What defines a short film

Short films are officially described as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits".

 Budget

The budgets of short films are often considerably lower than the feature length. An example of this could be alluded to using The Blair Witch Project, which brought in $249 million on a film that was shot with a $60,000 budget. As a result, the short film could be argued to have brought about a key impact on how prevalent they can become in the industry of film as a whole.

Shooting techniques

Due to the low budget, short films are often made using the cheapest and most efficient methods possible. To purport to one specific point, sound and lighting are crucial to control. Ensuring that filming is done using natural lighting and that the quality of the audio is picked up without pesky background noises would be a key element once shooting is commenced. Feature films prefer to use "lavalier" mics as they are primarily the main faculties of reducing this type of disturbance therefore short films would also benefit significantly by using these types of mics.

Some examples