Who Is The Audience for Short Films?

The target audience of short films is a rather small audience, made up of two main groups of people, those who work in the short film industry, and those who want to work in the short film industry. Obviously, when trying to get into an industry, it helps to be familiar with its conventions. So an aspiring film maker may spend a lot of time watching a wide variety of short films in order to pick up some creative techniques and ideas, and essentially learn what makes a good short film. 

Often, the target audience of a short film will vary depending on the content of the film itself, much like in the feature film industry. For example, a film about a victim of bullying in school is likely to be watched my children/young adults around the age of those in the film, often because they are able to relate to the story through their own personal experiences, and turn to these films in order to make themselves feel less alone and alienated.

I think that the reason that short films have such a small audience is mainly due to the fact that people just don't realise they're there. Recently, this has started to change. With the ever growing popularity of YouTube, and its ability to be a quick and easy way to share videos virally, more and more people are taking to making short films and posting them online. This new availability means that people are going to be able to discover short films more easily, and the target audience will expand, and will no longer be limited to those in the film industry.

Recently, Dreamworks have placed their foot in the door of the short film industry, creating a series of animated shorts that are shown in cinemas before the start of the feature film. This will hopefully create a massive boost to the short film genre, as it reaches out to a huge number of people, who clearly already enjoy some forms of media, and introduces them to this new creative aspect of films.