The Audience Interview: What have we learnt?

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 expected them to say it was only 10 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.
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. Sadly though, getting our film into the cinemas isn't realistic. However, we can have a public screening in school, the second most popular option. Effectively, we could have our own mini-film-festival, showing our film amongst those of other students.

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 length films.

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 finale, what did they think of our idea? Luckily, all of them 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.
Our audience won't have vary many expectations either. The reason for this is they have no experience with short films. This means we are more free to do what we want, in terms of mise-en-scene, camera angles, editing style and sound.
-BW