Here me and my friends used the format of a presidential debate to talk
about the distribution aspects of our coursework opening "GODLESS":
I referenced this video for the creative part of this evalutaion:
DISTRIBUTION:
Distribution is the process of promoting films to the targeted audience
through different channels and forms of media. After a film is produced it
is up to the distribution company to; try getting the film in local or
global theaters, get DVDs printed and generally manage the marketing or
advertising campaign for the film.
TENTPOLE OR BIG 5 PRODUCTION:
Global and high budget film distribution is primarily dominated by 5
companies, these being Disney, Warner Bros, Sony Colombia, Paramount and
NBC Universal. These companies essentially hold an oligopoly over the
film industry. The companies market share of the North American box office
is listed below.
Disney: 26%
Warner Bros 11.7%
Sony Colombia 22%
Paramount 8.5%
NBC Universal 11%
These companies will often employ the "Tentpole/Blockbuster" strategy,
which was a term coined by the economist Anita Elberse. The theory is that
companies with alot of money and a high market share should focus their
efforts into making high budget films that exceed the 100 million dollar
mark (or a blockbuster film), and use their massive marketing power to
promote the films. Some films the company cannot afford to lose money on
at this budget level, these are referred to as tentpoles.
In order to demonstrate just how dominant these companies are heres a
list of the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2020 and who distributed
them (Sourced from
box office pro):
- Bad Boys for Life. $206.31 Million. Sony
- Sonic the Hedgehog. $146.07 Million. Paramount
- Dolittle. $77.05 Million. Universal. ...
- The Invisible Man. $64.91 Million. Universal
- The Call of the Wild. $62.34 Million. Disney
- Onward. $61.56 Million. Disney
- Tenet. $57.91 Million. Warner Bros
- The Gentlemen. $36.47 Million. STX
- The Croods: New Age. Universal
THE GANT RULE/DYER/FRANCHISE:
The gant rule is a theory made by Charles Gant, stating that any
American film released in America will make ten times the box
office than a Brittish film released in the UK.
Then Dyer suggested that the most dominant aspect of marketing is the
casting of an A-list celebrity in the film. However the Star Wars and
Avatar films seem to have been able to prove him wrong, showing that
spectacle in a film can be equally if not more dominant than stars on
the marketing of a film. Not only this but films that are a part of a
franchise or previously established IP like the Marvel movies, Bohemian
Rhapsody, Mamma Mia and Star Wars.
CHINA/IMAX SCREENS:
Another key factor of distribution is weather or not your film can be
distributed in China. This is because of the size of Chinas market,
which is second only to America. However they have a quota system (only
letting 45 foreign made films to be shown in cinemas). Their
politics also play a role in weather or not your film will be shown in
China, any anti-CCP or films that dont paint China in the best light
wont make it through the quota system.
However this is where a publishing deal with the big 5 can greatly help
as they have contacts in China with Chinese film companies meaning
they are able to effectively bypass the quota system. An example of
this is Working Titles film "The High Note" which was co produced by
Perfect World Pictures, a Chinese production company.
Imax screens are huge (4 times the size of a normal cinema screen)
high definition 4k cinema screens that where implemented as a
response to the "home cinema". This means that because of convergence,
high quality large TV screens have become the norm meaning that most of
the target market has access to full quality screens making one of the
cinema industries selling points obscelete.
This didn't only affect the cinemas however as very expensive
equipment is required in order to make your film compatible with an Imax
screen. This means that this form is distribution is out of the question
for small Indie producers.
INDIE DISTRIBUTION:
This subtopic is the one that is the most relevant to me and my group
when taking film distribution into account. I have observed that most
indie production companies will often do some distribution for their
movies, this includes marketing and negotiating contracts with local
cinemas.
A good example of an indie production company taking steps to market
their film is Warp films' "Ghost Stories". They did this by having one
of the directors, Andy Nyman use social medias like twitter to post
images and videos of the behind the scenes process and interacted with
the audience.
Here are some examples of his tweets:
I thought in order to imitate this marketing strategy I
could setup a social media account for my production
company in order to put up pictures of poster and promotional
material, along with text or video insights to the production or
behind the scenes process of making our film.
-examples of my account-
Even though indie films can rely on some marketing done by the
producer, they will often seek help from an established smaller
distributor, the most popular choice seeming to be Studiocanal.
This is because even with the avenues convergence has allowed
producers to utilize to market their film with next to no costs,
producers still need additional support from distribution
companies to do things like print DVDs.
Most indie films have to rely on smaller distributors because
the kind of low budget social realist films they typically make
have an extremely low chance of getting picked up by a big
5 distributor. That is not to say that there are no exceptions
to the rule for example Working Title 2's "Billy Elliot" which
was produced on a lvery low budget but managed to get a
publishing deal from NBC Universal.
SCRIPT FOR VIDEO:
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