The short film is not only a visual visiting card but at its best can be a work of art in itself.Study the student work of many established film-makers, or their first cinematic efforts, and often can be discerned in embryo form, the look, technique, style and concerns that subsequently inform and define their feature films. Yet the short has a life of its own, and a shape, and an energy, and should be compared to the writings of Guy de Maupassant, or an Etude by Chopin, and not only as a postcard-trailer for a feature to come. In Britain, shorts for many years preceded the feature in commercial cinemas, until the Eady Levy was abolished and the financial benefits that had gone the way of British short-film producers or directors who had the luck to see their efforts turned into 450 prints and more to circulate with a major studio release, evaporated.