Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Rebecca Logan

Mainstream and Independent films differ in many ways, for example a mainstream film would be distributed by big film companies such as Universal and Paramount. These mainstream films would cost a lot of money to distribute but they will have a big budget to use for their film and therefore this will create a high profile marketing campaign to sell the film, including Trailers, billboards, posters and recognition for awards. This will create a large viral campaign. However, an independent film will be distributed by a film company like Lionsgate or Revolver. These films will appeal to a ‘niche’ audience and have a small budget to spend, so no expensive special effects would be used in the film. An independent film would cost less money to distribute because they company would have a lower budget. An independent film will create a small marketing campaign, which would include, Viral marketing, website, awards and festivals. For example, Paramount Pictures recently distributed the thriller film ‘Jack Reacher’: this would therefore be a mainstream film. Another Mainstream film would be ‘Skyfall’, this action-thriller was distributed by Columbia Pictures, a well knows film distributor. On the other hand, a film that has been distributed by an independent film company would be the sci-fi thriller ‘Dredd’, the company LIONSGATE distributed this film, usually this would be shown in more smaller cinemas and art houses. Mainstream and Independent Films

Evaluate When deciding what category our film falls into, either Mainstream or Independent, we thought about the aspects of both types of films. We felt that our film would fit an independent film more than mainstream, this is because it is a film for a smaller, UK, ‘niche’ audience. We wanted our film to show new emerging talent, and to have a low budget. Our film wouldn’t portray any expensive special effects, the character and the narrative would drive the film. We chose for this film to be an independent film because it is a British film, so it would not interest a big audience, it would only appeal to a certain audience. We chose an Independent film company because of the new emerging talent in our film. We decided to use emerging talent in our film rather than well known actors because it fitted our film narrative and it would be unusual to have a big star playing this certain role. We wanted to not use expensive special effects in our film because we wanted the audience to focus on the characters role and the films narrative, we felt if special effects were used that this would overtake the whole film. We have chosen the film company ‘Lionsgate’ because it is firstly an Independent Film company and we think this company would most likely fit our film. We liked the overall prospect of having the ‘Lionsgate’ logo at the beginning of our film in which people are introduced to the narrative of the film.

As a group we decided where our film would be distributed to smaller cinemas and art houses. It would only be for a short run but we wanted it as a British film. Our film would maybe be shown at film festivals, but not a large scale one, probably a low key film festival for our target audience. Award nominations for our film could possibly be for, Best upcoming actress/actor because for an independent film it is hard to compete against a mainstream where lots of money has been put in to it. I have looked at other independent films that have been distributed and looked at the box office figures, it is hard to consider the box office figures. For ‘The Hunger Games’ Distributed by Lionsgate, in the UK, it is estimated that they made £4,900 in 511 screens. Our film would not be shown in big cinemas. Therefore our box office figure will not be outstandingly high. For our film, considering it is for a UK audience not internationally, I think the box office figures wold be around £4000. I estimated this number from the research I have done on Independent film distributors and how much they make. We would use digital technologies to distribute our film. We would create a website, use social networking sites such as ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ to promote our film. We would use these sorts of technology because our target audience would mostly use these types of technology and websites and it would be shared amongst their friends and other people.