History of short film

Short film has been practiced in many forms since the beginning of cinema in the early 1900's. Short films would often be implemented before a feature length film as a sort of teaser. Due to technology not being as advanced as it has now become, short films producers would often require a profit for their short films, limited their potential. Notoriously, silent comedy series' which consisted of 5-10 minute episodes were shown regularly at screenings along with news reals.

However, since then short film has been developed to the point where short films in the 30's were independent and often existed purely as entertainment or propaganda during the second world war. This format encouraged the use of short film for proposing ideas and, in later decades, short film became the main source of advertisement. Although we can clearly distinguish short films from television adverts now, when adverts first emerged they were initially seen as promotional short films.

In the 50's short film also returned to the subject for creating entertainment-based series'. Animating companies such as the Walt Disney company produced many shorts in the mid-1900s.

In the past decade short film has increased in popularity dramatically due to software and hardware being more accessible to the general public. Furthering this, platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo allow for peoples content to be widely shared across the internet.