On the last weekend in July the Sundance Institute hosted its first annual Shortslab, a day dedicated entirely to short filmmaking. I was lucky enough (for $150) to attend, and it was an amazing experience. This is the first part of a five-part section on the labs.

Part 1: Development

Miguel Arteta, AFI Alumnus and director of shows such as “Six Feet Under,” “The Office” and “Ugly Betty,” as well as multiple feature films, including “Youth in Revolt,” was the first to go. After a short introduction, he screened his short, titled “Are you the favorite person of anybody?” Here it is:

He said that his then girlfriend Miranda July came up with the idea at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, and on 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon it was done. He praised the simplicity of the idea.

Next came Jay Duplass, of the Duplass brothers, whose recent feature Cyrus is still in theaters through Fox Searchlight, and who has had three features at Sundance overall.

Duplass said that he and his brother made a few features before they made shorts, all of which failed miserably.

“We kind of had an accident where I started filming my brother Mark one day, and the movie cost like 3 dollars. It was a mini DV tape that we got at this Circle K by our house and put into our parents’ home video camera. And this movie came out that was different from anything we had made. It was basically just one scene, it was something that had happened to me a week earlier, trying to perfect the personal greeting on my answering machine.”

Duplass said that shorts were a cheap way of trying to figure out who they were. What their voice was. He explained that

“We were trying to be the Coen Brothers for a long time.  Don’t try to be the Coen Brothers, they’re always going to beat you.”

He also said it took him 10 years to make anything he thought was decent, and that he was on the verge of losing his mind, and that that’s what that film was and what it represents. He emphasized that shorts were a cheap opportunity to discover your artistic voice;

No one in film school or on panels talks about it, but a big part of making art is trying to figure out who you are as an artist and what is unique that you have to offer the world.

Last came Peter Sollett, an NYU alum who showed his remarkable thesis film “Five Feet High and Rising,” winner of prizes at Cannes, Sundance, Aspen Shortsfest and South by Southwest. Sollett has participated in the Sundance Labs, where he developed his first feature “Raising Victor Vargas.”

Sollett told a great story about being a young filmmaker at NYU. The film he made before “Five Feet High and Rising” was a big production: lots of lights, dollies, and grips. When he screened the film, he said he got the best compliment anyone could give at NYU: “It looks like it was shot on 35 (mm).” It was a small comfort as he was very dissatisfied with the story and performances.

He decided after that that he didn’t want a big crew at all. He shot Five Feet without a DP, improvising based on a treatment and using natural locations with no permits. He had a very difficult time with it, and came out with something enormously beautiful and personal.

All of the filmmakers stressed that large productions will cannibalize your time away from story and performance. Multiple or elaborate locations, props, vehicles, costumes etc.will take all of your time and draw you away from your film’s story, performances, and camerawork.

Short filmmakers never have money (except in Europe, where they occasionally receive subsidies). The stories short films tell are generally small and simple, with minimal locations and characters. Often they are just one scene. Minimizing production hassle allows filmmakers to do what 2010 Sundance Short Film Winner Jeremy Konner recommends:

The best thing to do is to be prolific. If you look at a lot of the great artists, they made plenty of things that weren’t successful, that didn’t work.

Keeping costs down allows you to experiment and learn until you come up with something great.

It was a very inspiring day. Coming from a school where students spend thousands and thousands of dollars to make long, expensive and often confusing short films, a call for clarity, thrift and simplicity was refreshing.