Definition of a short:
A film that isn't long enough to be considered a full length feature film. The film comes under the 'shorts' category when it is 40 minutes or less in length. This includes the credits and the titles as if they ran over and made the film 41 minutes that wouldn't be a short film wouldn't be a short film.
It sounds extremely professional to call it a 'short' which you may think is why we call it a short rather than a short film but lets be honest...its just because we're all too lazy to say short film!
Background shorts
Short films started to appear around 1910 in the USA where the films were animated (not real people, cgi and what not) or live action (people on screen acting). The films then were mostly made and developed to make people laugh (or at least try to).
The shorts industry (no not the clothes) went through a rough patch where their popularity decreased but low and be hold things started to improve when the famous charlie Chaplin came about (the famous mime that walked like a penguin). He started the crazy of making short films again but after that short films again weren't that popular.
Today the only film companies that have made a few shorts are Pixar, famous for its 'lamp' short and many more, and disney. Here is a short film animation created by Pixar called 'For the Birds' which is one of their most recent shorts.
Short films are usually created by small industries with a low budget but Pixar and Disney prove this isn't always the case. However most short films today are produced and published onto sites such as youtube.
Now we've distinguished what a short film actually is we could do with seeing what makes up a short film and seeing a few other real life examples of shorts, some of which are multi award winning!
