The Proliferation of the Short Subject

The Proliferation of the Short Subject (Toronto International Short Film Festival)Short films -- we hear so much about them; but what is a short film, or video, these days, and where do they find their audience? In the beginning everything shot was short -- one minute long because that was all the cameras of the time could accommodate. When this technical difficulty was overcome a short became the length of one reel running ten minutes. When projectors were made to take longer reels when sound came in two tens were joined together and a short became twenty minutes. The running time of most silent films was seldom given in hours and minutes. An hour film would be six reels -- of ten minutes each, but being projected by hand, as all silent films were, they could run a bit shorter or longer, depending on how quickly or slowly the projectionist...