Short films #4 - How has the short film market benefitted from digital technologies?

In this blog post I shall evaluate how the short film market has benefitted from digital technologies by looking at how digital technology has affected the production, marketing and consumption of short film.

First of all I will look at how digital technology has benefitted the short film market in terms of production. Due to the rise in affordability of digital film cameras, more and more people can simply pick up a camera and film some footage that can be used to easily make their own short film. In addition to this, editing software has become cheaper and therefore more widely available for use. This combination of affordable digital cameras and cheaper (and easier to use) editing software has resulted in the rise of people being able to make their own short films and post them on youtube, Vimeo, and social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter. This has obviously had a positive impact on the short film market because young film makers have been more able to produce films easily and share them instantly. 

Secondly, I will look at how digital technology has benefitted the short film market in the form of marketing. Thanks to the introduction of the world wide web and along with it, social networking, the marketing of short films is as easy as ever. For example, if a young film maker is releasing his/her first ever short film, he/she can easily set up Facebook, twitter and Instagram accounts and use these to advertise the film by posting pictures of the film being produced, short interviews with cast members and last but not least, a trailer for his/her film. Digital technology has benefitted the short film market in terms of marketing because overall, the use of social networking makes it simple and free for anyone to advertise their short films.

Thirdly and finally, I will look at how digital technology has benefitted the short film market in terms of consumption. To start off, with the introduction of free video sites such as youtube and Vimeo, millions of people can view short films on their desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones whenever they want. This is a benefit to the short film market as loads of people can see uploaded short films and there is no cost to the short film producer to upload the finished video online. Another way in which the short film market has benefitted from digital technology is that the internet is completely free to gain access to and the increase in the affordability of smartphones and tablets means that more people than ever can go online and view short films. 

Overall, the short film market has benefitted greatly from new digital technology because short films are now easier to make, more people can produce them, new short films can be advertised to the general public without any charge, and finally millions of people have access to the internet on which countless short films can be viewed.