Task 3
- 1. Task 3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- 2. The distribution of a film is the process through which a movie is made available to watch for an audience by a film distributor, there are many ways in which this may be accomplished: Theatrical release Home entertainment release Television program for broadcast syndication A distributor is an individual or organisation who will represent your film at festivals and markets around the world who will attempt to sell it to television, cinemas and other companies which show films.
- 3. As a group we chose to create our own production company, Chilling Productions, as even though I personally did multiple research into other thriller film production companies we thought it best to be imaginative and go with our own production. If we were to choose a production company which showed thriller films all round the world with an impressive listing of films I would have chosen Twentieth Century Fox, due to its quantity and diversity of thriller films, e.g. Sci-fi thriller Independence day and Star wars, Horror thriller Predator and Alien, Action thriller Die hard and Speed. As an advantage to us Twentieth Century Fox is lacking in the physiological thriller department and we believe that they would be interested in producing our film as it would expand their diversity of thrillers even larger. Paramount consist of more lower budget films, such as Paranormal Activity, in comparison to Twentieth Century Fox but this could also work as an advantage for our small film as their could be a place for its first low budget movie with Twentieth Century Fox. Twentieth Century Fox is an American organisation, but it is also one of the largest movie producers over the world which does not limit its films or success rates to American films only.
- 4. We do believe that the largest percentage of viewers are going to result in being from the UK but this is not necessarily a bad thing, by aiming to go with an American situated production company doors would be opened to an American audience idealistically. Fox Searchlight Pictures is a production which releases independent films under the banner of Twentieth Century Fox, such films include Bill Cosby: Himself, Reuben and Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from mars. So even if the competition of films in the same league of Twentieth Century Fox is too high then there is a branch down to Fox Searchlight Pictures where the competition would be too high, relating back to the appeal the UK audience only Fox Searchlight Pictures specializes in independent and British films, which would be the category which our film would fall under and would definatly open up them previously mentioned doors to a wider audience not only in the UK.
- 5. There are many promotion strategies which can be approached, one idea would be that an introduction exhibition could be held about our films information as a smaller feature to a large exhibition which revolves mainly on the movie genre of thrillers such as the events, Read the book and See the movie, London Film Museum, National Media Museum and the Arivaca Independent Filmmakers Exhibition. All of these promotion opportunities would also result in our film being advertised the the most appropriate target audience possible which would be a cleaver strategy towards its advertisement in the press from particular events. There are other opportunities available to advertise and launch the movie, including choosing to market and exhibit whilst another thriller with similarities to ours are showing at cinemas, this would offer tons of chances as research shows they are showing all the time at well known locations and local locations. Another unnoticeable marketing strategy is going with a production company which is well known for its distribution of good quality and highly rated thriller films. There are also simple but fool proof ideas which include producing posters for advertisement but to print them smaller (11x17) where shops would post them rather than being too ambitious and printing too large which most shops wont post.
- 6. Self-distribution is where either yourself or a producer decide to distribute the film yourself or yourselves. The advantages of doing this would be that you would receive full control and rights over your film giving you the control to where the film can be shown and advertised. Also you would gain more profit as it wouldn’t be shared with a distributor. As well as advantages their are also disadvantages towards self-distribution and these include time loss and this would take a lot of your work and personal time which costs money, another is that their may be a limit to buyers as professional distributors work in a relationship with other buyers and opportunities may not be available if you are self-distributing. You must also be educated on how the operation of self-distributing works, worst case scenario is that you sign the rights of your film away due to lack of experience in this field. There is also the option of online distributors which is companies who claim to make profits from the distributions of films via the internet, the same concept and required advertising works the same to traditional distribution though.