Reviews are a great way of gaining extra publicity for short films. Good ones from trusted sources will attract online audiences to watch certain films. These reviews can also be placed on posters and other pieces of advertising to assure spectators that they aren't wasting their time watching the film, as they often contain 4 or 5 stars to demonstrate quality.
Reviews can be an essential way to gain the trust of audiences, who probably won't have heard of the cast and crew involved in the production. Key short film review sites include:
ukfilmreview.co.uk
theindependentcritic.com
Little White Lies
The format of short film reviews is often something like this:
We asked James and Niamh to give us feedback, here are their thoughts:
Do you understand the relationship between each character from watching the opening shots of the film?
James: "Hello Darling" made it very clear what the relationship was between the daughter and father. You can tell that the daughter was more relaxed as she was with her family, however it clearly showed that the young man was her boyfriend through his handshake with the father.
Niamh: I can tell it was the mum and dad inviting in their daughter and her partner. I can tell this thorugh their excited facial expressions and body language which expressed that it was the daughters parents.
How effective do you think this scene is in portraying John as a character with immense stress and addictions?
James: The shot in the water really expressed his distressed as it was very disstorted. Where the tablets were hidden makes it appear that he knows what he is doing and has been hiding this addiction for a long time.
Niamh: It was effective as it engages you to understand his situation that he is in and why he is doing it. The close-up of him taking the pills emphasises his stress and addiction, generating a sympathetic response.
Does this ending build suspense effectively and leave audiences on a successful cliffhanger?
James: Yes, I feel as though this cliffhanger is very intense. I love cliffhangers as it makes you want to watch more.
Niamh: It captivates you and want to see what happens, it is almost frustrating as you want answers.
Film festivals are a great way to really get your film out there. For example: every January, all film lovers’ eyes focus on the screens at
Sundance film festival to see the best in independent and documentary films. Also
unknown filmmakers hope that the festival becomes a launching pad for
their career.
Four Reasons to Attend Film Festivals
1) Do a deal
The primary reason for submitting your film to a film festival is to
have it screened in front of acquisition executives who will ‘discover’
your film and make you an offer on the spot. If you are attending one of
the smaller festivals, it is unlikely that this will happen. Film
buyers travel through the major and mini-major festivals and would only
consider a side trip to your screening at a smaller festival if you
carefully planned the publicity surrounding your screening. They might
reasonably ask why you had not been accepted into a larger, more
convenient festival. 2) Win awards If you read bios of filmmakers, you will often see the phrase ‘an
award-winning filmmaker’, but the names of the awards are never
mentioned. That is because there are only three awards worth naming on a
CV. The obvious one would be an Oscar, followed by Cannes and then Berlin film festival. Many festivals offer awards to any filmmaker attending their festival as a means of attracting entries. 3) Sit on a panel / do Q&As At film festivals you can also sit on a panel. This will help your public speaking skills,
but you can then claim that you were directly involved with the
festival. Alternatively, agree to a post-screening Q&A. Audiences
are always keen to 'meet' the filmmakers and a personal appearance will
help sell tickets. 4) Getting reviewed Film journalists really do not enjoy film festivals. Suppose your
first film festival is a small regional film festival. The local weekly newspaper will have a film journalist
who creates the weekly centre spread on films from the press kits
supplied by the major distributors. But with the film festival
approaching, they will have to watch all the films entered into the
festival and write reviews. As a producer or director, you want a good review, and
hope and pray that the pictures you sent to the festival with your press
kit are attractive enough to get printed in the newspaper. All of these aspects of film festivals are all incredibly important ways in promoting your films. It is really a way of building an audience and to gain the experience of coming into contact with a range of different filmmakers too. Cannes film festival awards that filmmakers can get 1- Award for best director 2- Award for best screenplay 3-Jury prize 4-Award for best actress 5-Awards for best actor 6-Artist technician 7-Special distinction 8-Palme d'or 9- Uncertain regard 10-Cinefondation 11-Camera d'or
There are many awards that can be won by filmmakers and this creates a great opportunity to get further into the film industry.
