Short Film Title

[jpp]

Well, if you're going to take this mechanistic approach, the cover art is far more important than the title anyway, so why agonize? Just put a babe on the cover....

Besides, you can call a 30 minute short anything you want, and it won't make the slightest difference. Festivals don't care, and nobody tunes in to shorts' programs on cable because of a specific title. There's no real marketing opportunities for shorts, because there's no real market for them.

And Ryan Patch, be warned: 30 minutes could prove to be an awkward length. It's impossible to program before a festival feature (it's too long), and it's also a bit long for an 80 or 90 minute festival shorts' programs or a cable channel shorts' program (they usually prefer to program shorter entries, for variety, and to relieve the audience, if it can't stand a particular entry). Market research!

 

[Manfred Lopez]

Besides, you can call a 30 minute short anything you want, and it won't make the slightest difference. Festivals don't care, and nobody tunes in to shorts' programs on cable because of a specific title. There's no real marketing opportunities for shorts, because there's no real market for them.

Well, I guess then that the people behind "George Lucas In Love" (LINK), "405" (LINK), and Ruairi Robinson with his oscar-nominated short (LINK) all wasted their time. We all know how Ruairi's career just nosedived after he produced "Silent City"... Not!

For the rest of us who haven't been blessed with that kind of success yet, can we at least agree that producing a short is great practice for when one finally does do a feature-length film. So I would say naming the damn thing is a very important part to it. Also I wouldn't be to quick to dismiss shorts as being completely worthless in the commercial sense. There are people (including Steve Jobs) who definitely think there is a market for program material that lasts around 30 minutes. I think we are going to see a major shift in how content is distributed in the next few years. This shift will no doubt include short films (Especially in HD).

Also, since when did good ol' fashioned analysis, studying and doing one's homework on a topic become "mechanistic". If this doesn't have a strong whiff of anti-intellectualism then I don't know what does. Are we supposed to grunt our way through film production and create with just 'gut' feelings? Since when did questioning how things work become bad? And, worse yet, when did producing a 30-minute short become a bad thing? Am I in the right forum or are we in the 'it's-too-hard-so-why-bother-or-care' board? If festivals and audiences don't care about titles for shorts then why not just sequentially number them and be done with it?

 

[jpp]

Well, I guess then that the people behind "George Lucas In Love" (LINK), "405" (LINK), and Ruairi Robinson with his oscar-nominated short (LINK) all wasted their time. We all know how Ruairi's career just nosedived after he produced "Silent City"... Not!

This forum is such fun.... I didn't say that shorts have no potential for career enhancement. I did say, for what it's worth, that there's no real commercial market for shorts at present, and devising a title based on your alchemical phonetic approach isn't going to make much difference to a short's commercial fortunes or for anyone's career, any more than holding a voodoo ceremony will.

Also, since when did good ol' fashioned analysis, studying and doing one's homework on a topic become "mechanistic". If this doesn't have a strong whiff of anti-intellectualism then I don't know what does. Are we supposed to grunt our way through film production and create with just 'gut' feelings? Since when did questioning how things work become bad? And, worse yet, when did producing a 30-minute short become a bad thing? Am I in the right forum or are we in the 'it's-too-hard-so-why-bother-or-care' board? If festivals and audiences don't care about titles for shorts then why not just sequentially number them and be done with it?

I would have thought "anti-intelletualism" would describe setting out elaborate theories of naming based on unproven and unprovable claims, or an attempt to gain market advantage using advertising techniques which bear no relationship to the actual quality and intelligence of the piece.

And by all means, make a 30 minute short, if you want to diminish your chances of getting it seen on the festival circuit. After all, the movie business is a purist art, and practical considerations -- like finding just the right title, based on phonetics, real or imagined -- should never enter into one's calculations.

Naming shorts with numbers is fine by me, though it does sound a bit avant-garde. Or is that my anti-intellectualism coming to the fore again?

 

[P Andersson]

yeah,

one good short film will take you a long way, the script is important, the title is important, the casting and execution is important, the postproduction is important, keeping a sane budget is important, and finding a way for people to see the darn thing when it is done is important

but more important than all of the above is putting one foot in front of the other until it is done

i agree, i think it is great he is reaching out to the community and asking for opinions and help in whatever ways,

a friend just told me that walt disney, humphrey bogart and stanley kubrick has this one thing in common: they would not shut up about the story of the film that they where making. They would tell the story to anybody that was willing to listen, over and over again, and slowly the story kept changing and morphing into something that they wanted to film.

he also reminded me of the process that coppola went through in apocalyse now that you see in the documentary where francis is rewriting and rewriting as he is influenced by all kinds of stuff around him

so yes, throw us a quick synopsis

 

[Manfred Lopez]

... elaborate theories of naming based on unproven and unprovable claims

You are right. I made it all up. Film naming is all Voodoo magic. I apologize to all people who were mislead by my posts into believing that they could actually improve their titles by thinking about them in a systematic way.

You are right... this forum is fun. :biggrin:

 

[Jason Ing]

Thanks, TheThe. I thought what you said was interesting.

