Northern Alliance - BFI

2. Context
2.1 The Review
The aim of this review was to describe and evaluate short film 6 in the UK, including
undertaking a detailed review of the UK Film Council‟s support for shorts over the
period 2001-2009, and to provide recommendations for future action.
The context for short filmmaking was principally evaluated through desk research. In
May and June 2009, 28 interviews were conducted with key stakeholders identified
by the UK Film Council steering group and Northern Alliance (see Appendix XIX for a
full list of interviewees). In addition, four focus groups were held. Three of these
comprised filmmakers (one in Sheffield, one in London and one at the Edinburgh
International Film Festival). The fourth brought together the UK Film Council‟s
strategic partners in delivering the NCF‟s entry-level short film scheme, Digital Shorts.
Appendix XXI contains further notes on the methodology employed.
2.2 History
The early history of cinema resides entirely in short films, and in the UK short
filmmaking has been strongly influenced by the intervention of the public sector to
complement the commercial resources available to support it (see Appendix III for a
brief history of short film). Sales both to UK and mainland European broadcasters
used to be the main source of revenue for short films, but the period immediately
before the formation of the UK Film Council saw radically decreasing support for
short films from broadcasters, both in financing and broadcasting them.
2.3 The audience for short films
The stakeholders consulted for this report clearly view film festivals in the UK and
internationally as the most important means of obtaining exposure and recognition
for short films. Although exceptions exist (see case study From short films to
DreamWorks, Appendix I), online platforms were generally viewed as poor
substitutes for festival representation and, so far, either fail to differentiate usergenerated
content from professionally made short films, or have not yet developed a
valuable audience for the latter.
Despite these frustrations, the consensus among the filmmakers interviewed was that
the general public was not the primary audience for short films in the UK. The main
6 For the purposes of this report, short film was defined as “a film to a maximum of 60 minutes
in length, fiction, animation or documentary”. See Appendix II for the definitions of key terms used in
this report.
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