Audience survey results from zoeellis



When looking at the results I found that our primary audience is 12-19 year old females. After that 12-19 and 30-39 year old males. This is quite a wide range so we have decided that our audience will be people who watch short films. We chose this because this group is quite small and niche and when looking at question 5 two of the top genres were thriller and crime. The people who chose these genres were a mix of ages and gender so we decided that gender and age won't effect our audience because they have something in common: they all watch short films.

Outline of a short film

Short films are usually 5-10 minuets in length with only a few characters. In terms of culture short films are very widespread. In the US short films aren't popular but in the UK there is market for them and there a film festivals about short films. Voice overs are a common feature as having a voice over can help to explain how or where the characters are. Also some short films don't have any dialogue and as the films are short and simple lengthy dialogue is not needed.

Characters

The characters are either main characters or a background character. This is because short films don't have time to fully develop a story into the history or mindset of a character and if there are too many characters they will each feel superficial and hard for the audience to relate and understand the characters.

Budget

Most short films have either a very short film or no budget at all. To keep budgets low directing and filming and writing are usually done by the same people. Actors are amateurs and there isn't a big soundtrack. Very locations are used and not much CGI if any is used.

Good example is The Black Hole which is based in one location - an office, with only one character.

Concept

Most films are about normal events or are realistic. This helps with the budgeting but it also appeals to audiences well as they can easily relate to the characters or situations. Usually short films will have a single problem that the characters will overcome.

Twist

Most short films include a 'twist'. This could be a super power, something abnormal or a plot twist. This helps to keep the film interesting as most short films have a very normal or basic setting. Unlike Feature length films short films are more likely to end in a cliffhanger or not fully explaining what happens and is left either ambiguous or up to the audience to decide what happened afterwards.

This idea of a twist can be applied to Todorov. His theory of Equilibrium follows: Equilibrium; Disequilibrium; New Equilibrium.

In short films the equilibrium the start shows everything as normal. The twist in the film or the problem encountered is the disequilibrium; and the new equilibrium is when the problem is solved or the character accepts the new equilibrium.

Examples

Sites such as shortoftheweek.com show a whole list of short films.

Short films with similar genre to ours include:

The Fly

Prosopagnosia

The offering

We created a survey and sent it out to some of our audience. Most of the respondents were people who took part in a BFI workshop that looked at short films.  Here is a link to the survey that we sent out. Below is the raw data that we have. I will post later showing the conclusions of the results.

                         

Slidehsow results from zoeellis