What kind of media institution might distrubute your media product and why?
A film distributor is a company that invests their own money in marketing the release of a film. They will decide exactly how the film is going to be distributed (e.g DVD, cinema), and then cover the costs involved to do this.
An example of a big film distributer is Paramount Pictures, who are based in America. They carry out the process of making the film available for viewing by an audience, whether this be through DVD, a cinema, or online. Paramount Pictures are considered to be one of the biggest film distributors in the world, so for our production, they are definitely not suitable. This is because our film is known as an independent film, which means our budget was low during the process of making it. Because of this, there is no chance that a big film production company would ever consider investing in the distribution process of our film, because they would only be involved in big well known films. We need to consider looking at ways that we can distribute our piece oursleves, without having to contact a company to invest in us.
The target audience for our Neo Noir production is mainly males, aged around 16 up to the age of 30. This target audience relates to the ideas about distribution, because we must consider what method is best to make viewing the best it can be for our audience. We considered offline distribution by looking at the option of TV, DVD, and cinema. However, we quickly made the decision that this wouldn't work for us due to a number of reasons. For example, any one of these distribution methods would cost money, whether it was bringing our film out on DVD, or paying to have it shown at the cinema. Relating back to our budget again, this would not be possible, so all of the offline distributions methods have been ruled out for us. Although, if we had the neccersarry budget then it may be a suitbale method for us, but it would be likely that our target market wouldn't be reached as much. This is because our audience would be more inclined to view our production online due to the amount of time they are likely to spend on it. As a whole we feel that offline distribution would not be the best method for us. In depth examples of offline distribution methods are below, with explanations as to why they would not work for us.
An example of an online film distributor is the service of Netflix. Although the films that feature on Netflix are not all purely distributed using online methods, there is a whole category that are. As you can see from the picture to the right, there is a whole category on Netflix named 'independent films'. Our Neo Noir would fit in this category because as I've mentioned before, our film is independent. A big advantage of having a film on Netflix is the likelyhood of the views. Millions of people use and operate Netflix everyday, so it is likely that the popularity of our film will be boosted. Also, it relates to our target audience because Netflix is something that they are likely to have and use regulary to watch films. It is a prime type of online distribution and something that would appeal to our audience. However, there may still be some costs involved for us with getting a production like our Noir onto Netflix, so despite the advantages of this online distributor, it may not be the most suitable for us.
As a whole, from the research I've done, I think that the best online distributor for us if we were going to would be Vimeo On Demand. This service is related to Vimeo, but relates specifically to film makers. You upload a film to Vimeo, and then people who want to watch it have to pay a small fee to do so. For us, I think this would be the most suitbale because it is easily accessible online for our target audience, and also would provide us with a small profit if we got enough views because of the small fee we could charge per view. We could just upload it to Vimeo and let people watch it for free, and this would still hit our audience, however I think that if we are actually looking to recieve any type of profit from this, then Vimeo On Demand would be the best way to try and do this.
We decided that online distribution is most likely to be the most successful way to market our film. This is because that the people aged between 16 - 30 (our target audience) will be of the modern generation, and so have more technological skills to view our piece online. It will also appeal to them becauase of the reason I've mentioned above about the amount of time they spend online. Another advantage of this is the power of the internet, and the way that things can be shared and made popular so easily. Our view counts and number of 'likes' could attract attention to raise popularity of our piece. Generally, to hit our target market as much as possible we need to distribute our production online to make it as accessible as possible, not to mention the fact that it is really our only option, because independent films are very rarely funded by big produciton companies. Below are examples of online distribution, and the decision of the one I think would be most suitbale for us.
As I've mentioned before, our budget makes it virtually impossible to consider distributing our media product at the cinema. Unless a production company invested in us, we simply wouldn't have the money available to do this. Because our piece is independent and not very well known, the chances are that this would never happen, so generally this idea has been eliminated. If we did have the available budget, we would certainly consider using the cinema as a distribution method for us because it would mean further advertisement for our film which would increase the popularity of it. However, we also have to consider the likeliness of our target audience going to the cinema to see our film. People aged around 16-30 are likely to have more technological knowledge (certainly the people aged 16-20). Because of this, they would be more likely to watch our piece in some form of online distribution, which is another reason as to why we shouldn't use offline methods.
Like the idea of the cinema, our budget makes it impossible to consider distributing our film through the sale of DVD. As I've mentioned before, the only way this would be possible would be if a production company decided to invest in us, but as said before this is unlikely. Having said all this, I think that even if we did have the available budget to distribute our piece through the sale of DVDs, it wouldn't be the most effective method in terms of hitting our target audience. I've mentioned before that our audience would be more inclined to watch our film online, so bringing it out on DVD would not allow them easy access to it. The chances are that most of our audience don't actually shop for DVDs anymore, and instead either watch films online or through some sort of box office on their TV. This backs up the point about offline distribution furhter, and highlights why we shouldn't use it as a method.