DISTRIBUTION

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

An independent distributor would distribute my film, our group has chosen 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 making sure the film is in the hands of the theatre chains, broadcasters, video stores and video on demand operators. The companies that do this are called the distributors. A producer gets a sales agent to license a film to distributors outside the producers own country. Distributors acquire films via deals with studios, and production companies. Any distributor may compete for the rights to release a film, whether for cinema,satellite/terrestrial television and DVD. Distribution deals cover the overall rights to a film for a set period of time, this usually includes the release plan, media promotion and what edits and changes are allowed. Distributors must create an entirely new film release plan for each project to identify the unique selling points and attract the widest audience for the film. They also oversee the marketing plans, expenditure evaluations, 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.
After watching this video many time, Stuart Williams who is a deputy managing and marketing director, discusses the unique ways a film can become well known. He mentions that the 'word of mouth' technique is the strongest because people trust what other people say. We will listen to a film critic and decide whether or not we will go see a film if they say its good or bad. We will also listen to friends and family and decide to see a film dependent on what they say about it. Another way is by social media, people will set up websites and pages on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc on a a movie and the more followers or likes it gets the more its spreads around the world and the more people see it.

From my research into the Hollywood Big 6 and other big studios, I learned that big budget films have a wide range of distribution strategies at their disposal. I had already noticed from my own interest in film how distribution strategies at their disposal, such as London has Fallen , as I had seen billboards and a trailer. Then I did a case study on the distribution of Jurassic Park. 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 , have 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 is was. The next day they had made it look like the dinosaurs had escaped as they had made life like art pieces, the 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.

PLANNING: INTERVIEWING OUR CHARACTERS

I read this article by Charlie Sierra, where he refers to award winning Pen Densham, he mentions about how to get to know our characters. We are going to do character interviews so we get to know the background story of our characters and our film. He writes about how we should think of it like a questionnaire which the characters need to fill out. For our film we are going to interview the girl character from the Dad, so we can see the turn of events that happen.

My Character Interview

One of the main characters is a teenage girl, so for this we decided to use a What's App message interview between her and the characters Dad. Here he shows anger about asking where she is and is worried. She replies saying where she is and that she is just trying to have fun. This then turns badly 

as she then realises she is in danger. Here are the screen shots from our interview

RESEARCH- BIFA

I have been following the nominations at the  BIFA this week, especially since I have been introduced to the film American Honey since seeing the trailer at the BFI on a study day given by Rob Miller on An Introduction to the film industry in November 2016.

https://www.bifa.film/awards/film/american-honey

I am interested in American Honey because of some similarities of this film and the film we are making ourselves. At 2.7 million pounds budget it was not expensive to make, it featured almost unknowns except Shia LaBeouf. It is promoted as defining our generation according to the website. 

I first saw this film at the BFI. I learnt that American Honey counted as a British film as it had a British director, Andrea Arnold. and cast and the key organisations involved. It is an example of a BFI funding model. The director also made the film Fishtank which was funded at a cost of 1.3 million pounds in 2009, (compare this to Star Wars, which was 230 million pounds). American Honey's key themes involve young people and their lifestyle, and how they live in the moment in a carefree way, which are themes and issues rarely shown in mainstream cinema. In addition there were no expensive sets as it was shot in location, as the same for our films. Part of the social realism was created by its camera work: the film was hand held, exploring the urban youth, which gives the cinema verite. 

There are similarities between the film I will be making and American Honey, because ours will be low budget, with unknowns and taken on locations.

PLANNING: THE TOP LINE AND BIG QUESTION

Frank Ash is a creative consultant who has taught story telling and creativity techniques to teams across the BBC and beyond. In this presentation he said to develop and strengthen the story of a film you need to think about the audiences and what do they want from the story they tell. To tell the audiences what the story is all about, he gave advice saying can you tell you story in one sentence? The second most important is telling the audience 'what is going to happen?'

I have recently watched the film 'Catch me if you can'. If I was to describe this movie in a sentence it would be 'a funny, inspiring and suspense cat and mouse chase between two very much alike characters'.

The big story question in the movie 'catch me if you can' was 'is he ever going to get caught?'. Although they hint in the very first scene what happens in the end, they don't show all of it. The movie then starts the story from the beginning after that, then when it gets to the end of the film, you realise what the main character is really like and you get a better understanding of the beginning again.

