Evaluation Question 3

By Milo Davis(Wong Productions)

What is film distribution?• Film distribution is the process of making a movie available for viewing by an

audience. (Wiki)• A film distributor is responsible for the marketing of a film. The distribution

company is usually different from the production company. Distribution deals are an important part of financing a film.(Wiki)

• In terms of shorts, a distributor is an individual or organisation who will represent your film at festivals and markets around the world and who will attempt to sell it to television (including terrestrial, cable and satellite), airlines and other companies that show short films. In terms of features, a distributor is generally an organisation who handles the theatrical release of a film in a particular country as well as the marketing and circulation of films for home viewing (DVD, Video-On-Demand, Download, Television etc). Often feature films have different distributors representing them in different territories and different distributors handling the home-viewing circulation. (BBC)

The Big 10

There are 6 main film distributors who are all coincidentally ranked the top 6 I the image above. These 6 are followed by the following 4: Lionsgate, New Line, DreamWorks SKG and Miramax. These are also massive film distribution companies but they don’t quite make the cut. The big 6 are special as most of them also own their own subsidiaries that concentrate on typically smaller films which are often independently produced. New Line is an example of this as it is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers, the biggest film distribution company in the world.

Budget• Abridged is an example of a micro-budgeted indie film without any established

stars, this means that our film would find it difficult to be distributed by any big distribution companies such as Universal. Also as our film of the social realist genre which are also generally indie films so they are on a lower budget than a big working title film.

• Working title however, is a high budget production company that is allowed to spend $35 million without having to consult universal (their distribution company). An example of this would be Les Miserables who had a budget of $61 million. However films such as ‘The boat that rocked’ did not do as well despite its budget of $50 million due to its effectiveness of distribution.

• This can be contrasted to that of Warp films, a small indie lower budget production company who’s budgets are often south of £100,000. These movies do not often make big box office hits and do not make as much money, but this is simply down to financial reasons because they don’t have the distributional qualities such as big stars or massive investments into the set and the filming.

Methods of distribution• There are various methods and techniques in which companies from the top

to the bottom use in order to retain an audience which will enable the companies involved to retain a profit. These techniques and methods include:

• Trailers• Posters• Securing a theatrical release• Film Festivals• Premiers• T.V advertisements• Social Media (Trending with the use of hashtags)• DVD’S• Movie streaming sites e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime• Newspaper and Magazine reviews

Abridged• With regards to our film and specifically the distribution involved with

our film, I believe that as our film is a micro budget film we would not invest a lot of money into the distribution as it would create an unbalanced investment between production and distribution which would lead to unhappy customers. I believe that institutions who might want to distribute our film would consist of charities or organisations such as the UK film council who are not as worried about profit retention whereas private companies such as film4 or sky would be more concerned about the potential money made and would therefore reject distributing our film as it is not likely to make much money due to it being an indie production. You can compare this film to that of submarine who also did not invest that much money into distribution but on the whole became pretty successful as they £1.4 million profit despite the limited distribution investment.

Abridged (continued)• Whilst not spending any money as there was no budget. I am yet to create any

accounts on any social media sites for the film and its advertising, however, I have decided to use the following sites to upload my marketing and distribution campaign in order to attract an audience: Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and maybe Tumblr.

• On these sites you would see what you expect to see. We should follow the generic style of simply promoting our film as much as possible using many different methods. We would create a trailer for the film which is common used method to attract potential viewers to watch your film. This trailer would be uploaded to each of the sites where it can be potentially viewed by millions of people. I have also decided to utilise the hashtag feature in which all of these social media sites have also. The hashtag would simply be #Abridged which would allow the potentiality of a trend with regards to my film.