 

[Jason Ing]

As far as the commercialism of "shorts", I'm sure sites like You Tube and Atom films don't make any money at all. They're run by an all volunteer workforce.

 

[jpp]

You are right. I made it all up. Film naming is all Voodoo magic. I apologize to all people who were mislead by my posts into believing that they could actually improve their titles by thinking about them in a systematic way.

Let's not be imprecise here. Systematic thought and great titles remain highly recommended. The only system being challenged here is yours.

You're absolutely correct that sounds that don't depend on vocal cord resonance are indistinguishable from one speaker to another. However, the rest of your theory represents something of a leap of faith. I know of no studies which have correlated select consonants in titles with movie profitability. If you do, kindly list the references.

Better still, why not just leave it alone, before you get in any deeper? At this point, it really isn't much fun.... Not enough to continue, anyway.

 

[Manfred Lopez]

Thanks, TheThe. I thought what you said was interesting.

You're welcome, and thanks for the feedback. I actually do enjoy thinking about this kind of stuff. I love the whole challenge of naming movies.

Let's not be imprecise here. Systematic thought and great titles remain highly recommended. The only system being challenged here is yours.

I know of no studies which have correlated select consonants in titles with movie profitability. If you do, kindly list the references.

Okay, I'll give this one last shot. I have never said that titles have anything to do with profitability. I'll say it again: I am NOT talking about profitability... You keep trying to link what I'm saying to profits :greedy: ... no, no, no... bad. I am just talking about what makes a title good. What makes them memorable! And, yes! It can and has been studied! The field where all this is happening is called 'Speech Perception'. So it's not my own crazy ideas and theories here (I am not that smart!).

Here is someone else's description of this field:

"Speech perception has emerged as a major field of research over the past two decades, as enormous theoretical and technical changes have occurred. The study of speech perception has broadened in scope to encompass and appeal to a wide variety of disciplines including phonetics, auditory and speech science, cognitive science, experimental psychology, computer science, and informatics, among others."


As far as citing studies to this 'voodoo magic', I'll give you the wikipedia link. It's a good place to start. Just --Please--- don't drag me into it. I am sure you can follow all the links on that page and eventually arrive at some study or proof or whatever you seek that links certain sounds in words, names and titles to better cognition. But I just want to discuss movie titles here and what makes them tick without resorting to footnotes or other nonsense. Here is the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_perception


I hope I don't sound too confrontational :usd: . I just want to have the freedom to try to help someone else out who asked for opinions. But you keep shooting all my post down and dismiss them as being voodoo magic without really trying to see them from my perspective. What if what I'm saying actually has some thought behind it? What if you can apply the science of one field to improve movie titles? Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't you want to know about it? But instead I keep hearing this chant "Never heard of it... Let's burn the Witch!!!" :gun:

 

[Tico Llaurador]

"Words on Windows"

 

[number6]

No, it isn't just about being an explosive sound. "R" is part of the hard-sell camp. I think it has to do with what is easiest to remember and say. Think of what would be easiest for a child to say. So anything with those sounds helps. Also anything with a repetition... like "Bam Bam". That's why "express" is good because it repeats the 'eh' sound and combines it with two strong consonant sounds to boot (The 'x' and the 'pr' sounds). But all this is not my opinion. It is all part of well-established science on human speech.

Okay, with the risk of sounding too much like an a-hole (and then having people like Ruairi tear me down), I'd like to share something I learned regarding dialogue editing for movies. I think it directly sheds light on what I'm talking about. Human sounds seem to be catalogued into two major camps. One camp is where the intonation of each sound is very specific to each person in regards to gender, age, voice pitch, etc. The other is where sound is completely universal and we can't tell who it is coming from. Dialogue editors have for years known the difference between the two and often 'repair' the spoken dialogue of on-screen characters by dubbing in their own voice over the actor's lines... and no one can tell the difference. This is mostly done when actors don't pronounce all the correct sounds or letters of words in the heat of acting.

I was amazed to see this phenomenon when it was first demoed to me. This fat, deep-voiced, unshaven dialogue editor was dubbing in sounds for a six-year-old actress's lines... and it seemed that she was saying the improved lines. Apparently when someone makes an 's' sound no one can tell from what kind of person it is coming from, so we have to wait for some other clues like 'r', 'p', 'k', etc, sounds to tell us if a little girl is speaking or if it's that old, fat sound editor. So it seems these sounds are what makes us remember the person saying them more (think of them as sounds helping a bat out to determine size, shape and distance because of the resonance that they cause). So therefore these sounds make us remember the titles better. It helps even more if a character or voice-over artist appropriate with the mood of the film (Don LaFontaine, you will be missed) says the title to us in advertisements. So I hope all of this makes sense. So now if Ruairi still wants to rip down the science by throwing movie grosses at me, fine. But I still believe that not all titles are created equal and that there is a rational explanation of why.

...

Very interesting stuff, and I trust your judgment so will not doubt what you say. Thanks.

obtw... I still like "Whose yellow name is that in the snow?" better.:tongue:

 

[number6]

"Words on Windows"

Or, for the Mac croud, "Pics on OSX"