It was suggested to me if i wanted to be a director or at least get more experience directing, i should film some shorts. Does a half-hour Pilot I wrote count as a short?
Filmmaking / Directing : Can a indie pilot count as a short? by Jared Moses
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Does it "count" as a short? Depends on the qualifying festival or platform guidelines. Most define anything under 61 minutes as a short but most also won't play or accept anything over 5 minutes.
The main reason is that if they take your 30 pilot as a short film they will have to turn down 4 or 5 other short films due to the limited run time in the theaters they are booking. So they'd have to really, really like it to say yes to programming anything over 10 minutes. On the other hand, with most festivals moving online these days, it probably won't matter anymore what the run time is.
Hit me up, Jared... I'm Shawn, a mod, and my team attempted to shoot a sitcom pilot short, a ten-minute sample pilot. It was my FRIENDS starring me and we failed badly. It's too much to type right now. maybe I'll write an in-depth post on how DREAMHOUSE AVE, a true-to-life comedy about neurotic middle-aged actors who rent rooms in a house with millennial models --- became-- KILL THE DUMBASS... A weed head actor accidentally calls the wife of his producer and the filmmaking mobster shows up with henchmen to pitch his new movie Kill The Dumbass...
Crazy, right. Hit me up on the hotline at 720-808-2401, or not, and I'll be happy to talk shop. My man.
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Jared Moses Yes, your indie pilot counts as a short. Generally anything 45mins or less is a short, 45-60 is a "featurette" and over 60 is a "feature" length. Though those are not rules. For instance, many film festivals will not count anything over 30 minutes as a "short" and anything below say 5 minutes might be a "short-short".
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Depends on where you submit it. If there are categories, it will go under 30 min TV scripted.
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Depends on the RT (run time).
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Some pilots and teaser trailers are shorts in themselves anyway. Enter it under genre with a title. Eg Horror, Dave's day out.
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What Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg said LOL! I think the categories of shorts are under 5 minutes (mini), 5-12minutes (short short), 13-30min (short), 30-45min (long short).