Distribution Evaluation

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 3

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

The production company funds the production and this can be done directly by them, through another subsidiary company or its parent company, a partner, a private investor, or through and organisation such as the British Film Institute. The British Film Institute offer the ‘Film Fund’, ’Innovation Fund’, ‘Prints and Advertising Fund’ and ‘Film Export Funds’. They would be one of the best options for acquiring funding f or our production, as they focus on independent film makers and because the UK Film council no longer exists.

 

The latter two relate to the distribution of films, involving the export of them to international film festivals, widening the potential audience and therefore making the production more likely to be a success financially.

‘Institutionally’, our film similar to Red Road, which was low budget and released in very few cinemas. However, it would be expected for a film produced by Miramax to be a success, but this is mainly only the case with big-budget titles. It differs to expectations of the success of a film produced by Miramax, as the production company it was produced by, Tartan, have never grossed over £1 million.

We chose to use Miramax’s production logo in our film. Our reason for this choice is the fact that they are known for their distribution, of independent and foreign films. As we didn’t choose to use the logo for a much larger company, we fall into the latter category and it too was also once independent. However, it has had a change of ownership twice since its creation and is now a subsidiary of Colony Capital who bought it from Disney in 2010. The success with recent films such as Harry Brown that it has had could potentially attract an audience, especially seeing as it starred the well-known actor Michael Caine.

It has also recently been announced that they are to manage the productions of Samuel Goldwyn Films, another independently owned company, showing that although they themselves are no longer independent, they have an awareness of what independent companies and films require.

The fact that Miramax has also had success with the label Dimension Films and created successful and well-known film franchises such as Scary Movie, would give our production a level of credibility, as this shows that they have had success in the past. However, such franchises obviously aren’t relevant to our film.

 

The distribution of our film would benefit greatly from the partnerships Miramax has with the likes of Netflix, Facebook and Studio Canal. It would also be practical, as they have a sales office in London that could be used for contact with their headquarters in California.

As well as links with major companies, it also has links with poplar directors. The most significant of which is probably Quentin Tarantino, as his film Pulp Fiction is regarded as one of the best thrillers of all time by many. They also released volumes I and II of Kill Bill.

A common convention for films is for the main actors and individuals to appear in the relatively short opening titles and for everybody else to appear alongside them in the closing titles. However, in many of Hitchcock’s films and others of the same time, they could be very lengthily, three minutes in the case of Vertigo, which isn't an overlay, so therefor appears longer than contemporary titles. The main roles mentioned with the main actors are usually that of the director, director of photography, producers, editor, screen writer and composer of the score and the person responsible for casting choices, with the name of the production company often repeated. If the film is based in any way on a book or existing franchise, this is acknowledged as well. These roles often appear with the most major first and more minor roles later, although all of those mentioned in the opening titles are often almost equally important.

We have reflected this by including what could be viewed as the ‘essential’ credits such as the main actors (which were all three of us, as we were the only ones) and the director. The inclusion of some titles was unnecessary, for example we didn’t directly base our production on an existing piece of work so there was no need for such credit to be given. If all of the roles were included it may have looked quite amateurish, as there are only a potential three names to choose from: mine, Max's, or Kieran's. To solve this problem, we used the names of already established professionals in our titles, an example of which was Guy Ritchie as the director.