Purpose of a short film

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. Its is defined as an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits. The main purposes of the productions of these short films are mainly due to 4 factors which are:

- To promote the director - This almost is a technique for directors to showcase their skills/talents to the mainstream corporations in order to be noticed.
- To fulfil a task or subject allocated to the director - in this aspect short films would be created to fulfil an assignment or task
- An easy way for the actors themselves to promote themselves - actors are also people trying to get noticed in the mainstream world or film making
- To portray an issue of importance to the director - directors sometimes create these short films in order to highlight a key issue in society of personal experiences.

Through producing short films directors could almost sell themselves to bigger companies and corporations, through events like the London Film festival and Film competitions.
A key short film that was created in purpose of promoting the film and himself was Alive in Joburg, which was a short film directed by Neil Blomkamp. This short film is approximately 6minutes long and was filmed in johannaburg South Africa with soundtrack featuring composer sound designer Drazen Bosnjak's Harmonic Code. The film explores themes of apartheid and is noted for its visual effects as well as its documentary-style imagery. Blomkamp's 2009 feature film District 9, starring Copley, expands themes and elements from this short film.

However mainstream constitutions also adopt the idea of producing short movies in order build up on factors that were cut from the main movie. The idea for this short film

came from an idea for a scene originally considered for inclusion in The Incredibles film; it was cut from the feature and subsequently expanded into this short film. This shows that short films are also used by mainstream companies in order build up on factors that didn't make the movie.

A short film that was produced in the purpose of winning a competition is "sign language" by Oscar Sharp. This film was created in the purpose of this short film was to win a Virgin media Short film competition. This is one of the films that illustrates the past experiences of the director as it emulates his past experience of when he first came to London and worked as a sign holder.

A key film that shows great success by being released thought the Internet. It is a film that shows how viral distribution could sometimes be the best way to promote an actor or director. This video obtained over 1 million views within 4 days of its realise. its sudden increase in views lead to the director getting a call from Hollywood to produce a $30m film. This emphasises how successful a short film could be through viral distribution because there is that element of being easily accessible to the world wide audience.

Short films can be seen to differ extremely from mainstream movies mainly due to time constraints. Furthermore, short films consist of open ending, where the director ends the film without disclosing the out come of the main characters fate. Furthermore another key factor that greatly differs a short film from a movie is the funding. Mainstream movies have a budget of over a million whereas short films attain much less budgets to produce films.

There is also audience expectations that highly separates the 2 factors of mainstream movies and short films. As movies tend to try to target as much of a wide audience as possible, trying to entertain the audiences. Therefore, audiences tend to expect a high budget great quality film that captures there attention. Whereas short films have a more small based target audience which are created to show of the directors skills rather than to appeal to a wide audience. Resulting in the audiences of short films to be more attracted to witness the potential and work of the director rather than to watch the short film for their own personal enjoyment.

The Short film directors are allowed to explore a much wider range of issues addressed in society, whereas mainstream films have to abide by a guide line in order to en corporate themes that would not greatly anger or lose public interest. Issues like social realism and integrity would not be a factor of a mainstream film due to the fact that it would really draw in the world wide audience.

Lastly due to the lack in budget short films can not live up to the standards of mainstream films. Mainstream films carry the budget to produce a high quality picture and explore different smooth and professional camera angles, effects and picture. for example a film like Inception (2010) would blow a short film like double take out of the water due to the sheer fact that inception has a great quality in picture effects and illusions that attract the audience, whereas double take is a gritty film that hardly explores any camera angles and effects to capture the audiences interest.