Every famous director started out as a film student trying to create a work of art that will grab a lot of attention from the masses. Before they made big-budgeted movies with star power and award recognition, they initially had short films that began their legendary career.
You can view these short films and catch a great glimpse of a director’s natural artistic side before having to work under a production company. Here is a list of student films made by famous directors that film studies instructors can use in their classrooms. Filmmakers can use these titles as inspiration for making their own short films, the first step for breaking into the film industry.
The Resurrection of Bronco Billy
We consider John Carpenter to be a master of horror, known for Halloween, The Thing, and The Fog. But before this, Carpenter was an editor, music composer, and co-writer of the Western short film The Resurrection of Bronco Billy. The plot follows a young man in the big city who indulges himself in fantasies of living as a cowboy in the Wild West.
In 1968, Carpenter was studying film at the University of Southern California. He quit in order to work on his first short film Captain Voyeur. The next year, he collaborated with John Longenecker to create The Resurrection of Bronco Billy which won Best Live Action Short Film at the 43rd annual Oscars. This award-winning short was released in theaters for the next two years in the United States and Canada. This could end up happening to your short film too!
You can watch The Resurrection of Bronco Billy on YouTube.
Stalk of the Celery Monster
Before Tim Burton was entertaining kids and adults with titles like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice, he made an animated short drawn entirely in pencil called Stalk of the Celery Monster. With the only fragments remaining of the movie, we see a dentist conducting bloody experiments with his patients. This 1979 short was written, directed, and animated by Burton during the time he was a student at the California Institute of the Arts and shot on 8mm film.
Many thought this film was lost until it premiered on Spanish television in 2006. They currently hold celluloid excerpts at the Library of Congress. Tim Burton made such a good first impression with Stalk of the Celery Monster that Walt Disney Animation Studios offered him an apprenticeship. This story proves that you just need that one movie to catch the attention of major studios.
You can watch Stalk of the Celery Monster on YouTube.
Bottle Rocket
We may know Wes Anderson for his colorful, unique visuals in films like Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, but he entered the entertainment industry through his short film Bottle Rocket. He met with then-newbie actor Owen Wilson in a playwriting class in 1989 during their sophomore year at the University of Texas, Austin. They wrote a script about wannabe criminals that would also feature Wilson’s brother Luke and Robert Musgrave. While Bottle Rocket got little critical attention, it certainly caught the eye of producer James Brook who funded this short into a feature film of the same name. This launched the career of Anderson and the Wilson brothers.
You can watch Bottle Rocket on YouTube.
Cigarettes & Coffee
Punch-Drunk Love’s Paul Thomas Anderson scraped together all of his money for his early short film Cigarettes & Coffee. The $20,000 budget came from his gambling winnings, his college fund set aside by his father, his girlfriend’s credit cards, and other donations. His producer rented a cheap diner in the Gorman Pass to shoot the film about five people connected to a $20 bill.
After Cigarettes & Coffee became a sensation on the short film festival circuit, the 1994 Sundance Institute invited Anderson to create a feature film which is called Hard Eight.
You can watch Cigarettes & Coffee on YouTube.
Luxo Jr.
When Steve Jobs bought Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group for $5 million, he renamed it Pixar, the wonderful animation company we know today. Luxo Jr. was Pixar’s first animation about large and small desk lamps. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull worked around the clock on the film. Lasseter even slept under his desk to get ready for the next morning.
Luxo Jr. became the first 3-D movie to receive an Oscar nomination. Even the lamp became the company’s new mascot. This would follow several memorable Pixar movies like Toy Story and Lasseter becoming the chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney animation studios.
You can watch Luxo Jr. on YouTube.