Institutional Research

In this post i am going to be doing some institutional research on short films. I will be looking at how they get funding, how they get seen as well as some other points.

Production:

• Budget And Funding
• In the UK there are a few different ways short films can get funding:

1. BFI - Until recently the first place to look for funding on a national level was the Uk Film Council, but since the UKFC is now closed the BFI has taken over the majority of the responsibilities.
2. National And Regional Screen Agencies - Before the UKFC closed it had a model of 9 independent regional film bodies however there is now a new organisation called Creative England. They are composed of three regional hubs.
3. Local Councils - Local councils will often put money towards a short filmmaking initiative, especially if it deals with social exclusion or aids the local community in some way.
4. Charities - A number of charities fund short films. You usually need to have the right subject are of a film for it to get funded by a charity.
5. Production Schemes - From time to time, there are various schemes set up by broadcasters and other organisations that produce a series of shorts. For example BBC New Music Shorts.
6. Crowdfunding - These are sites where the user will put up an idea which they want to get funding from. Members will then donate to that idea if they want to see it happen

• Equipment 
• Short films are usually shot with DSLRs as opposed to high quality film cameras. This is because they will usually have very limited budgets. 
• Sound recorders are also used as they are easy to  obtain for quite a small price.
• In terms of CGI, very little will be used because it can be quite expensive and it is hard to balance it out in the budget.
• Crew
• Usually the film with have a skeleton crew of maybe a director, a gaffer/grip, a make up artist and a sound engineer. 
• Director
• Gaffer/Grip
• Make Up Artist
• Sound Engineer
• This is about how much a small short film could manage as they would only have a small budget.

Distribution:

• Marketing
• With large blockbuster films they have a huge amount of money to spend on distribution of their film as where as short films have a much smaller budget to spend on distribution.
• Due to the rise in social networks short films have an easier way to market their films to a wide audience.
• How are social networks used:
• Facebook - Film Page, Competitions, Giveaways e.t.c
• Twitter - Sponsored Tweets, Twitter feeds/pages for the film.
• Instagram - Instagram profile for the film also sponsored images/posts.
• It is important that the film producers keep these networks up to date so that they can constantly keep their potential audience engaged throughout.
• Another area which has come in to play in recent years is SEO, otherwise know as search engine optimisation or paid search. 
• Paid search is where you bid for certain keywords on a search network to become associated with your ad. 
• This is an area which larger films have more of a budget to tap into though so it is very hard for small films to do this unless they have a large budget for marketing.

• Prints
• Where do short films get shown:
• Short films will find it hard to get into big multiplexes with large audiences.
• Due to the increase in art house cinemas it allows short films to tap into an area where they find that there format/genre of film is more appreciated as a piece of art as opposed to something to make money.
• Another way which short films are distributing their films is VOD. This means instant access at any time to the film which means that there is an increased connivence for their audience.
• You can also submit your short film to film festivals as such as Sundance, if successful in your application your film will get shown in front of big conglomerate distributors. They can then provide with a big budget to distribute your film or even make your short film in to a full length media text, this for example is how the film Whiplash came about. Although the full length version only had a budget of around 3.3 million dollars it grossed around 33 million dollars.

Exhibition:

• How Do You See A Short Film:
• Theatrical - Normally in a cinema, this is when the film is screened to the public.
• Non-Theatrical - Usually it is when a film is screened to a membership group or other organisation. No admission charge will be used in this case.
• In recent times film days have started to pop-up where you can pay a fixed fee and go and watch short films for a day whilst enjoying snacks and a drink. This has brought in a newer audience into the film industry who are more interested in this kind of experience.
• Some Short films/low budget films will chose to go straight to DVD. Though this may seem like a cheap and easy way to go about it DVD's are are growing out of date due to the proliferation in the ways in which you can view films digitally over the internet.
• There are now a lot more ways in which you can view films without having to even go out of the house let alone get off of your sofa.

Target Audience:

• The short film industry has it's own target audience, being somewhat a genre of its own. 
• Although a lot of people may come across short films every now and again there is a nice audience of mostly film makers and fans of independent films who follow the industry. 
• With these points in mind short films do not cover a wide majority so the target audience is already reduced to those stereotyped as 'artsy' who enjoy the small films.

Questionaire Creation

In this post i am going to be looking at why we chose our questions to ask the public.

Question 1: How Old Are You?

For this question we wanted to get an idea of our target audience for the film. This could help us to best identify ways to market the film as the younger generation are more likely to be susceptible to marketing via social networks.

Question 2: What Is Your Ethnicity?

This was question was to again establish our target audience. Some ethnicities will have slightly varied followings for different genres of films.

Question 3: What Is Your Gender?

This is again to get an idea of our target audience. Generally speaking different genders have different  genres of film which they watch.

Question 4: Do You Watch Short Films?

This was to gain an idea of whether our audience had ever seen short films before.

Question 5: How Do You Watch Films?

This gives us an idea of the best way to distribute our film. Whether it would work better in a cinema or whether it would work better in the VOD portion of the market.

Question 6: How Long Do You Think A Short Film Is?

