Distribution Research

What is distribution?

-         Distribution focuses mainly on how a film is marketed and sold either countrywide or worldwide; they focus on cinemas and advertising first and then follow on to DVDs and Blu-Rays once the film has been released. The same system takes place in Hollywood and general industrial cinema, the three stages are: licensing, marketing and logistics.

What is licensing?

-         During distribution, licensing is the first stage; it can take place in an international level or on a local level. The distributor has to pay a fee to license a film; after this has been sorted this distributor has the responsibility of launching the film.

What is marketing?

-         There are two key questions ‘When?’ and ‘How?’ This stage of distribution focuses on when the film will be released, and how the audience will react to it. They usually choose to release films on Fridays as this means people will view it over the weekend, however this would probably fluctuate depending on the age restriction.

Marketing: Prints and Advertising:

-         Prints and Advertising make sure that the film is well known and the word gets around about it. The most common forms of advertising are buses, billboards, trailers, emails, texts, leaflets and then more discrete ones such as having your Bluetooth or Infer-Red switched on near a cinema would cause you to receive a message from the cinema advertising the film.

The Logistics of Distribution:

-         The distributor arranges to have specific ‘play-dates’ with a cinema; logistics also consists of circulating copies of the video to DVDs and tapes to be sold in shops and video rental stores. There are differing laws from selling DVDs in shops and allowing them for rental use. Prints are generally broken down into sections of about 20 minutes each at 24 frames per second.

Case Study: Bullet Boy

-         Bullet Boy is an independent film with a first time director, it has a low budget because of this and stars a UK rapper from So Solid Crew. Linking to printing, the film opened on 75 prints worldwide; however it was screened mainly in London.

Digital Distribution:

-         The main change was from 35mm prints to digital film, this meant that technology could move forward by a considerable amount.  High Definition is also involved in the digital side of the distribution, the film is put into high definition if it is being sold as a Blu-Ray rather than DVD. The change to digital distribution only began to occur in 2005, this means that now digital projection increasingly uses digital formats, and also digital sound systems.