The target audience of Short Films

The target audience of Short Films

Short film is a genre with a very small foothold in the film industry. You don’t see short films advertised on television or hear about famous and successful directors making them. Short film caters for a very small niche in the market.
One of the main reasons short film does not cater for the majority of the market is the subject matter. Normally, short films deal with quite moving and thought provoking subjects, topics that rally make you think when you watch them and for the majority of people that’s just not entertaining. When people pay £10 to go to the cinema they don’t necessarily want to be entertained, and not to watch something that will make them think.
However, some of the most popular short films are not thought provoking, meaningful works but in fact fun and uplifting films. Films that try out new ideas and have fun and original concepts that many people won’t have seen.
The kind of people that go and see short films are typically not your average movie going audience, they are more into the genre as an art piece than as a form of entertainment. They are more interested in what a piece means and what it is trying to say.
To look at the target audience of short films you have to look at who makes, them,
Typically short films are made my aspiring directors, people wanting to add to their showreels and trying to break into the industry. Works like these would most likely appeal to those in the film industry like fellow directors/film-makers or producers looking for talent.
Critics would also have to be part of the main target audience. Short films often shy away from the conventions surrounding mainstream films and television programs so they might provide a more challenging and intellectual watch for critics and might be something more interesting for them.
Films that challenge new ideas and concepts, particularly ones that are very visually stimulating, can appeal to much wider mainstream audience. User-generated content websites have made viewing and exhibiting films a lot easier. If a film on the internet seems to be particularly interesting it can easily spread among web users, the ‘word of mouse’ hypothesis. Typically films that fall into this category and more entertaining than thought provoking and that’s why they appeal to wider audiences.
In conclusion the target film is made up of a wide range of people, but people looking conventions of short films. In very brief terms, either something thought provoking or fin exciting and original concepts.

Second Textual Analysis

To further my understanding of Short Film I have a video textual analysis.

Textual Analysis on the short film 'Dawn'

In order to further my understanding of short film I have decided to do a textual analysis of one. I will be analysing a short called ‘Dawn’ (Fiction Factory, 2005) directed by Shreepali Patel. The general synopsis goes something like this:

Two children awake in their council flat on an unforgiving estate. With their mother asleep in bed with a stranger, they embark on a morning full of freedom. The only rules are the limits of their imagination. The stranger and the girl share an intense look. When he leaves, the boy hurtles into his mother’s bedroom. He hugs her tightly. Underneath her bed lies an abandoned syringe, empty of its deadly content. Framed by the window, the girl watches as the man walks quickly across the estate.

This short is very similar to a feature length film in style, in is fairly conventional and does not try to be experimental in any way and could easily be compared with something like Shane Meadows ‘This is England’ in style in the way it comments on social class and the representation of working class Britain. It has one many awards including the Brisbane film festival award, the Cardiff screen festival award, the Edinburgh film festival award and the D.M. Davies Bafta award, Cymru.

It was produced by fiction factory, funded by the Arts council of Wales and exhibited mainly through independent film festivals. It was also chosen by the BBC Network which specialises in showcasing new talented British filmmakers through their website, where I coincidentally found the film.

To watch the film, please click here

The film starts off relatively slowly showing a milk cart doing its rounds as well as showing establishing shots of a local council estate. These establishing are generally held for a relatively long time further enforcing the setting of the story which is crucial. Due to time constraints it is very important in this short that the audience are aware of the setting, a council estate, so the emphasis on it during the beginning is a good way of cementing it into the audiences‘ mind. It is also where we see a shot of some graffiti on a wall saying “ Charles and Diana, 29 July 1981’, a device for telling us when the story is set.

Generally the piece has very well composed shots, more care has been taken from an artistic point of view to make the piece aesthetically pleasing as it does not need to be so focused on driving the narrative. The use particular shots however are used to emphasise some of the underlying messages in the piece. For example the use of a birds eye view shot to show the boy pouring milk into the goldfish bowl emphasises the lack of parental supervision these children have from their mother as they are allowed to do what they want, their naive recklessness due to a lack of guidance can be seen at another point, when we see the door to the hamster cage is wide open. Subsequently many shots from floor level show the hamster running around the flat freely further connoting this lack of parental supervision.

