2. FESTIVAL
● Short films usually work with small budget, so therefore the
promotional materials and techniques are rely on the producers. For
example, having a large marketing campaign like a feature film and a
we'll establishing distribution company cannot be achieved or afforded.
● Instead, short films use festivals as a self promotion platform. Doing
this will raise awareness of the produces, creators and directors and
attract mainstream film companies who are interested in investing
talent and see successful potential.
● By joining a film festival, is that filmmakers can increase their chance of
receiving film awards which nevertheless, creates attention for their
film and adds to their portfolio.
● Some examples of film festivals are:
- Dawson city international short film festival
- Vancouver short film festival
- American film institute festivals (AFI festival)
3. SOCIAL MEDIA
● In the 21st century, social media has become a huge game changing. Billions of people use social
media on the daily as it's a free platform that allows people to share their personal information,
images, videos, links and more. As social media is huge now-a-days, this gives short films the
advantage to use it's different platforms to promote and market it's film for free.
● Short films aim to achieve a viral marketing campaign by using social media platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and youtube. Their main purpose of viral marketing is to
encourage their target audience to share their posts in order to reach a wider range or audience.
The social media platforms Instagram and twitter specicially focus on the use of hashtags ‘#’ in
order to view posts that are related to the same topic, whilst facebook is known for the ‘share’
button.
● Using social media to promote and market your film doesn't only encourage, engage and target
audiences but as well as promote the film producers work, and attract successful film producers
who are willing to search for talent for upcoming filmmakers.
4. STREAMING ONLINE
● Online streaming platforms such as ‘Youtube’ , ‘Vimeo’ , and ‘DailyMotion’ allow anyone
to publically share and post videos. Filmmakers tend to use these platforms to promote
their product as they are easy to access for their target audience and very popular.
● Some short films are then able to embed their video onto their website, where audiences
are able to view it on the short films website - something I will be doing for my film.
● Another website that has been introduced is ‘www.shortfilmoftheweek.com.’ - this is an
example of a specialist website where filmmakers are able to submit their short film
every week where anyone can access it. This helps raise awareness and target people that
would be most interested in short films.
5. SUCCESSFUL SHORT FILM EXAMPLE
● The short film ‘BAGMAN’ follows the Sci-Fi genre and
successfully utilised the following methods in order to
promote their short film.
● The short film has submitted their product to film festivals.
● They used social media as much as possible to promote their
film. They used Facebook mostly to promote their behind the
scene. Posting and sharing posts like this will attract most of
the target audience and will engage many audiences with their
passionate work.
● For their streaming online platform they used ‘Vimeo’ and
they shared it on shortfilmoftheweek.com
● From following these components, the success has resulted
Josh and Jonathan Baker to be given the opportunity to direct a
funded, full length feature based film on their original short
film. The film was called “kin” and was presented this year.
