Distribution is the way in which a film is made available to the audience. This includes marketing, in order to make the audience aware that the film exists. The distribution platforms for a film include cinema, selling film rights to television networks, DVD sales, Sky video on demand, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Google play, Xbox live, Itunes, Spotify and YouTube. Cinema is where films make most of their money however 9/10 films do not make it into the cinema so most have to find an audience other ways. For a low budget filmmaker, it is essential to go to film festivals as this is a way to find a distributor to buy your film. Film festivals take place in London, Sheffield, Brighton, New York, Berlin etc... Film festivals act as a meeting point for people to have an opportunity to invest in films they like and think will make money.
Once film is sold to a distribution company, they will then market the film, advertise the film, create a social media campaign, get your film a certificate to be rated (age) and handle all the press interviews. This is time consuming and things they do not want to do. The film will then be pitched to independent cinema chains like Curzon. It is important to strike the right deal with a distribution company in order to maximise the chance of profit. Distribution companies will take money off for digital platform fees, advertising and cinema rentals, therefore getting the best deal is important and low budget film makers need to decide whether to sell all their rights to the distributor and make a small profit or cut a deal with them.
A big Hollywood company would make my film because it is a good thriller/horror idea based upon a genre that is popular and has a high consumer base. A film that achieved success that is in the same genre is Inception.
It is highly unlikely that an American conglomerate would distribute our film because it was made with a very small budget therefore all the aspects of the film wouldn't be professional enough for people to pay a lot of money to go and watch. The actors in our film are unknown therefore it wont attract anyone to come and watch it, even before they have been told about the idea. For example, The revenant was successful because it had a pre sell element of the star actor being Leo Di Caprio who is known worldwide and would attract people to go and see the film before they had even heard about the idea. Furthermore, we are first time film makers and have no experience in this industry therefore it is unlikely our film will be of high enough quality for them to be interested in distributing it. Moreover, the unprofessional location of it being in an actual house and not in a studio makes it unlikely that it will be distributed. Also the camera and lighting equipment is semi professional as well as the costume not being specifically made for the film so these factors all lead to the film not being eligible to make enough money to be worthy of success.
If we posted our film on social media and it went viral and got picked up by a UK distribution company, we would invest money in promoting it nationally as well as adding a pre sell element to attract people to the idea. A similar film where this happened is made by Vertigo and is called this is evil. This film is similar to ours because it is based around fear and not actual violence and this was promoted and distributed because of this main concept which is similar to ours.
A problem with the UK film distributors is that they require additional support to distribute their films and if they share it in the UK, the do not have the financial muscle or power to venture much further to expand and make a lot of money where significant profit can be made. This means that they need to seek additional help to be able to distribute their film around Europe and the rest of the world. An extra investment makes it difficult for the original producers to make money off of it because the investors expect a their money back and a lot of the profit!
Another film created by Vertigo is Street Dance. This is a small budget film of around 3.5 million and was very successful in the UK. The main reason it was successful was because of the pre sold element of the famous people in the cast e.g. George Sampson and Diversity. These famous people made people want to go and see the film before they had even heard about the plot and this is what made it very successful despite the average ratings. It made £2,493,948 on the first weekend in May 2010 and made a total of 17 million in the UK by September 2010.It was shown in 412 screens in total. The success of this film was unexpected as it was made by a small UK film distributor and ended up being shown in 36 countries worldwide.
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