Audiences

Short films can revolve around controversial themes which may differ from standard, full length block buster movies, and therefore have a smaller target audience. An example of this is a short film directed by Colin Hutton, "Gravity". This short film is controversial as it involved the brutal death of a young, innocent child. This theme would not make a competent feature length film, as not many people would actually want to watch a film with such a sad ending.

Short films are not promoted nearly as much as feature length films are, there are no trailers, posters or television advertisements and rarely do film stars appear in them so they get a lot less public thought. This is due to the budget they have to make the film. Although a short films costs a lot less to make that a full length film for obvious reasons, the directors are usually given an allowance to cover just the funding of the film, and not marketing. Funding for short films can come from places such as the UK Film Council or the British Film Institute. The lack of knowledge from the public about short films is probably the main factor as to why their audiences are so small compared to regular length films.

However, the development of new media, eg. the internet, has definitely expanded the audiences of short films as it is now easier to access them at just a click of a button via YouTube. This is instead of  going to a film festival or paying to see/buy them. Due to the expanding audiences, the amount of short films being made each year is also growing. YouTube isn't the only website encouraging film makers to upload their short videos for audiences to see, Vimeo is another site, as well as sites like FILMSshort and the BBC Film Network are all their to enable film makers to build an online community and watch and share eachothers videos

Short films are now beginning to be shown on on TV as time fillers inbetween films and therefore picking up extra viewers. ShortsTV was the first television channel dedicated to short films. This is proves that audeinces of short films are indeed growing, as ShortsTV feel as if they have a large enough market to just show short films.

Some animation studios have started incorporating Short Films into their advertisement scheme. For example, Disney Pixar now screens a short film alongside all their feature length films. These shorts films can either be spin offs of previous feature length films, or testing out a new feature length film idea. Disney Pixar produced a series of short films advertising the new Muppets feature film. The short films were distributed on youtube and planned to go viral. Here is an example of one of Disney Pixars most well known short films