3 DISTRIBUTION

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

As I have made a film opening, I would use a distribution company to distribute my film. An independent distributor such as Verve because it is a smaller distributor that mainly uses small independent films which is what our group is making. Distribution is the process of getting the film into the hands of the theatre chains, broadcasters, video stores and video on demand (VoD) operators. The companies that do this are called distributors. In general a producer uses a sales agent to license a film to distributors outside the producer’s own country.

When I read about Distributers on the FDA, I learned that Distribution is highly competitive business of launching films in the market place.

I signed up for the Business of film course on the future lean website, this would be helpful because it would tell me what the distributors do throughout the whole film process. 
Along with this I went to an A level study talk at the BFI. Throughout the day there were different speakers that gave the audience a view of what their jobs were really like, each guest had a Q&A. By gathering all this information up I learned that distributors deal with studios and production companies. They may compete for the rights to release a film, for cinema or television. The distribution deals cover the rights to a film for a set period of time, these include the release plan, media promotion, and what changes are allowable. They must create a new film release plan for each project that will show the unique selling points and get the widest possible audience for that film. They also provide studios or producers with reports covering marketing plans, forecasts and revenue breakdowns.

I researched distribution on the FDA website as well as the FutureLearn course titles The Business of Film and at an A level study day at the BFI delivered by Rob Miller. I also looked at case studies. Overall distributors are creating plans for film release to ensure they reach big audiences and make a profit. Sell and publise films to the media, marketing partners and cinemas for the public. And deal with filmmakers and producers, sales agents, publicists and advertising agencies.

  In this video, Stuart Williams says that 'word of mouth' technique is one of the most important roles of advertising a film, because audiences decide to see a film dependent on what other people say about it. This could be friends and family or general reviews.
Distributors raise awareness by making a website for every film they are part of and even making them viral. Along with this, social media is now the main way of advertising, this means that each movie will have an Instagram page, Twitter account etc. Social media also has a word of mouth effect on a film because if someone says a film isn't that good and put it out on there account because are going to read that and then decide not to see it either.

From my research into the Hollywood 6 and other big studios, I learned that bug budget films have a wide range of distribution strategies at their disposal. I had already noticed from my own interest in film how distributors drew my attention to films such as Deadpool, as I had seen billboards and a trailer. Deadpool advertised by creating viral videos that were funny about the main character in the movie, this then attracted people to see the film. Another way is by advertising on the side of buses and in bus shelters, and if it is a very high budget film they might use the Super Bowl commercial. However low budget films, like mine, can struggle to find any distributor at all. I did a case study on the distribution of Tortoise in Love, having discovered that the BFI's P&A fund stepped in to help them distribute their film.


Gareth Lowrie from NBC Universal explained to us at the BFI study day how he worked on the marketing for Jurassic World. He explained how at Waterloo Station they set up a dinosaur cage, this interesting people what the cage was. The next day they had made it look like the dinosaurs had escaped as they had made life like art pieces, they had members of staff dressed like zookeepers and advertisement for the film on the screen around the station. They also allowed people to take photos with the dinosaurs and had a hashtag to spread it around the world on social media. This made the film attractive as they had to think of something unique because the movie is a franchise and had to tell viewers it was going to be different from the other films. This was successful as it was one of the highest top 10 grossing films in 2015.