Evaluation Question 3 (Blog Post)

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Film distribution is the process of making a movie available to view for an audience. A distributer is an individual, or organisation who will represent your film at at festivals and markets around the world, they will also attempt to sell it to television, airlines and other companies who show short films. There are six major distributors that are directly affiliated to the Hollywood Studios. More independent distributors tend to promote films outside of the major film studios, typically indie films. The top six distributors with the largest market share between 1995 and 2016 are Warner Bros, Walt Disney, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and Universal.

Warner Bros

Walt Disney

Sony Pictures

20th Century Fox

Paramount Pictures

Universal

A distributer simply sends your film out to the market. They decide when and where the film will be screened. Firstly they have to chose how many copies of the film to make. The film, then is previewed to prospective buyers, e.g cinema owners. The film is sent to cinemas and they can then be screened. Once the film has been viewed, the cinema sends the film back and a price is agreed with the representatives from the cinema, in smaller budget films however more steps may have to be taken.

Digitisation is the process of converting information into a digital format. Digitisation improves a distributors efficiency, quality and consistency. Along with this there is a massive deduction in costs,  film prints cost thousands of pounds each, whereas hard drives cost near to nothing, which taken with the capacity to use social media, potentially opens up distribution opportunities to indies and self-distribution.

Box office performance for Action Movies in 2015

Market share for the top 10 disributors between 1995-2016 

(I found this information on The Numbers.)

Top 10 films, performance at box office and there distributors in the UK.

How distributors market films
Distribution companies use posters, trailers, websites and social networking to market their film.

Firstly, trailers. All distribution companies will use a trailer in particular as a marketing tool. Trailers allow a foresight into the film and what it may hold, they can build suspense and desire to see the film on release date. Films made in Hollywood or a by a small budget indie company all use trailers to promote their film.

Secondly, posters. Distributors may also use posters to market the film. Posters are effective ways of spreading awareness. They are cheap to make, and can be re-created on a large scale, for example a billboard. A distributor may make more than one poster. An example of a poster advertising a film would be:

The poster has the title, a screenshot from the film itself and its release date.

Thirdly, websites. Some distributors will also create a website advertising the film. This is normally a further step from the trailer and posters and is a resource to find out further information about the film, what it may be based on, for example whether it is fact or fiction.
Example: http://pointbreakmovie.com
Not all distributors take this step as it is an added cost and less effective. Therefore you wouldn't find many small-budget indie films making a website for their film.

A screen shot I took from the website which can be found on the link above.

And finally, social media. Social media, with platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have been very effective to market a film and is a key tool used by distributors. It is inexpensive and reaches a large amount of people. Whether it is a small budget indie or a large scale HollyWood film, marketing through social media is almost a necessity.

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Our Budget

If I was to estimate what our budget would be, I would say around £650,000. The reason for this would be that our film is situated in the 'low budget indie' category and another film in this region had a budget of £695,393, Dead Mans Shoes. Along with this, if we were to carry out the whole production, we would need to invest on props, clothing, equipment, actors, promotion and possibly large scale destructive stunts, which are a common convention of other films in the action genre, this isn't essential, however would improve the overall quality of the film significantly if it worked.



Which distributor we would use and why...
Examples of the bid six distributors such as Warner Bros and Universal may not be interested in distributing our film. This is down to it being a low budget indie production. These distributors tend to market high budget HollyWood films featuring major stars, because of this it makes them a lot easier to market, as you can market the characters. As a general rule, the higher the film making budget, the more it makes at box office, so for us these distributors would be unrealistic as our budget would be estimated around £650,000. Examples include, Mad Max Fury Road had a budget of $150,000,000, and made $377,636,354 (worldwide) at the box office. A small budget film such as Submarine made $864,959 (Worldwide) at box office.

When it come for us to decide which distributor we personally we would want to go with Optimum Releasing would be a good option. This is because they are a large independent distributor for micro budget indies like our own. If they don't manage to get the film into cinemas, they will still use their Optimum Home Entertainment service for new DvD and Blu-Ray releases along with their Optimum Classic Service for DvD re releases of back catalogue films. Furthermore, it would also be very beneficial to use Alamo Draft House Cinema to distribute our film in the house. This is very rare to have a low budget indie film distributed in the US and with Alamo Draft House Cinema having 22 screens around the USA it would be rewarding and improve our performance at the box office. Four Lions is an example of a film distributed in the USA by Alamo Draft House Cinema.




Risk of not finding a distributor...
There is an obvious risk when it comes to trying to find a distributor to market our film as we are first time film makers with no experience. If our film was unable to find a distributor, we would look to do this ourselves. Here are a few examples of self distribution: Tiger Tail in Blue, The Final Member and Crazy and Thief are just a few examples of hundreds. If our self distribution fails, we will resort to uploading to Youtube and various other streaming services such as Vimeo. This is the case for many low budget indie films who can't find a distributor, for example The Silent Force (2001).