Potential Audience for a Short Film

The potential audiences of short films are different to those of mainstream films due to funding and distribution. As short films are generally non profit orientated, they will not spend too much money trying to distribute their film; therefore, it will possibly be only available on YouTube and specialist TV Channels, with the fair few going to film festivals, for example, Cannes. Short films are certainly not aired through mainstream cinemas such as,

Vue and Cineworld; unlike feature length films, for example, Pirates of the Caribbean, where they will be shown in cinemas. In addition, short films will find it quite hard to find any financial sponsors to be able to make their short film into a feature length one. Also, because most short films have very little money invested in them, they will sometimes be filmed only using a hand held camera, which can be good to add realistic features, but does create a grainy image to the audience even if not intended. Therefore, as short films are not shown in cinemas and especially not in highest quality, adults 30+ are generally unlikely to watch these films because they have a stereotype that they will only go to cinemas to watch films, and will not use computers.

After watching the film Gravity by Colin Hutton, I now believe that it was made for youths living in very urban communities, where there may be a relatively high general crime rate. The short film was meant to be shown in secondary schools from year 10 onwards to teach them a clear message on responsibility of their actions.

Double Take by Toa Stappard was made for the target audience of 14-25 year olds. This film was also created for people to take responsibility, and possibly also to make the audience aware of consequences of theft, like ‘Karma’, what goes around comes around.

The short film Kinesiology by Richard Shaw was made for the target audience of young adults, and for people who slightly doubt decisions in life. This short film can be seen as a documentary for young adults about life.

The development of new technology and websites such as YouTube, has changed the audience greatly because now short films can be easily watched, via the Internet by simply searching ‘Short Films’, it will even come up with suggestions of what genre or style of short film you would like. Before, a person may have to attend film festivals or competitions to see short films, but this development has made distribution for film makers easier and cheaper to do for a much wider audience.

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is responsible for the classification of films in the UK. Every film must have an age certificate give by this organisation,

which will obviously limit who watches the type of film. The BBFC set guidelines for film makers which they must abide by if they only want a certain age range to watch their film. There are guidelines for each classification they can give a film, for example, U and 12.

If a short film was classified either with ‘U’ or ‘PG’, the amount of suspense and tension

would be restricted to a limit. As the possible audience would be young children, they may not understand any messages portrayed. After watching some short films, I have noticed that a lot of messages wanting to be portrayed are aimed at people at school about responsibility, therefore, this is ideal to fit a ‘15’ age certificate, as they can keep to the conventions of a short film, for example, suspense and tension. However with a BBFC certified ‘12’ age rating, there still may be some restrictions against short films, for example, only mild tension is allowed with only some light violence.