If something is going to be small, it needs to be perfectly formed. If it’s a short story, you need to be giving it Katherine Mansfield levels of welly. If you’re contemplating a 90-minute adaptation of Great Expectations, you need to be David Lean. If it’s a canape, it needs to be a tiny yorkshire pudding with a mini slice of roast beef tucked in and a dot of horseradish on the top. A smear of cream cheese on a cracker won’t do.
And if you are putting together a set of three 15-minute films as the first original drama for Channel 4’s digital platform, to be shown on YouTube to try to get the youth market to pump the brakes on its handcart to hell and see what this “art” business is all about (before it is streamed in one gobbet on your main broadcast channel), the same principle applies. It needs to be a miracle of compression, a story told without a wasted second or word. It will need to evoke much but still nail the key points and obey the narrative rules by which we make sense of any tale and through which we enjoy it.
