From the data which we've compiled, we have an idea of what our audience expects from any short film. We also know what they want from our short film and what they don't want.
So, what do they think short film is? The majority rightly know that a short film has a duration that is up to 40 minutes in length. I'm going to be honest, I didn't expect them to know that.I expected them to say that a short film would be up to ten minutes. Meaning they have more knowledge on the subject than previously thought.
Others in the audience only describe short film as having a duration of around 15 minutes, while not wrong, it shows that some people don't have as much knowledge on the subject as others within our audience.
One person also described short film as being "artsy" and "experimental". I like this because it shows that some, while a small percentage, of the audience expect what we are aiming for. They're also thinking outside the box.
A lot of the audience have seen short films before. However, the films they have seen are mainly those from Disney Pixar. This is nothing like our film at all, which could be an issue. Because the audience have seen nothing like it, they could be deterred from enjoying it because it's unfamiliar. Alternatively, they could enjoy the change.
The way the audience consume short film is generally through 3 methods. The first and most common is through cinema. They don't go to the cinema specifically for the short film though, it was just screened before a feature film screening.
The second most common is, surprisingly, at a different public screening. But it was a student film shown at this school, so perhaps this is an anomaly. It doesn't seem that the members of the audience openly seek out short films, sadly.
The third way is through television. They said that they simply sat and watched it. Not particularly interesting, but it's third most common way of short film consumption according to our survey.
This all means that the best way to get our film seen is apparently to get it shown at cinemas before feature length screenings or at public screenings. Clearly this is not realistic so instead we could organise another public showing in the school; we could habe a 'minni' film festival with the others groups film too as this would give us some feeback too.
What do the audience expect from short films? They expect the plot to be simple. I assume this is because it's harder to develop an elaborate plot in a shorter time frame. But if there was an elaborate plot in a short space of time, then it may be hard to follow.
In terms of characters, they all expected less characterisation, again this is probably because the short time frame isn't god for the development of lots of characters.
Some people expect short film to be more experimental, artsy and hence more original than feature lengtfilms.
The actors that are generally expected by are audience are unknown actors. The audience don't expect to see bigger faces in short film. They think it's more likely to be actors who want to get there face out there in attempts to get famous.
And the all important question: what did they think of our idea? Luckily, they all told us that they liked the idea and the concept. Hopefully this wasn't just them being nice to us.
They all said that they thought the film would be good, so long as it isn't too complicated. And what have we learnt from that? We need to make the plot interesting, yet not too hard to follow, as this would seem to make the audience lose interest.
-BW (edited by RM)
All that ben has covered has been very relevant to all that we found out. Another thing I personally learnt was that our audience would have few expectations of short films as they have little experince of them. This would mean that we can be quite free in terms of mise, camera angles and editing because we wont be disrupting thier pre conceived ideas. Also noone is going to mind that our film has unknown actors in it as that is what the expect from a short film anyway.
-RM
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