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.

Film Distribution: Then and Now

How does a film make money for the studio?
- People watch the film if it is popular and has a good cast, they see it at the cinema, then follow on to buy the DVDs or Blu-Ray versions of the film so they can watch it at home. They could also buy merchandise for themselves or people they know which spreads information about the film.

Where does the money come from?
- Profit from things such as; merchandise, cinema tickets, premiere tickets, soundtrack, advanced showings of the film, DVDs

Who decides to produce the film?
- The producer makes the decision to produce the film after being pitched the writer's idea and how the director wishes to put the film into action, the cinematographer would also suggest how it could be filmed.

Where does the money to make a film come from?
- The budget for the film comes from the companies which invest in the film, the film company has to pitch their idea - the more investors interested in the film, the better the budget should be (because people can drop out of investments).

What was the relationship between studios and Cinemas in the 1930's/40's?
- These years were some of the most popular and successful times for cinema and studio systems, more than 600 films were being produced per year.

How has that changed? When?
- The studio system ended in 1959, along with the death of RKO; this is because technology became more advanced so people didn't need to use the studio system any longer.

How do studios make money from Video/DVD sales? What rules govern DVD rentals?
- DVDs make the film an ongoing feature in the world, with the introduction of Blu-ray DVDs as well people are now going to buy their favourite DVDs all over again in Blu-ray's high definition. Rented DVDs have law and age restrictions on them and must be returned within a certain date which is why it is cheaper to buy a film in the long-run.

What ways does a studio have of making sure that a Film is profitable? (Stars, property, marketing)
- The budget is decided before making the film so they can limit their money to each area; they would start by deciding which locations are actors are possible to get for the film. This would then follow on to smaller costs.

What other ways does a studio have of making money?
- Studios advertise everywhere and anywhere, from obvious places such as billboards and cinema trailers to sending messages via Bluetooth when people are near cinemas with Bluetooth switched on. There are also now bar codes that Blackberry phones can scan to receive updates or free downloads of particular things such as a clip of the film or a release date. Other forms of advertisement are posters, texts, emails, leaflets in cinemas, buses, taxis and TV interviews.

Group Revision - Grace Keogh (Audience Theory)

Audience Theory’s

The effects/hypodermic model

The original model for audience was the effects/hypodermic model which stressed the effects of the mass media on their audiences. This model owes much to the supposed power of the mass media - in particular film - to inject their audiences with ideas and meanings. Such was the thinking behind much of the Nazi propaganda that was evident in Triumph of the Will and similar films. It is worth noting that totalitarian states and dictatorships are similar in their desire to have complete control over the media, usually in the belief that strict regulation of the media will help in controlling entire populations. The effects model has several variants and despite the fact that it is an outdated model it continues to exert influence in present debates about censorship and control in the media.

Advantages of hypodermic needle:

-          Can make a wide range of audience more interested in the film being advertised

-          Makes the film stand out more from other films

Disadvantages of hypodermic needle:

-          Can cause mass panic, like with the film 2012, where there was billboards up saying the world was going to end. People did not realise that the billboard was actually advertising a film

Reception Theory

Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading.

This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a preferred reading.