Why Film Challenges are Great for Filmmakers

If you give an artist a piece of paper and say draw anything, you’ll more than likely be waiting for a while before they produce anything they feel good about. However, if you give them direction, an outline, elements they have to include, they’ll be able to create something incredible.

This is the same with filmmakers. If they have limits, a box they have to create within, a deadline, their creativity takes over, and they start figuring out a way to make it happen. This is how the creative brain works, we want restrictions despite the fact we also want freedom. By taking part in a film challenge it keeps us active with little effort compared to us overthinking about that bigger project that requires a budget, raising money in an online campaign, all the things that can actully slowdown us from actually producing a film. And, it helps build your IMDb, which is great because in a short period of time, a new title appears on your portfolio, ready for you to share.

So how much time are we talking about? We’ve all heard about the 24-hour film challenges and those are great, but the film challenges hosted by Weird Short Films will have the same premise in terms of simplicity and accessibility, but with more time. People with busy lives deserve to have the ability to make something they want to show off, rather than a rush job that may not appear on their IMDb. We want to uplift filmmakers, not paint them in a corner just to adhere to an unrealistic deadline they’ll regret.

DIY projects are encouraged also. So the short film I made a film challenge, Hey It’s Just Jim, was built around two random required elements: a paper bag and a sweater. That’s it. At first glance, it may seem a little weird, these two things aren’t related, but that’s the genius of a film challenge. You somehow put them together in a script and start production.

The shoot took me about 4 hours, but I had to break up the editing because I can’t just edit the same day and expect to turn off everything else. If this had been just a 24-hour time limit, I would’ve had the time to put in all the little things, like the sound design. None of the sound in the film is from a mic. It’s all sound design, from the bike sounds to the foot steps, the nature ambience to the little plop the rock makes when he throws it in the lake. No way I would’ve been able to do all that in 24 hours. I gave myself a week. And it was just me, my iphone 15 pro, looking like an idiot in Prospect Park with a paper bag over my head.

For my short film Dodgeball, the challenge was to include a ball and a fake mustache. How the hell..? Again, at first glance it’s baffling how these two things could even belong in the same story, and yet they do. Having those odd requirements gave me just enough direction to start thinking outside the box, and I ended up creating this completely unhinged character. The shoot took about 7 hours, and I spent several days in post. As I developed the script, I kept layering in weird details, like the vacuum and the this patient who ends up trapped in this bizarre scenario. Why are these characters even in a gym? Who cares? It’s weird as hell, and dark.

I had a little over 2 weeks for this one. Since we were shooting in a gymnasium we had to do it when the school was out so it was a late night shoot (finished at 3AM) and we had to pay the custodian to be on premises, had to get insurance so this is a little bigger than Hey It’s Just Jim which was total DIY with no budget.

And this is exactly why we wanted to allow filmmakers more time to gather a team, to spend time in post, to do whatever it takes to produce something you actually want people to watch, and not hate the process. We all work better with deadlines, and I presume some will still wait till the last minute, and that’s okay too. Whatever works. We just want to give filmmakers the opportunity to actually build a professional portfolio they can leverage into more work.

We’re excited to launch the Weird Short Films challenges, and we can’t wait to see what people can produce under the confines of the required elements. Stay tuned!