Short Films audience research

In order to understand more about the audiences short films attract, I conducted some research using an online survey. This was easy to send to others and meant that I could get some insight into whether people of my age group (15-18) like to watch short films.

This is a link to my survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/9ZPQPYT


These are the responses I received:

I was pleased to see that the majority had watched a short film before, but wasn't surprised that some people had never seen one before.

Most people watch short films 'rarely'. This therefore shows that most people won't go out of their way to watch them, and implies that advertising is poor, they aren't easily accessible or people don't know where to find them.

Most people look to watch short films, as this platform is incredibly popular among young people. Some use vimeo, and one person said they use Facebook in the 'other' category.

I hoped that this question would give me some answers as to what people like about short films.

In summary, the respondents enjoyed complex, unusual storylines/themes that you can't typically find in feature films. One response said 'it's a glimpse into someone's life no matter the context', which I thought was a really interesting view about short films. It is a glimpse into a storyline that the viewer is thrown into, and its context doesn't matter, it's left for the viewer to interpret.

This shows that short films aren't easily available for some people. They aren't mainstream, and they aren't aimed at a mainstream audience, but if people want to find them they may not know where to look.

 

For most of the respondents, if short films were easier to access it would encourage more people to watch them. This could be from better advertising, and knowing where one could access them. If short films were screened alongside feature films, like Pixar, it would mean that they reach more people.
However, as the penultimate response said, 'I don't think that the short film medium lends itself to more blockbuster approaches... bigger isn't always better'. It is a niche medium with a much smaller audience than short films, and that is its intention. The media and the film industry doesn't push it forward because, in the grand scheme of things, not everyone likes short films.
One could argue, however, that people don't watch them because they have little exposure to them, and they are only screened at film festival events. Therefore we need to either advertise them better so people know how to access them, or screen them at more mainstream events, or push them more during mainstream awards seasons.
But, is bigger always better? Making anything more mainstream can start to destroy the medium. It should be that if you make things more readily available, it is positive because you reach more people. But it could change the purpose of making short films, which is to create an innovative story which generates little profit, so filmmakers may start wanting to make them in order to generate revenue. This could make them much less genuine for audiences.