Evaluation - Question 3

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

There are two ways of looking at our film - from the perspective of an amateur film and from the perspective of a real film.

If it were treated like an amateur film (such as it is) then it could be entered into a student film festival such as Exposures:
http://www.exposuresfilmfestival.co.uk/.
This is the UK's largest festival of film and image work. However, our project would likely do alot better in a less profile festival such as a competition. There are plenty of these around (for example, last year's Orange 60 Seconds of Fame sponsored by Bafta). However, sometimes these require regulations we cannot fit (for example, our film is two minutes, not one). The most likely distributor of our amateur film would probably be an institution specialist to horror. Here is a low-profile film festival I found in the US, dedicated to horror films:
http://www.britfilms.com/festivals/browse/?id=042A214607a4929CEDnPtJ8CF234.

Something like this in Britian would be ideal, especially one dedicated to modern niche horror. The best one I could find was this film festival in Nottingham held over Halloween week in a special arts centre, screening hundreds of student horror films:
http://www.mayhemhorrorfest.co.uk/festival.html.
This seems ideal for our piece, Reservation.

Example of a poster for a film festival - Eerie Horror Fest 2007:

Thinking about our film as a real film in the real film world, it would be distributed by bigger institutions. Our actors are unknowns and not "stars" - actors used to sell a movie as a blockbuster (e.g. Brad Pitt). We chose our actors as to not distract viewers from the story because if was the killer he would be known as Johnny Depp and not as a messed up individual character with depth ('Michael Myers' in 'Halloween' was not a well known actor but became a classic horror character, which was more our intention). Our film would not get the publicity of a blockbuster but I believe it has the potential to be shown in a normal mulitplex cinema.

Our film company, 'Live Wire', would finance some of the distribution as would our production company 'Wall & Bayliss Productions'. 'Live Wire' would finance the makings of many films, from action thrillers to teen movis. 'Wall & Bayliss' are more specific to this particular dark subgenre - they are a modern horror film production organisation. Other companies likely to be interested in maybe joint-financing our film would be the likes of 'Twisted Pictures' and 'Lions Gate Films' ('Saw' & 'Hostel'), as they are similar films and likely to be endorsed and advertised in the same way. Like these two films, our film is not mainstream but is part of a new breed of modern niche horror, which is very popular with a certain audience. It has unique selling points such as the artistic blue tint and unique storyline breaking conventions. It also has many similarities to real films (this trailer of 'Hostel' being close to how our film would be advertised:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JBxOjTaUpFM).

'Saw' was extremely successful as it firstly appealed to horror enthusiasts before it became a huge film brand ('Saw V' recieved the highest box-office ratings this Autumn in Britain, 2008). There is no reason why our film could not enjoy success in big cinemas such as Cineworld and The Odeon, as it would benefit from past successes in the subgenre, and would offer a new exciting approach for the horror lovers of the cinema.

To get our film into the cinemas we would need to link up with a distributor to sell our film to the big cinemas (the cinemas are owned by the exhibitor companies, who show the films). 'Lions Gate UK' is part of 'Lions Gate Films' who distributes in the UK, so we could have a good link there. We would not be likely to gain the services of a big distributor such as 'Universal' but could target smaller ones such as 'Revolver Entertainment' who do specifically thrillers or 'Tartan films' who have distributed low-budget horror films such as 'Black Christmas (Morgan, 2006)'.

The distributer could firstly distribute to cinemas in London and see how viewings are for a week. The results of this would control whether we began distributing to other regions in the South and then into the North. A good advertising campaing and strong word of mouth could help profoundly. Lastly, we could promote our films in targeted countries such as Japan who are renowned for horror-making. The more successful our film is in these countries the closer we could come to releasing across the rest of Europe and even in America. Global success would be unlikely for the first film release by the production and film company, but the potential could possibly be enhanced by solid advertising and good links with other companies.

Our film would be likely to be released on DVD after cinema showing, depending on the success of the movie. Any DVD-writing company such as 'Excelsior Film & Video', who transfer from cine to DVD as well as duplicating the DVD's:

http://www.videostudio.co.uk/.

With the backing of raised finances from cinema screenings of the film, and the production companies, we could distribute our DVD's across the UK if our film was successful (maybe across London if our film was not so successful).

To summarise, as an amateur film ours would be screened at a student film festival specifically for low-budget horror films in the UK. This could be shown in a special arts cinema. As a real film, our production and film companies could link up with bigger companies of similar genres to add finance backing and increase the potential of people our film could reach by good promotion and advertising. It would be distibuted by a distributo specific to horror and fairly cheap. The success of the film would depend on how far it would spread across the country and globally - and also if the film would be released on DVD after with the help of a platform converter company (from cine to DVD). With a good distribution strategy and relations between bigger institutions our film would have the potential to challenge the successes of the likes of 'Saw' and 'Hostel'.