Q3-What Kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

It is important that when deciding how to distribute your media production you choose the root which will best suit your target audience. There are a variety of ways in which you could do this, each with its own positives and negatives. You have to understand how each method of distributation works and which will be the most successful method distributation. First thing we needed to do is recognize that our media production was indie and that this limited us to certain methods. At the same time it narrowed to the roots in which we could take and allowed up to compare and research each one.

At first thought anyone who wants to distribute a media production will go to a movie distributor. Distributors are split into two categories, indie and mainstream. As our film was indie we would look for a distributor who would support our film and allow us funds which would help promote it. Optimum Releasing is one of the biggest indie film distributors in the UK and are responsible for the distribution of films such as This Is England and Rise of the Foot Solider. Although This Is England only had a budget of 1.5 million pounds, its gross revenue was 8 million pound. Optimum Releasing was in charge of its promotion, producing trailers, posters, and setting up a website for the film. This is what we would want for our production. Without a good promotional campaign you will not be able to target your intended audience. Dogwoof is another indie film distributor based in the UK. The distributor is not as well as known as Optimum releasing but deals with really low budget films such as ours and helps them to distribute their film. Dogwoof has helped distributed films such as The Age of Stupid and The Wolf. Both are foreign films which are set in the UK and each were produced on an extremely low budget. What this shows me that this distributor may be able help promote our film in foreign countries such as Spain and Germany. By promoting our film in other countries we widening our range of audience. In a recent survey taken in Spain showed that the indie film culture was more popular there then in Britain. Over 65% of people asked said that they preferred indie films to mainstream and this was including foreign film for Britain. Another survey taken in Britain this time showed that 85% of people preferred mainstream to indie, some stating that they found mainstream films more exciting. Looking at these results you may say by going to a distributor such as Dogwoof which distribute in foreign you have a greater chance of success.
On the turn if the millennium the age of the internet was born and this opened up a whole new market for film distributation. For film makers such as us who have no funds for distributation , you have to look for ways in which you can promote your film for free. In 2004 the social networking site called MySpace was created by Tom Anderson. Nothing like this had ever been created before and soon the website had over 100 million users. Celebrities, politicians and even the Royal Family used it to connect to the people. What the website allows you to do is create a page (for free) which can be for any purpose, from promoting music to connecting to lost friends. They are also used to promote films and this we could for ours. By creating a page we will be able to upload pictures, trailers and information which people can access at any time. The network also allows you to become “fans” of the page and includes a comment box on each page. Although our film will be unknown at first it only takes one person to become a fan to start the wild fire process. As soon as one person becomes a fan they may invite their friends to join them and so on and so forth. The comment box will also allow us to gain vital feedback on our film which we can use for future films.
Another social networking site which may be as or even more effective would be the social networking phenomenon called Twitter. What makes Twitter different to Myspace is that it is mainly used by celebrities. Again the network is free but it does not offer as much as MySpace as it does not allow you to post pictures, posters or videos. Although this may be a down fall, the chance that a celebrity may see your Twitter page and actually become a fan is too good to past. If we gained the support of a celebrity through Twitter this would make distributation of our film a lot easier. We would gain media coverage and the people who follow that celebrity may see that his have become a fan of our page and decide to do the same.