The editing of the piece is fairly conventional without use of flashy editing techniques, it adheres to the rules of continuity editing occasionally harnessing temporal ellipses in order to pace up the narrative.

The use of ambient sound in the opening of the film gives more prominence to the gritty urban setting. A non-diegetic score runs throughout the piece, it is generally uplifting and happy but very relaxed and calming.

There are several recurring themes throughout the piece, one notably being the milk brought into the estate at the beginning. Milk is seen as something pure and innocent and is generally associated with children, yet in ‘Dawn’ the milk is stolen 4 times. The first time, by a postman walking past, the second by two teenagers who are caught by the milk man which causes them to drop the milk and smash the bottles. Once by a drunken man on the housing estate who drinks some then spills it all over the floor, and once by the little girl.

The train is another important recurring theme. The train line is featured 6 times in the piece, with the distinctive noise of the tracks and the trains themselves. This gives more prominence to the setting; the dirty grubby council estate. The area these children live in is portrayed as a bad place, the train line is cut to several times during the film to reinforce that they are not living in a nice or glamourous area.

In my opinion the main underlying point to this story is how these two innocent children are caught up in a bad world, a bad world that they most likely with eventually become a part of. It is a snapshot moral and social disintegration and these children are a product of the ongoing breakdown of society.

What exactly is a short film?

Short film is a very hard genre to define as it doesn’t really follow the conventions of any other genre. Short is essentially a free genre that does not have to follow any sort of genre. It is a free form of expression similar to that of absolute music, music for musics’ sake.

Because short film is in some ways an infinite genre, the genres it covers can vary. From small action shorts, to just a simple story like a break-up being told through words. Short films can vary from being a short 5 minute piece to longer 45 minute subjects. As pieces of film I find that they are less likely to follow the conventions of telling a narrative through dialogue and developed constructed characters, but instead tell stories or convey emotions or themes through their use of camera, shot, angle, composition, editing, sound and mise-en-scene.

A lot of short films have very basic story lines, things like fate, a man seeing his own death before it happens or a break up, that is shown in reverse from end to beginning. In terms of narrative they are not normally developed. The narrative is merely a spring board that the maker can use to express their creativity as short film is less to do with narrative and more to do with technique and the element of production instead.

Often a lot of experimentation in making films plays a part in shorts. Shot angles and composition are often experimented with varying results. Compositions in shot that might not work in conventional film can work in short films because short films don’t necessarily have to make any sort of sense. Unconventional editing techniques also play in a part in short film and can be the basis of making a short film. Filmmakers can often use the medium of short film as a montage to showcase new techniques of shots that have wanted to experiment with using things like traffic or pedestrians as the subject material. Soundtracks can also be seen as “unconventional”, using unsigned artists or real 20th century style music using dissonance or new edgy tunes as subject material for the film itself.

Mise-en-scene can play a tricky part in a film as it all depends on what the film is about and short film can really be about anything. It can be used in a typical construction of everyday life or to portray weird and eerie worlds. Most importantly, mise-en-scene can play roles in themes. Using mise-en-scene as symbolism in a piece is a technique often used in short film. Like a little girl as a omen, or a red balloon representing love, mise-en-scene is used in this way to show themes and subject matter in place of dialogue and narrative.

Short film is often a genre explored by unknown filmmakers and is a very good genre for indie filmmakers to explore. This has lead to a culture in short film and has led to art house style film festivals dedicated to short films and their makers which can often be used to showcase new and upcoming talent in the filmmaking industry. Short film is rapidly becoming a more explored and accepted genre due to the openness of it. Indie Filmmakers can easily make their own shorts and distribute them through online user generated content websites dedicated to indie filmmakers and short films making short film an expanding and growing genre as well as expanding the fan base and publicity around it.

The beginning

This post marks the start of my A2 Media Studies coursework. We plan to make a short film and to use this blog as a way of showing my progress throughout the project and update every aspect of the short film.

Thats all I shall reveal for now, but what I can say is . . .

. . . watch this space. ManFlick is back