This can help us in the production portion of our film. If the film is too long our audience might not watch it to the end where as if it is to short the audience could be unsatisfied.

Question 7: How Do You Hear About Short Films?

This was to establish where and how would be the best place to market our films.

Question 8: Do You Think Short Films Should Be Shown In The Cinema?

This question was designed to create an opinion for us to look at. It also shows whether audiences think there is an issue with the cinema industry of today.

Question 9: How Often Do You Visit The Cinema?

This can show if the cinema industry is declining and if this is the case it would suggest to us that it would not be good to distribute our film to cinemas.

Question 10: What Is Your Preferred Genre?

This helps us when creating/coming up with ideas for our film. We can tailor make our story for what the audience want to see most in the film. Whether it be a thriller or a comedy.

Blog Update

Treatment For Our Short Film

A schoolgirl aged 16 is having a relationship with a married, middle-aged man. On one specific day she leaves school to see him parked around the corner. She gets into the car and they head over to his house. His wife is not home so they have a glass of wine and then head to the sauna. While in the sauna she tells him she is pregnant. He says he just has to go and get a towel in an awkward manner. He leaves the sauna to turn up the temperature. She looked at the temperature gauge on the side of the sauna and realised it was well over what it should be. She began to panic. Whilst the girl was in the sauna the man was preparing the body bag for the girl. In the sauna she has fainted due to the high temperature. An hour later her motionless dead body lies in the sauna. The man returns to the sauna and turns down the heat. He then goes inside and picks up her body and puts it into the bag and leaves it on the floor in the sauna.


The wife returns after a long day in the office. She is greeted by her husband who is seemingly more affectionate with her than in the morning. He pours them both a glass of wine. She refuses hers, She tells him she is pregnant. His reaction is of pure joy. She then says that he needs to stop that affair with that schoolgirl. He is dumbfounded. He agrees to stop it and says that it never meant anything. She suggests that they both go into the sauna. He says it is not a good idea.

Narrative Application Examples

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorovs Theory is as follows:

1. A point of stable equilibrium, where everything is satisfied, calm and normal.
2. This stability is disrupted by some kind of force, which creates a state of disequilibrium.
3. Recognition that there has been a disruption.
4. It is only possible to re-create equilibrium though an action directed against the disruption.
5. Restoration of an equilibrium, usually better than the original equilibrium.

Black Hole - A sleep-derived office worker accidentally discovers a black hole - and then greed gets the better of him.

Stage 1: The man is working in the office, he looks very tired as well as bored. This the equilibrium.

Stage 2: The disruption of the equilibrium is when the printer stops working, the office worker appears to be frustrated by this. He then kicks the printer and it prints out a black circle on a sheet of paper.

Stage 3: The man realises that this black circle he has accidentally printed has some sort of magical power after putting his coffee cup into it. He then decides to test it out a couple of times by grabbing a snack from the vending machine. This is when they recognise that a disruption has taken place.

Stage 4: The man then lets himself into the safe room using the black hole. He then goes top the safe and sticks the black hole on to the door. The man then reaches inside and starts pulling out the money stored there. There comes a point when he can't steal anymore so he climbs inside the safe to grab as much as he can.

Stage 5: The man becomes stuck in the safe because the paper falls off the door. In this case greed got the better of him. This shows how there is the ending of the current equilibrium and the beginning of a new equilibrium.

Roland Barthes

Barthes Theory Is As Follows:

1. Plot Or Theme is established.
2. Followed by the development of the problem, an enigma, an increase in tension.
3. Resolution of the plot.

Stage 1: The film starts with a short of a girl and a boy outside of a party talking, this establishes that the film will be focused on them they seem affectionate towards each other.

Stage 2: As the narration begins the boys voice sounds sad, this leaves the audience wandering why this might be. This creates and enigma for the audience. As the narration carries on it begins to build tension.

Stage 3: As the short film draws to a climax we learn that the boy is talking about a previous lover of his and how he misses her. This is where we find our resolution.

Vladimir Propp

Propps Theory Is As Follows:

• There Are Seven Character Types In A Story:
• The Villain - Struggles against the hero.
• The Donor - Prepares the hero gives the hero some magical object.
• The Helper - Helps the hero on their quest.
• The Princess And Her Father - Gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative.
• The Dispatcher - Character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
• The Hero - Reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
• False Hero - Takes credit for the hero's actions or tries to marry the princess
• Due to nature of short films and also the small amount of characters included in these films it is hard to find a character for each of the ones suggested above however i have applied as many as i can.

The Hero - This is the older man featured in the short film, he is trying to get into heaven but there appears to be some mix-up.

The Villain - This is the organisation who grant/deny people access to heaven, the people who the man is fighting to get up there.

The Dispatcher - This is man who is originally working at the counter when they first get into the building, although he works for the organisation, he is portrayed as being quite nice and helpful.

The Helper - This is the mans wife, she provides support to the man throughout his ordeal.

The False Hero - Vlad The Impaler, he takes credit for the man who had lead a reasonably good life without doing anything wrong.

Preliminary Audience Questionnaire

Here is a print screen of our audience questionnaire.

Short Film Title Ideas