RESEARCH:DEADPOOL

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/deadpool/

Deadpool is a comic superhero movie, it is known as comic film which breaks the fourth wall. The fourth wall is a performance convention in which is an invisible, imagined wall which separates actors from the audience. However Deadpool and the main actor breaks this by talking to the camera/ audience. This film came out in 2016, and was very popular not only from Ryan Reynolds starring, and the comedy in all the trailers, but also from the 'viral' videos the came out once a day in December, and in each video Deadpool himself would addresses a different topic for example on 'World Australia Day' and 'Valentines day'.

By having the opening title as a fake one makes the audience realise this isn't going to be a normal superhero film. Here is what the director Tim Miller, and layout super visor Franck Balson said about the fake opening title, and how they managed people to see whether it was a joke or not.

Tim: The screenings were so informative. You get to see when and where the audience laughs. And the magazine cover gets a huge laugh…

Franck: Only at a certain spot though!

Tim: It’s true. We had it later and it didn’t hit.

Franck: We had it earlier, but what we realized was that Ryan’s cover was kind of the moment everything shifted completely into meta, where people were like “Oh my Gosh! This is a fake title sequence!” When we tried the cover later people were still trying to analyze the title sequence as if it was a real one and didn’t understand the jokes.

You can tell this is a fake opening title because unlike in a normal opening they would show the name of the actors and be professional about it, however they say 'starring a hot women and a moody teen'. This straight away tells the audience that it is fake and that the whole movie will be taking a dig at normal superhero films. They also seem to make fun of the main actor by showing old magazines covers of himself being named 'sexiest man alive 2010' and a card of him wearing the Green Lantern costume as Ryan Reynolds also played that superhero in the past.

RESEARCH: BUSINESS OF FILM

In the UK, the BFI and its predessesscor the UK Film Council and, have published a number of reports on the economic and cultural value of film. An example of this is the most recent report on economic impact found that film contributed £3.67 billion to the UK economy. Studies have shown that the cultural impact of films have shown how films, apart from being a popular activity of enjoyment, carry powerful personal and politcal messages for viewers, give new views and insights into other cultures, and help reflect peoples cultural identity back to ourselves.



http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/film-industry-statistics-reports/reports/uk-film-economy/economic-contribution-uks-film-sectors


Why film is important to the economy

The UK makes many independent films that are British, such as Pride, Paddington, The Inbetweeners, and the Imotation game.
Many of these films perform well at award shows such as the BAFTAs, and even US Academy awards. This is a source for the UK, this is one of the reasons why there are so many Hollywood stars that are British born.
Another source of income from film and television is from tourism. Tourists go and look around the film sets, for example Harry Potter world near Watford. Around £840 million of tourism spending is by visitors can be added to film-induced tourism.

The benefits of inward investment

The benefits of inward investment is for companies like the BFI, is to deliver economic growth through investment in the UK. The International Strategy has committed £200k to support attracting film inward investment from the US. This is also been in addition to £400k grant for funding the BFI.  This and another £200k to help UK Trade and Investment attract Tv inward investment and film inward investment from emerging markets.

Thinking about the value chain

In the film industry 'value chain' is the series of steps that go from the first thought about the film right to the end of the commercial life of the completed film. The chain includes these seven steps:
Distribution, Concept origination, Development, Finance, Creative packaging, Production, Exploitation. The producer would be the only filmmaker that is with the film on its entire journey through the value chain.
The order of the value chain is:
Concept origination, Finance, development, production, distribution, creative packaging, exploitation.

 Concept origination-find ideas
Creative packaging- hire casting director, secure development finance, secure key cast, hire writer.
Development- secure rights, hire director, secure pre-sales, option agreement.
Finance- preliminary budget, prepare estimate.
Production- pre-production, principle photography, post production
Distribution- marketing campaign, secure rights, broadcast license, certify as British, video/DVD/VOD licensing
Exploitation: Download to own, cinema exhibition, DVD rental and sales.

RESEARCH: THE ART OF THE TITLE SKYFALL

https://www.emaze.com/@AWCZWOZO/skyfall


 This is my fourth Art of Title which I presented using Emaze.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/skyfall/