3 DISTRIBUTION

What is Distribution?

Distribution is the process of making a film available for viewing by an audience, When a film is initially produced, a feature film is often shown to audiences in a cinema. The companies in which handle this process are called the distributors 


I recently started to research a lot on distribution on the FDA website due to the sheer amount of details it gave me into the job of a distributor. As well as the FDA website I also signed up for an online course on 'The Business of Film' on FutureLearn. I signed up for this course I thought it would widen my knowledge on how the big companies produce and distribute their films from start to finish. 

I also attended an A Level study day at the BFI Southbank in which was presented by Rob Miller. Throughout the lecture that we went to at the BFI, there were a variety of different special guests that gave us extra inside information on to allow us to take in what distributors and film producers do. I also looked at many different case studies that helped me expand my knowledge on distribution. From the large amount of research that I had done I came to the conclusion that distributors have the job of A film distributor is responsible for the marketing of a film, and have roles such as selecting an appropriate release date, posters, trailers, advertising, marketing and many more aspects of distribution that helps increase the audience watching the film. 

How do Distributors Raise Awareness? 

The main source that allows distributors to raise awareness is though a variety of different social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, another way in which distributes raise awareness are through the teaser trailers and trailers. This raises awareness as watching trailers often make audiences feel eager to want to watch more therefore attracting a larger audience. However if the trailer is released to early before the actually film is released then people will forget about the film as a whole. Therefore distributors have to be really careful when selecting trailer dates and actually release dates for films. Social Media is a very good source of increasing awareness of a certain film as 2 billion people currently have some sort of social media account. This therefore means one third of the entire population could potentially some sort of trailer, poster or advert for a movie. Facebook and Twitter are the main social media platform when it comes to selling a film to an audience, however Instagram and snapchat are also a useful options. 

I also looked at many different case studies of distribution such as how Jurassic World was marketed. Gareth Lowry of NBC Universal explained the Jurassic World campaign to his audience at the film distributors association. 

The Difference between Low and High budget distribution? 

From the research that I have gathered I learnt that the Hollywood Big 6 and many other big studios have a much wider range of distribution strategies at their disposal. I had already noticed this through seeing many different billboards, bus posters, trailers and radio adverts, this way of distribution will attract a larger audience as it will get through to almost of people. Eg) A lot of people will come across bus advertising as the buses are always going from one place to another therefore a variety of different people will see the advert. However for a low budget film like my own, it would be extremely difficult to distribute the film, or even find a distributor in the first place. I did a case study on tortoise in love and discovered that BFI's P & A fund stepped in to help with the budget of the distribution. 

After researching many different aspects of film distribution I had came to the conclusion that out of all the distributors that I have research, the distributor that would suit my low budget indie film the most would be StudioCanal. This is because my film is very much an independent film. This is due to my film not being filmed at a film set/ studio. StudioCanal have distributed horror films in the past therefore such as The Last Exorcism, Orphan and Shaun of the Dead.