There are various ways to promote short films however, these methods are different to ones used to promote feature length films as short films tend to have less publicity and lower budget than the feature length films. When marketing a short film, those responsible for promoting their short film will have to sell it in creative ways and it is not as straightforward as marketing a feature length film. The three methods for promoting and marketing a short film are: posters, reviews and film festivals.
Posters Posters are used in both short and feature length films to promote the film and foreshadow the narrative as it may interest the audience the film is targeting. All posters are built of certain elements no matter what it is promoting. All posters will have a title; the title will be bolder and stand out the most. Many film posters will have reviews which are represented through short quotes and star ratings which label the source. Film posters will advertise the awards they have one or have been nominated for.
There are differences in the poster of a short film to a post of a feature length film. Short posters won't have certifcation as they don't have to ussually go through censorship unlike feature length films. Short film posters tend to avoid large actor names and don't have reviews sourced from mainstream media.
Film posters will have billing blocks although the content of them varies from poster to poster. The billing block (also known as a credit block) is an important aspect to consider when designing a movie poster. Usually found at the bottom of the movie poster, this is the section that provides credits for the most important members of the cast and crew, as well as logos.
The layout of film posters is always carefully considered. The layout is used to hint, or foreshadow the narrative. The posters will be designed to attract to a target audience therefore colour schemes and considering what fonts you use is important to the design of a poster. It's also suppose to look professional most times so not having a organised colour scheme and using fonts such as comic sans is not advised when making a poster for a short film. The poster will have to be relevant to your film therefore it will need to have some sort of link to the narrative of your film; this can reveal as little or as much as you want but it's important the poster doesn't reveal to much and spoil the story for the audience.
This was our final day of filming, shooting the indoor scenes with all the characters together. The sound,light and camera operator discussed the best lighting for this scenes. we filmed on a bright day where the sun was shining through so decided that the extra lighting was not needed.
For the shot of the brothers running down the stairs, we needed to use extra lighting because it was starting to get dark and dim outside. as we were portraying a morning scenes we needed the house to be as bright as possible.
During all of our filming days we looked around for any more health and safety risk that we didn't notice before, as we were using a lived in house we had to check for things on the floor, wires,shoes etc anything that could cause a health risk to the crew or our cast. in the shot shown above our characters were being filmed running down stairs which could cause serious or minor injury if one of our characters fell down the stairs. to overcome any dangers we discussed with each of the cast members and warned them not to run down the stairs fast or to touch other cast members that were going down at the same time as this could lead to a falling. we also checked the stairs and around the bottom of the stairs for anything that may trip our cast up and cause danger.
for the scenes shot in the woods there are clearly going to be many risk that could harm our cast if we didn't assess them properly. for example when the brothers were riding there bikes through the woods we noticed that there we tree roots in the middle of the course they were going to change, so we looked around for another pathway similar that wouldn't cause any obvious harm to our cast. riding a bike is a health and safety risk of its own, if the cast were to ride to fast or swerve it could cause an incident so we discussed with our cast members and warned them not to ride to fast or competitively as this could cause an accident.
Cooking the Pasta and Garlic bread for our cast to eat in the dinner scene.
Cast and crew discussing the best camera angle and position for this shot and the lighting needed
On our second day of filming we took a few shots of our main character John which could potentially be used for our poster. This was taken at beachy head which was the most significant location to our story due to the meanings and messages it holds from past history of the location.
This is the first shot of the scene in the woods, for this shot as a group we discussed which position the camera would be to show the setting and characters as best we can. as we shot in a wood we had to make from and move things out of the way so the camera operator could get the best angle and stability whilst filming.
Second shot of the scene, as a group we discussed where the characters would be and what angle we would be filming from and where the camera operator needed to stand to get this accurate.
Getting into the best positon for the shot, the camera operator needed to be at a lower level to shoot the bike wheels.
