater in the past decade will assure you that there is pre-show "entertainment," but in the form of ads selling TV shows and cars. There's no crafted short that captures the viewer's imagination, giving them incentive to actually show up for a little extra surprise. After all, that is what shorts can be: surprises.
The one company that has pretty much kept the short afloat over the past 20 years is Pixar. Starting with A Bug's Life, the company has accompanied every film with a short (in that film's case, Geri's Game). Most recently saw the pairing of Finding Dory with one of the company's best: Piper, in which a cute small bird goes hunting for food. It's dialogue-free and has a very predictable story. However, it does the most that it could possibly do within a few minutes and reflects what at its core cinema can do. It doesn't really need two hours to tell a cohesive story. Sometimes it just needs seconds or minutes.
It is true that in The Academy Awards' sensibility that a short is anything under 30 minutes. It is true that maybe audiences paying to see Finding Dory would grow impatient if Piper expanded to an exhausting length. It's one of the limitations of the medium that likely has held it back from bigger success. However, there have been great examples of shorts that fit within a double feature outside of Pixar. One can turn to Disney's Paper Man, which played in front of Wreck-It Ralph, or the brief run of Toy Story shorts that accompanied Disney features. They sometimes come across as a novelty, but have the capability to entertain in a way that the main feature wouldn't. This is mostly possible in the realm of animation, where two different styles can be paired together with similar moral themes. Most often in the case of Pixar, it gives directors a chance to test their capabilities in a small way before giving them a shot on one of their many features. For instance, Peter Sohn did work on Partly Cloudy before being given the feature length The Good Dinosaur.
This is also true in live action, though is often not given as much of a chance. Maybe it's because the norm has dictated that shorts don't play in front of feature lengths, but it has sort of crippled the art form, as many artists cannot do work that will be seen outside of film festivals. There are those that do excellent work, but the odds of them becoming a household name aren't as likely. Even Shawn Christensen won an Oscar for his spectacular short Curfew before adapting it to the less acclaimed Before I Disappear. Even Whiplash was based off of a short that was mostly used to pitch the movie. Either way, the works seem to be more of a promotional tool for a full length narrative, and it sometimes sacrifices stories by stretching them out beyond their potential. One can only hope that the 40-second long short Fresh Guacamole doesn't inspire similar treatment.
Again, it could be a case of there being too much content and not enough ways to see it. With the need to keep up with TV shows and viral videos, it's impossible to give shorts their appreciation, especially those with more ingenuity and budgetary concerns. While they often are calling cards for bigger work, there's also the hope that they would spawn a profit, or formulate some sort of a career working in mainstream film. It's the way that people get exposed to their future potential.
It's always been fun to watch new films annually and determine what directors will define the zeitgeist within the decade. It's still incredible to see many independent voices being given control over studio franchises with limited experience. However, it becomes strange that shorts don't often lead to similar results. One rare case is Tim Miller, whose 2005 short Gopher Broke landed him an Oscar nomination and who began working on special effects for various films such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before landing his debut Deadpool, which is now the highest grossing movie related to the X-Men franchise. It does happen, but it's an industry that becomes tougher to gauge because while it is collaborative, there isn't effort to expose very brief content to mass audiences.
Imagine if more people took a cue from Pixar and did this before even a Noah Baumbach movie. It would give audiences plenty more to talk about as well as potentially expose them to an equally compelling story on a smaller scale. I'm not saying that every film needs to adapt this philosophy, but imagine how much more rewarding film going would be if it felt like there was something extra now and then that made audiences care about showing up. Imagine if there were those Peter Sohns or Tim Millers who could be seen and then go on to bigger work. It could be a worthwhile venture, especially since it's a tad less futile than the uneven appeal of anthology films such as VHS.
So while this may never happen, it's hard not to find some admiration for the medium that still needs time to be recognized in all of its potential. While Pixar and Disney have largely kept the trend alive, there's still the need to show shorts that have something else besides cute birds to offer audiences. Imagine if this was true. The Oscars would be able to announce the category without a resounding sense of confusion from audiences incapable of making it out to film festivals. Instead, there will always be those novelty shorts, such as the upcoming Minions short before The Secret Life of Pets to remind us that this is a thing that still exists. The issue is making it something more important than that.
Comments
Post a Comment