I was down the pub on Friday night and got asked why I bothered doing a minute long film. It’s a very good question and one I asked myself at the outset of doing “Fairy Tale”. I thought I’d discuss it here for reference.

Let’s start with the feature I’m working on. When I first started toying with the idea, a lot of it involved that good old horror movie staple “being chased through trees”. Because I have it in mind that I’ll direct this myself, I got into my head that I should do some test footage of this type of action. But rather than just shoot test footage, I wanted to do it as a short film in its own right. So I had to come up with an idea for a short story that would end up with a chase through woods. Simple eh?

I mused on several ideas but none of them leapt out of me until one day I thought of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. So I started drafting the script. The original script went something like “Goldilocks is in the house, the three bears come back, Daddy Bear chases her through the woods.” That’s that sorted.

Except it wasn’t. I wasn’t happy with it. For a start, it wasn’t just Goldilocks, it was Goldilocks and her bastard boyfriend who outruns her and leaves her to get caught by Daddy Bear. I can’t remember why there was a boyfriend in it. I never liked him so in the third draft of the script, I cut him entirely. From there on in, the script started to resemble something more like the finished film.

The other problem I had was, coincedentally, the “why bother” part. The script was 2 pages long and seemed pointless. I couldn’t justify to myself why I should make a 2 minute long film. I’d also just come off the back of producing a 10 minute short with proper actors, proper lighting and a fully professional crew. Talk about downsizing! It wasn’t until I saw the BBCs 1 minute movie challenge that I realised there was a point in doing this film. The challenge was to tell a story with setup and resolution in under a minute. That was going to mean some hefty cutting.

First thing to go, ironically, was the chase through the woods - the whole reason I’d come up with the idea for the film in the first place.

When you’ve only got a minute to work with you obviously don’t have a lot of time to play with. You have to set up the character and the situation as quickly as possible. So, opening scene: the girl is in bed, the clock shows it’s twenty past two in the afternoon. She gets up and has a shower. We don’t know why the girl is getting out of bed so late but I hoped that by having her listening to the radio and not having it start with an alarm, it would be obvious that she’s in no hurry to get of bed and that she’s just having a lie in.

The radio also proved useful in trying to fill in more of the setup - a news bulletin about break-ins taking place presumably in the area where this is happening. I hoped that would be clear.

In 20 seconds, we’ve set up the girl, her environment and the world situation. That’s Act 1.

Act 2 begins with a shift in location to the kitchen. Goldilocks has got up, is making a cup of coffee and reading a paper - her goal is to have a normal, relaxed day. More environment information - she’s obviously in no hurry and knows where things are. This is obviously her house. The obstacle to her having a normal day is introduced - the door to the house opens, the hand of an intruder is seen. She’s obviously about to become a victim of one of the break-ins that we heard about on the news report.

Act 2 ends with conflict and a major setback for our protagonist - Goldilocks comes face to face with the intruder and there’s a momentary stand off. (At this point in the final draft is the only line of dialogue - the intruder simply says “Get out!” In the final edit I actually cut this line because it seemed unneccessary and also it jarred with the fact that, apart from the newsreader, there was no other dialogue at all.)

In a 60 second long film, we’ve got very little time for Act 3. Everything has to be resolved - who is this intruder, what will Goldilocks do? The conflict is resolved immediately by Goldilocks running away. That in itself is not enough information to tell the viewer what’s happened so we introduce two other people - a woman and a child. A lot of people have said this is a bit spooky or creepy and that’s mostly down to the editing. (There was very little footage to choose from which didn’t have the child, who was 2 at the time, kicking, talking, jumping down and doing anything but staying still. I nearly cut him from the whole thing but it was more effective to include him.) But again, we haven’t got enough information so the final shot is the picture on the side table of the family together. Why is this picture in Goldilocks’ house? Because it’s not her house and she’s actually the intruder. The payoff is delivered and the story has resolved.

So that’s why I’d do more microshorts and why it’s worth the bother - how do you tell a story in a minute or less? Any story still needs a beginning, middle and end and the reduced amount of time means having to convey all the information as efficiently and economically as possible.