Author: Richard Raskin

Born in Brooklyn in 1941 and presently residing in Denmark, Richard Raskin’s main interest has been in short film storytelling. For more than 30 years, he taught students at Aarhus University the art of making short films. He has served on juries and lectured at international film festivals, is the founding editor of Short Film Studies published in the U.K., has written books and articles about the short film, co-founded a school called Multiplatform Storytelling and Production, and wrote the script for an award-winning short film, Seven Minutes in the Warsaw Ghetto.

On the Power of Film: The Surprising Example of Charles B. McVay

On October 30th 2000, President Bill Clinton signed into law Bill HR 3710, fully exonerating Navy Captain Charles B. McVay. McVay had been unfairly blamed for the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in 1945 and for the deaths of hundreds of crewmen. His court-martial shortly after the Japanese surrender had resulted in a guilty verdict […]

Ten tips for student filmmakers making their first short films

The short film is an art form in its own right. Many of its storytelling properties differ from those of the feature film. It is typically under 10 min. long. The shorter the better. It should not be confused with the 25-40 min. graduation films made at film schools and which are really miniature feature […]

Ego as an Enemy in Short Film Production

Without ego there would be no art, no motivation to take on the challenges and to seek the rewards of creating original work. Jackie Gleason, best remembered for creating and starring in The Honeymooners – one of the first and most successful sitcoms in television history – once said: “If I didn’t have an enormous […]

Actors Sometimes Know Best

At the end of John Huston’s Maltese Falcon (1941), Detective Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) picks up the heavy statue of the falcon and asks “What is it?” to which Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) meaningfully replies: “The, uh… stuff that dreams are made of.” There is no such line in Dashiell Hammet’s novel nor in John […]

A Screenwriter’s Lot

According to a story often told, Frank Capra gave a magazine interview in the late 1930s, going on about the ‘Capra touch’ in such award-winning films as It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), without once mentioning Robert Riskin, his screenwriter. After seeing the piece, Riskin is said to have […]

Five actors who turned lemons into lemonade

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Popular dictum Many actors have managed to transform an illness or injury into a distinctive trademark that gave them an appeal and recognizability they would not have otherwise enjoyed. Five of them will be considered here: three character actors whose faces you would probably recognize though you never […]

Marketing Permissions