Research For Promotion, Distribution and Exhibition and the Role of Film Festivals-Connor Hilton

Research For Promotion, Distribution and Exhibition and the Role of Film Festivals-Connor Hilton, Sam Swinson & Jake Woolven

Promotion:

One way that we could promote our short film would be to create a website for the short film and share the website with others via social media. Having a website is better than simply uploading the short film to YouTube or Vimeo as it allows you to provide more information on the short film.  It will also make it seem more official. 

I feel that our main source of promotion will be social media and our blog. This is because we will be ale to share links on social media and our blog could be used to show the process that was gone through to make the short film which some of our audience may be interested in seeing. 

Reviews - Connor Hilton:

A review of a short film can provide useful constructive criticism, praise and most importantly, publicity. For some people reviews are their main way of deciding whether to watch a film or not, others like to see it for themselves. The majority of people will only watch something with good reviews which is why they are so important for the promotion of your film. 

If your film was to get a terrible review then it would obviously be bad in most ways. People would think your film wasn't worth watching and just not bother watching it. This is why it's important that your film gets a good review. There would be one upside to getting a bad review in that some people get enjoyment from watching bad films, so at least there's that. 

Certain news sites or magazine companies will only review a certain type of film. The film that we are making would get reviewed by a newspaper or magazine that reviews short films, for example "Little White Lies". This means that the people that read the reviews would be the specific audience of people that enjoy short films.

Some may argue that any publicity is good publicity, however, in our case I feel that this doesn't apply. I feel this way because if our short film got a bad review then people that read the review would be less likely to watch the short film, aside from the few who might enjoy watching something with bad reviews.

People who are very invested in watching short films may also share a link to a short film review if they agreed with what was being said and this would gain more publicity for the short film being reviewed.

Lastly, sometimes the site that is reviewing the short film may embed or link to the short film that they are reviewing so that the readers can watch the short film for themselves, which would give the short film even more publicity.

All in all, I feel that reviews are very important for a short films promotion. But, whether the review is good or bad it can make or break your promotional stage for your short film.

Film Festivals - Sam Swinson:

A short film festival is an event where lots of short films are enter in and they are showcases to a massive audience. The audience that go to these festivals are very specific because they will most likely be short film enthusiasts. Lots of short film makers will enter their short films into these festivals because it is an effective way of getting your work to be seen by lots of people that enjoy short films.

Most short film festivals will give out awards to the best short films at the festivals. These awards will help promote the short film because often the festival awards that a short film has won will appear on the short film poster.

There are lots of different types of people that go to short film festivals including:

• People that want to network and met new people to help their film making careers.

• People that want to learn from what others are doing by looking at some of the best work.
• People that want to get inspired by watching other peoples work.
• People that want to get a job.
• People that want to make a business partnership.

• People that want to create high quality content for their blogs.
• People that want to relay the knowledge they obtain onto their teammates.
• People that want to stay successful.

• People that want to spy on what other people are doing and collect intelligence.
• People that want to make a sale.