2025 > Back in Fasion
By Neil Graham
01 Oct 2025
Artistically, shorts have always been important. There are as so many fabulous and important short films produced every year. But they don’t always get the attention they deserve. They have drifted in and out of fashion over the last 130 years…..
…..but it looks like we are on the crest of another wave of short-form film insurgence. The rise of vertical drama shows no sign of slowing down…..
The motion picture industry started with shorts. Until 1917 they were the main mode of film production. Louis Lumière’s La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon in 1895 became the catalyst for the creation of this industry we all love. And so many pioneers followed quickly afterwards (Chaplin, Keaton, Méliès, Porter, Griffith, Blackton, Paul — this really is a list that could go on forever) to create the cinematic language of edits, close-ups and shot-reverse shots and three act story structures that have remained remarkably sticky over the last century.
When I started to go to the cinema in the late 70’s shorts were still a part of the movie experience. It was normal for a short film to be shown as an appetiser for the feature. But by the 1980’s this was phased out, with only Disney and later Pixar treating us to an animated short before the main event. It was a sad day when Toy Story 4 was released at the cinema without an accompanying short!
And so over times shorts largely became commercially less important; and their production has largely been driven as a training ground for new filmmakers or a place of artistic freedom and expression for established artists who have something they want to say outside the constraints of the feature film industry. Sometimes, short is just better.
The emergence of new technologies has been a frequent driver for the changing fortunes of the short-film sector. And whilst shorts largely disappeared from the cinema and the main-stream television schedules the 80’s and 90’s also saw the rapid growth of the music video and the television advertisement — both of which provided space for expression in short-form. From these worlds emerged incredible film artists such as Ridley Scott, Spike Jonze and David Fincher. Steve Barron’s Take on Me video from 1985 often features in the list of greatest music videos, but I would argue it is also one of the best short films made in the 1980’s too.
Fast forward to the age of the DVD, the internet and streaming and shorts again rose in importance. High-end short films were produced to accompany the release of films and tv series. Think of the The Animatrix shorts from 2003 that were far more interesting than either the sequels or the Marvel One-Shots used to expand the Marvel cinematic universe from 2011.
And so it looks like we are going through another shift in the importance of the short with the emergence of vertical mini-dramas. Technology again is an important factor in this drive with these micro-short films/episodes being written and designed for viewing on a mobile phone. Hence the phrase vertical comes from the size and parameters of the average mobile phone screen, and not as I had thought initially from some Marketing lingo!
I did a little bit of research — and the growth in this sector is quite staggering. In China, were this phenomenon first took hold, it is estimated that over 60% of its population has watched a mini drama and this sector is estimated to be worth c. $7bn dollars since it emerged in 2023.
The US sector is expected to reach similar numbers in the 2030’s. I always remain a little cynical about the scale of the numbers thrown around by the streamers and technology platforms, but the reported daily viewing numbers for Youtube Shorts is 13 billion! I doubt it is this high — but it is clearly still a lot of people viewing short form content pretty regularly.
Now this is a little alien to me. I prefer to find a cinema with the biggest screen possible and watch a narrative unfold over a couple of hours. And Tik-Tok videos drive me to distraction. But the emergence of these condensed episodes and new platforms such as ReelShort is another fascinating episode in the story the short form drama. I admit to losing a few evenings sampling these before I forced myself to stop! I can’t see these replacing my love for the big-screen, but I can appreciate why people like them.
So shorts are back in fashion again. And that can only be a good thing.
Submissions are open for the 7th annual Canadian Short Screenplay Competition.
The Early Bird Deadline is December 28th, 2025. The final deadline is April 26th, 2026. Get your entries in via FilmFreeway or also now courtesy of the fine folks over at Stage32, if you’re feeling so inclined.Submit your script today and prepare to take your place on the global stage in what is one of the best screenplay contests out there.
2025 #WW Laureate
