Distributors, the secretive 'wizard of Oz' behind every film. Throughout the production of a film the distributor is constantly working to pulicise to ensure the largest viewer audiences possible. A films' budget is often a distributor's budget; sometimes the distrbution even costs more than it does to shoot the film. Posters, websites, interactive experiences and trailers, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds for films are all managed by the distributor.
Sara Frain: On how a distributor approaches a marketing plan: |
Part of the research I did involved looking at the Film Distributor's Association, on which I watched several videos in which various figures, such as Sara Frain (video above) discuss the various aspects of distribution.
Trailers:
Distributors usually have a range of audiovisual 'content' to work with as they prepare campaigns, including short and extended clips, approved by the producers; making-For Gaia's Army, we need to find a British film distributor who would be willing to take the risk of taking on our film. Early ideas included Lionsgate (which I used for my GCSE Thriller opening, Dead Capacity last year) and Momentum. We have decided to use Columbia Tristar, after looking it up on IMBD and looking at films it has previously publicised - our opening has a similar feel and tone to movies which this paticular distributor has taken on in the past.
The website for American thriller 'Source Code'
Another of our optional tasks was to create some publicity for our films; so I researched several websites for thriller films for ideas about what goes where, and what is 'what' in the first place.
Website for Dan Radcliff's new thriller/horror 'The Woman in Black'
By Friday 2 March:
ReplyDeleteKeep an ongoing log of the tasks that you are undertaking, that is, your research on distribution this week and, a separate post, your planning for adressing/attracting your audiences.
When deciding on your film's distributor, you should look within the UK. It would be best if your group researched which British distributors would handle a film like yours.Write up a definitive answer for the specific Evaluation question 3: 'We plan to use X to distribute our film as it has handled X, Y and Z successfully; for instance, it...'