At every film festival I go to, there's at least one short film that takes my breath away. The format is perfect for delivering a short, sharp shock, and it's a freer, purer form because it doesn't have to conform to standard narrative conventions – literally anything could happen. Watching a whole short-film programme is like sampling all the dishes on the menu. There's something inherently satisfying about shorts; and yet, outside of film festivals it's hard to get hold of them and even more difficult to see them as they should be screened – on the big screen. In this Hallowe'en special, film makers talk about the long and short of it.

Mitch Davis, programmer for the FantAsia film festival and also director of short film Divided Into Zero (1999) says, “The terrible reality is that in most cases, if you read about a short film that sounds interesting to you, it is going to be near-impossible for you to actively seek it out and watch it.” He thinks that the format is “an absolutely vital one” and at the latest FantAsia festival there were nine dedicated short film blocks programmed, almost all of them got huge audiences. Davis says, “I can cite cases where short films were more popular than any feature in the years that they were showcased at FantAsia (Nacho Cerda's Aftermath, Robert Morgan's The Separation, Denisson Ramalho's Love From Mother Only and Peter Cornwell's Ward 13).

A film that scared the pants off me was Brendan Muldowney's award winning haunted house story The Ten Steps. There's no blood or ghoul, in fact, the horror relies purely on the viewer's imagination: a young girl (Jill Harding) has to cope in an old house when the lights go out. The strength of the film lies its simple but effective storyline as we go down ten steps with a frightened girl by candlelight. Brendan explains how he achieved his classic scare effects, “ Photographers Michael O'Donovan and Tom Comerford shot on super 16mm, and went back to basics. They shot the old house sequences with a combination of slow fluid movements and plush lighting to create tension before the lights go out, and handheld camera to create edginess once the house is plunged into darkness.”

The film references older classics of the genre like Robert Wise's The Haunting where the subtle use of shadow is exploited to maximum effect. Muldowney says, “Using steadicam exclusively for a POV and making the steadicam a character achieved the idea of an evil presence creeping around the house. Deep breaths and voices were added on the soundtrack to give even more character to these shots. Over fifty percent of the film was lit by candlelight and no other lights, after extensive camera tests it was found that by using double wick candles and Kodak 200 ASA stock, the correct level of darkness and shadow was achieved”. The film was shot on 16mm and then blown up to 35mm and plays well in a cinema.

The film's ending is amazing, which you'll just have to experience yourself to appreciate it. It's the kind of shock that's subtle, that creeps up on you without you knowing it until it's too late. It's the eighth film from Muldowney and now he feels it's time to move on to features. He has a feature film called Soul Broke written by Garrett Shanley in development with the Irish film board. He's also writing another feature and considering expanding the premise of The Ten Steps to a feature. I asked him if it ‘was worth' making short films as a career platform, “Yes, if they are successful, but you are never going to know that until they are made and out at the festivals. You just have to believe that they will be”. The Ten Steps can be viewed on www.atomfilm.com in the New Year; it's a useful site for looking at short films. For more details about Muldowney's latest projects, contact him at: spfilms@eircom.net .

Because short films are often a director's stepping stone to feature film production, it's common for them to become real labours of love which people self-finance or spend months of their life working on unpaid. Spanish director Nacha Cerda shot 30 minute short Genesis (1998) on 35mm and handled the project as if it was a feature. It was a huge personal and financial sacrifice and, fortunately, he's now finally filming his first full-length film, Bloodline . Often though, the budgets for shorts can seem deceptively cheap as film school students are often able to use expensive equipment and post-production facilities for free. The talented German director Andreas Samland got just 2,500 Euros from the German Film Academy for his award-winning short Tag 26 (aka Day 26) (2003) but along with his DOP Max Penzel, they personally invested another 4,500, but in a MakingTheFilm.com article, Samland estimated the real cost of the film would have been 21,000 Euros.

Again, Tag 26 makes use of a simple, but effective premise – it's day twenty-six of a nuclear aftermath and two men dressed in decontamination suits search a farmhouse looking for survivors. The film is perfectly photographed and the camera lovingly lingers over the men's rubber suits and the extreme care they take to avoid damaging their protective clothing. At times the cinematography is so superb, and shot so pointedly, it looks like a rubber fetishist's dream, which makes the fact that they have to wear it even darker. The stark reality of post-apocalyptic survival is detailed to the millimetre, but when one of the men gets his suit punctured his partner responds differently to protocol. It's quite simply the best thing I've seen about a nuclear holocaust and works just perfectly as it is. Tag 26 has won a number of prizes and has been shown on Channel 4; Samland is hard at work currently shooting his next film.

Not that a film has to be shot on film. Plenty of short films work well on a shoestring budget. Andre Kapel made his super gory 60 ML for about a $1000, although it does help if you are Brazil 's top SFX artist! 60 ML combines a haunting soundtrack and gangster action over a drug heist with a fierce tale about zombies. The best thing about it is its unusual pace which speeds up and slows down and the narrative itself is full of surprises. Kapel attended the FantAsia film festival with his film and through this interest is now negotiating a deal to write a screenplay for a horror feature. Getting your stuff out there works!

US filmmaker Christian Ray has had a successful run at film festivals internationally with Graveless . This ten minute short has just won the Brigadoon Award for Best Film at Sitges. It opens with a victim tied and blindfolded to a chair, the victim of a serial killer who is determined not just to kill him, but to find out his victim's greatest fear and kill him by this method. The film is unusual in that it films its victim as if he was stupid rather than helpless, and allows him to partially escape, only to find that this is an elaborate trap in order to probe his deepest fear. Most of the film takes place in the dark and exploits fear of claustrophobia to the full, it's another simple idea that works. To download the film, see the official site: www.graveless.com.

Finally, an excellent example of a high energy film is Josh Townsend's 34 minute short, Loyalty . Despite its length it was shot for around $4000 on Panasonic DV, but that meant Townsend being most of the crew and even building his own steadicam! Townsend explains, “My day job is custom carpentry so it was rather easy to make one out of wood. It's not any heavier than would you would buy and most people don't even realise that the first four minutes are all one take with a steadicam shot.” It's a kind of black gangster take on Hong Kong film Ebola Syndrome (aka Yibola bing du, 1996) as rival gangs try to get hold of a chemical weapon, but the feel of the film is more like a cautionary tale about Japanese Yakuza's. Interestingly, the brutality of the male warring gangsters is matched by the knife wielding antics of the protagonist's sadistic girlfriend (Christina White), although lead actor Adonis Boyd becomes particularly vindictive when he becomes infected.

The script is brilliantly written and captures perfectly current ‘street talk'. Townsend gives a few tips for writing captivating dialogue, “Practice and more practice. I've been writing for years and years. Listen to other people talk and remember what they do. I've been around some unique characters in my life, so I'm not just some kid emulating dialogue I've heard on TV”. His other tip for budding filmmakers is “To find a producer and partner up with him.” More details about the film can be found on www.loyaltythemovie.com . Townsend's short zombie movie can also be downloaded at: http://home.comcast.net/~towjun/tilldeath_final.wmv

If you like what you see, support shorts by going to see them at film festivals, and buying them when they occasionally surface on DVD (Fangoria's Blood Drive and selected shorts from FantAsia will be released as Small Gauge Trauma with Synapse films in July 2006). You never know, you might even be tempted to make your own! Happy Hallowe'en!