I remember when "Titanic" came out and a lot of people who went to see it were complaining about it's three-hour long running time. One complaint in particular came from a friend who did not like this movie. Today, the complaint got me thinking about the way that short films are often given a bad rep at film festivals, among many filmmakers, film industry experts and even movie fans.

A lot of people treat short films like they are unimportant or some type of neglected second cousin of the feature film club. The disappointment from a feature length movie like "Titanic" or action films such as "Transformers" usually arise when they do not meet the expectations that movie goers had when they decided to visit the theater and watch it based on its movie trailer.

It is not unusual for a movie goer to feel like time was wasted that they cannot get back....two hours is a lot of time out of someone's life that is used to watch a film, so it should be good or at the very least....entertaining, right? This is an issue where short films should be given the benefit of the doubt because they are useful forms of entertainment that do not take two hours to watch.

Many short films are under 10 minutes in length, so whether they are exceptional pieces of cinematic art like some of the Oscar nominated short films...or whether they are bland...or whether they are bad....short length movies do not have to meet the same level of expectations that feature length films do.

More than one dozen short films can be watched in the same time that one views "The Lord of the Rings" (this is not to say that LOTR falls into the same category of "Transformers" because LOTR is a good movie!) so even if movie fans come across a short film that they do not like, there wasn't that much time wasted in watching it because the average person usually spends the same amount of time in the bathroom. In fact, you could watch a short film while you are using the bathroom and get it done and over with....unless of course, you spend the bathroom time reading a book!

This post was written for the topic of "Expectations" in the new Group Blogging Experience (GBE 2). Also, I want to thank Alana at Writercize for letting me know about this blogging project!

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