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.

Little White Lies Institutional Analysis

Little white Lies 70- 'The Dunkirk issue'

Product Analysis

Market Segmentation

Why does the design appeal to the chosen audience?

• A magazine for film fanatics by film fanatics- The creators of LWL care more about the content, creation and inspiration behind films than the hype and publicity behind blockbuster high-budget movies. They focus on the creators of the art rather than what will appeal to a mass market. Interviews focus around directors and DOPs as opposed to Hollywood actors, and the reviews section includes vintage classics along with independent releases fresh into box office. Essentially, it is a magazine that presents academic ideas in an artistic way. 

• It feels like quality- The quality of the paper, the matt finish and the binding of the magazine make it seem like more than a cheaply made film mag- it feels like a substantial purchase and something that you would want to keep in a collection. 

• Looks classy and slick- It's clear that there is a lot of effort that goes into creating bespoke images for each film- press photographs for each film are drawn in individualistic styles that fit to the chosen film. Even the inside covers have unique almost 'wallpaper' style graphic drawings related to the feature film. The use of unconventional typography and imagery in such a visually interesting way is what makes it appeal to an audience that like alternative culture, and are fed up with cheap commercial magazines that are based around publicity. 

Poster Analysis- Under the Skin

A2 Advanced Portfolio- OCR's Brief

A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer, together with two of the following three options:

• a website for the homepage for the film
• a film magazine front cover, featuring the film
• a poster for the film

A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three:

• a poster for the film
• a radio trailer for the film
• a film magazine review page featuring the film

Final film and prelim task

Here is the final film:

Here is the final prelim:

Evaluation Question 7

I was very fortunate that Meg and I get on really well and we both had a very similar vision for the film: the style, the tone, the look, the shots. We realised that we were going to have to thoroughly plan everything as much as we could, and our research and planning we had already done before working together, and our interest in other specific films really helped us to construct the look we wanted for the film.

The style and narrative

It was really important to both of us that we made a film that had a quite complex plot, had a social realist tone, and that it looked like a real film. We went through extensive planning, looking at specific examples from our favourite films, particularly those of the social realist and thriller genre, of location, style, plot, characters, semiotics and colour palettes that we could emulate in our own work. We looked at casting meticulously, working with our friends who we knew were reliable, could work with our schedule and could appear to be the right age (Tom older than Sonia). We cast our friend Sonia as the protagonist, and though she was different to our original character profile (as Sonia is black and we had originally planned to cast someone who was white), but we actually preferred this as we thought it would be important to portray different social groups and have an interracial relationship. Looking back through our evaluation questions, Meg and I have realised how layered the narrative really is and how detailed our purposes for each shot were. There are multiple different readings that could come from this opening (which you can read about in evaluation question 2 in greater detail), and though we know how the rest of the film would have developed through negotiated readings, it was really interesting to see through feedback from surveys and friends what they thought really happened, and what would happen next.

Shotlist

As we thought in such similar ways we were already visualising the same sort of shots we would use for the opening, and our narrative helped to shape this too: close up match-on-action shots on the phone and the knife; shot reverse shots in the coffee shop; establishing wide shot across the road at the bus stop; and low-angle shots looking up to the coffee shops sign, but at different times of day.  Developing from the preliminary task, we knew the importance of having a groundwork of shot reverse shots, using the 180 degree rule, and match on action shots, but to also build upon these basics. Unlike the prelim, we planned an extensive shot list, and Meg drew up a story board. We also, however, gave ourselves leeway to work around the locations we were working in, and leeway to experiment on location with different shots.

Location

From doing the prelim task we knew the importance of finding appropriate locations to suit the narrative and the style of the film. We were very lucky that our friend lived in an area which would work really well for our film: it could look like a rough and busy area on the main road, but the side road on which he lived would juxtapose as it is much quieter. It also worked well as he lived right next door to a coffee shop, which we had to ask the owner’s permission to film in, and fitted perfectly with the narrative. Having everything in one place also helped because we didn’t have to shoot in multiple different locations on different sides of London. We also just loved his house: it had everything we needed there, we didn’t have to bring anything else with us- it already looked like a film set! At school we also used the darkroom to film the second flashback as it would mean we got to shoot in a room with red lighting – an aspect that was very important to us since the start of the process- and we didn’t have to edit in the red in post-production.

On the day

We planned to film separate scenes on separate days, but fortunately the filming process didn’t take very long as everything was in such close proximity. We spent one evening filming all of the shots in the house, and some shots on the main road. It was a great surprise on the day as by using a specific lens on my camera, the lights in the background of each shot blurred. Using this to our full advantage, we experimented with many different shots to make the best use out of it which created a really beautiful effect, and we think added a lot to the film. The golden hour flashback was very important to film at a specific time of day, about 4 o’clock, so we had a very limited amount of time to get everything we wanted before it got dark (about 5 o’clock in winter). We were also pressed for time as the coffee shop closed at about 4:45, so we had to work very quickly. On that day we then waited for it to get dark do we could film extra shots and diegetic sound on the main road that we didn’t get on the other day of filming. We filmed the second flashback in the darkroom on a separate day.

Technical development

I have progressed a lot from when we first started the course, which I think you can clearly see when comparing the prelim to our final film. In particular I have learnt how to use sound equipment correctly, and how to edit this successfully along with a soundtrack that reflects the mood of the film. As you can see in our evaluation question 6, we learnt more about the benefits and problems with using a Conon 550D and f1.4 lens- the shots were really beautiful with a very precise point of focus, but the manual focus was very difficult to use, particularly during walking shots. I think we actually got around this very well, and managed to edit the most successful shots to create a really beautiful opening. My editing skills greatly improved, and I think that in particular through post-production our soundtrack was really strong, and our transitions between the present and the past were very clear.

Teamwork

Meg and I tried to split the responsibilities evenly with each other: Meg did most of the filming while I did all of the sound, and we played to our strengths, so as Meg is really arty she made the storyboard and complied the shotlist, while I did more work in post-production through editing, and putting the soundtrack together. We also shared the evaluation tasks. It was great to work with Meg as we had such similar views and we knew exactly what we wanted for the film, and she and I cared so much about wanting to bring all our hard work to fruition. I think the result was really successful, and it turned out even better than we wanted it to.

Evaluation Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

F.L

In this video I have summarised what we have learnt from all of the technologies from the process of constructing our opening. These include:

• Using Final Cut Pro
• Editing sound, constructing a soundtrack using stems and ensuring that it flows well throughout the opening, reflecting the tone of each scene
• Editing colour in our first flashback, making the colour palette more golden to distinguish between the present and the past.
• Using titles from dafont.com, and why we chose them
• Using a tripod, and why we used it certain scenes and not in others
• Using a Canon 550D with an F1.4 lens, the difficulties and benefits of it, and how the way our film was shot reflects other scenes from thrillers.