The Film Industry - Distribution 1

The distributor's job is to bring the film to the market or in other words to launch it. The ways in which distributor's acquire films vary depending on whether the distributor is major or small. Major distributor's are given many films to distribute whereas the small have to pay for them, acquiring them at events such as festivals. Their job is to simply be the representative of the film.

When films first start to be marketed, there are many starting points. Firstly distributors must find the attracting elements or the USP - Unique Selling Point, also known as the 'hook' of the film. One line is usually given to describe the whole film along with advertising the main casting characters. Genre is also important because this gives the film identification.

Considering audience, there are two core cinema goers. The frequent divide into the categories of 15 to 24 year olds and family groups. It is important for the distributors to target their audience for marketing campaigns and also attract possibly other groups, increasing the revenue of the film.

Choosing a release date for a film is very important. This is one determinant of the audience. School holidays are very popular due to children and adolescents in education being out of school. This allows a wider audience to attend the cinema due to less restrictions on time. A big franchise is a date in which distributors have already in mind. The only problem with this is the possibility of having a similar film released on the same day and therefore having to compete for the same audience. This problem would mean that each film would have to compete for the unique selling point or the release date would have to be moved.

Film research is important because this allows distributors to listen to and interrupt audiences, also being known as the 'marketing hook'. Research involves posters, concepts and trailers for visual purposes.

The budget is decided upon once the audience and unique selling point have been defined. Marketing is how much money you have to spend in the first place. This is determined by the box office potential income. 25% - 30% of the budget will be spent on marketing. Distributors will try and stretch the budget as far as it will possibly go. The three sections of marketing involve: 1) The promotions and events such as premiers. 2) Traditional/ general advertising such as film trailers and posters. 3) The overall costs of production.