Evaluation Question 3

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

A film distributor is a company that, once a film is complete, helps the production company to promote it to the public (i.e. cinema, TV, iTunes DVD etc.) and more specifically, the intended target audience. There are generally two types of film distributors, major and niche: major distributors usually handle films that are likely to appeal to large and varied audiences (family films, animated films etc.), while niche film distributors usually handle films that appeal to more specific audiences (horror etc.)There are 6 main major film studios that own distribution companies. They are Columbia, Universal, Walt Disney, Paramount, 20^th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Examples of smaller, independent companies are Lionsgate, 2Entertain etc.

The genre of our film opening is horror/thriller and as such would appeal to a more niche, independent film distribution company. This is because horror/thriller films tend to appeal to a more specific audience, namely young people (i.e. teenagers).

I think that our film could be distributed by a company called 'Momentum Pictures'. A UK founded film distribution company that has quickly become one of the leading independent film distributors. I chose this company because it has distributed incredibly successful films such as 'The King's Speech', the thriller film 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and, more recently, the horror film 'The Woman in Black', and as such they have experience in distributing the horror/thriller genre and attracting the appropriate target audience for our film.

I would expect our film to be distributed in smaller scale cinemas, as although the genre appeals to a large audience, the audience is specialist and the film would probably not attract a large amount of attention due to it being a small scale production. We could however, attract a lot more attention by using other mediums, such as YouTube, to reach our audience as well as producing posters and adverts etc.