Question 3

There is a process each film must follow in order to follow the distribution process and achieve the goal of every film, to have an audience. First must come the Production process, consisting of Pre-Production (planning the film), Production (actually shooting the film) and Post-Production (editing and adding the final touches). After this the film is finished and ready to be seen. For this to happen the filmmaker/ production company needs to get in touch with a distributor, who will basically organise getting the film out to be seen – leading to the next stage, exhibition (whether that means selling a copy of the film to a major cinema, or simply posting it on Youtube). The size of the film would determine the amount of distribution (and therefore size of the distribution company) needed. For example, a mainstream, big Hollywood blockbuster could try to use a distribution company like 20^th Century Fox, while a small independent film may turn to a company such as Dogwoof.

For our media product, we would need to distribute our film through an independent distributor. This is because we do not have the funds to pay for mainstream distributors, but also because an independent distributor would have more experience with smaller-budget films like ours, so would know where/how to distribute it better.

Diffusion Picture’s main goal is to ‘handpick our films to find the best undiscovered gems’, and this is the exact approach we would need a distribution company to take when working with our film. We feel they may show interest in distributing our film because it does fit in with the films they have distributed so far, in the way that the majority are mostly drama-based and all concentrate on how a specific series of events can completely change the protagonist during the film (such as in their films)

Another distributor that could consider our media product is White Night Studios. This distributor ‘is the production and distribution division of Concept Media Arts Inc.  As a sales agency and distribution company we offer a wide selection of International titles, which deal with some of the most outspoken, provocative, and intense filmmaking. Our film library can be viewed from a variety of formats made for multi-broadcasting purposes. We offer a variety of broadcast and distribution licensing for North American and international territories including regions where digital and non-digital formats are still being used. Our clientele reaches to over 65 countries worldwide including: United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Greece, Soviet Russia, Taiwan, Japan, India, China, Israel, the United States, Mexico, Canada and many more.’ I feel this could be a good distributor for our film because while they do specialise in distributing independent films, they are a sub-division of a larger company, so would already be quite an establish name in the film industry (making it more likely they will have important contacts in terms of exhibition outlets).

However, there are some outlets we could use to exhibit our films if we were not aiming to make money, meaning we wouldn’t have a need for a distributor. For example, if we were to post it onto social networking sites such as Twitter and Tumblr, we could make our film available to a large number of people. Also, if we could manage to get our film to be a popular trending topic, attracting more people’s attention to it, this could also act as marketing. From a financial perspective, we would be able to put all of our money into production and marketing if we were to take this approach. However, the main problem with this would be that our film could easily become lost in the crowd of other films on these social networking sites, and it could be quite difficult to get the word out about it to a large number of people.