It also helps to gauge the audience you're going to present to...so you can make a more carefully targeted piece. It may seem like anathema to art, but art without an audience is a bit sad...and the filmgoing audience is a relatively well informed audience for this art form. When we did our first 48 hour, we completely misread the audience (only 2 people on our team of 10ish had ever been to the 48 before...I wasn't one of them) The second year, we missed the deadline, but got much better audience reaction.
If there are other events with alot of the same audience, go see short films with them to see what they respond to in a short film. It'll inform your choices to help you make films better fit to your audience.
