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The film is famous because it launched Scorsese's career as he was immediately signed up to direct his first feature.

1. 5 History Repeats Itself
The short film enabled Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy, to get a footing in the film industry during the 1910s, as it did with Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese in the late 1960s. It's only logical to suggest it is a viable way for new filmmakers to get noticed, and with its condensed production value, and cheaper costs, it appears it is an excellent way for new filmmakers to attempt the medium.

Since Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese all produced their films whilst studying film production in America. It does create questions of whether or not the medium will be inundated with Spielberg 'wannabe's' making amateurish films whose makers no very little about the craft. With digital technology making basic film production easily attainable, it raises questions of whether this type of cinema will be flooded with bad filmmaking, or if it will indeed liberate the medium, freeing it as an art form to be influenced by more people than ever before. Robert Rodriguez seems to think so, telling new filmmakers to save their university funds and put them into their own films.
Take that $20, 000 you were planning on spending at UCLA or New York University and put it right back in your pocket. They can't teach you how to tell a good story in film school, and even if they did, you wouldn't want to learn from them anyway. They teach you how to make big movies, with a big crew so that when you graduate after spending $20, 000 on a diploma, you can go to Hollywood and get a job pulling cable's on someone else's big movie.' (Rodriguez, 1995. pg. 201)

If short film has had a life cycle then it is one that started as a commercial medium, died, and then reinvented itself as a pedestal for young filmmakers to exhibit their talent.

1. 6 Experimentation
The Short film from the beginning was one of experimentation. It was an excellent way for the major studios to experiment with new technology, especially with the growth and development of sound and animation' (Turner Classic Movies, 2005), and Warner Bros. for example, used the Vitaphone shorts as vehicles to show off synchronized sound.' (Eder, 2004) Yet, the short film was still a commercially viable product. This, however, has more to do with cinema being in its infancy, than pre-1930s audiences wanting short films over feature length. Many of the early talkies were awkward in their use of

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