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Making films in the era of one-second Instagram reels

Relatability is impactful: We all want to be heard and seen. If your audience can relate to what you are showing, they will watch it despite the duration.


In an era where attention spans are shortening daily, we are forced to create art that caters to this ‘demand or trait.’ This challenges most creatives who indulge in long art forms such as film. Whether it means reducing the runtime of the movie or series or providing clues to the audience to make them understand the story better, these are ways in which filmmakers must cater to the current mass audiences, who are continually exposed to short-form, straightforward content such as Reels and TikToks. But even then, such techniques are neither a hassle nor take away from the art you create — it’s all about striking the perfect balance, which, of course, requires a lot of trial and error initially.



I have been a filmmaker for a while and a creative for even longer. In my career, I started with short films; their short runtime already made half the task easy, but the other part of it was creating a story that was engaging and simple to understand. This was a challenge given that even if the runtime was shorter, the subject matter was heavy because it would discuss a social cause or issue. Some may even argue that the short runtime is an even more significant challenge — how would you propagate a simple story focusing on a heavy subject in just minutes?


Over the years, I have realized relatability is the key to simplicity. If you can relate to someone or something, you will be able to understand and absorb that content or its inferences. Even if you have not necessarily been through that exact situation unfolding in the film, you’ll find that, as humans, we share some degree of sentiment because chances are we felt the same when facing a situation that might have been different. Relatability is impactful because we all want to be heard; we all want to be seen. Resonance is significant to us. We are drawn to familiarity.


How does one make an impactful film in the era of zero-second reels? Zenofar Fathima, a Dubai-based filmmaker, philanthropist, and CEO of Zen Film Productions, contributes an exclusive on how to make a film in the current times.

Short films were my stepping stone to doing more extensive and more ambitious things with my craft and understanding the concept of relatability. After making short films for an extended period, I was ready to apply my lessons to the challenging television series format, and there, too, I used the same principles. In short, looking for relatability is the trick to c

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