History of short film

Short films started to surface at the start of the 20th century. For a long time short films had very similar popularity to the full length feature films like "Birth Of Nation" by D.W. Griffith's.

Throughout the progression of film short films became associated with comedies such as Our Gang, animated cartoons and newsreels. This started to separate short films from feature films substantially.

Animated shorts became the fashion in the 1960s as more and more studios were acquiring the abilities to animate their movies. It cost more in terms of production in some cases but bigger name actors were not required. The animated short eventually died out in the 1980s. When disney acquired pixar in 2005 the animated short genre started to make its ultimate comeback with things like "Goofy" and "How to hook up your home cinema".  

After the great depression cinema took a severe hit. Causing cinema owners to develop programs that supported feature films far more than their short film counterparts. This ultimately led to a massive dip in short films being made as there was no room in the already suffering cinemas for it. With the rise of the double feature as a cinema programming format, 2-reel shorts went into decline as a commercial category. Hal Roach, for example, moved Laurel and Hardy full-time into feature films after 1935, and halved his popular Our Gang films to one reel. By the 1940s, he'd moved out of short films altogether.