Q3 - Reflective Evaluation - Raja Virdi

Distribution is the way in which you get your film seen and the way in which you promote it, for example posters & trailers.



Here are the different ways, an independent and major company will distribute their films:


Independant Film Companies


Hammer Films - It is a independant production company which specialises in the genre of horror films, and has produced many of them since opening in 1934.

Examples of films:


Woman In Black



Here is the trailer of the film, as we can see it looks like quite a large budget film, and considering their choice of actor (Daniel Radcliffe), you would expect that kind of film to be with a major institution such as Lionsgate.

Here is an example of a promo poster from the film:

As we can see from this poster, it is evidently well done in terms of graphics which you would expect from a larger production.

We can also see that, in terms of marketing, compared to larger companies they have similar techniques.










Let Me In






Here is the trailer for the film "Let Me In". Another film by production company Hammer. As we can see from this, it obviously has a professional edge to it you wouldn't expect from an independent production company. As it says "From the director of Cloverfield", we can see it is going to be a more up-market production as Cloverfield was backed up by a major production company; Paramount.

Here is an example of the poster for Let Me In. Again we can see from this that this independent production company has similar methods of marketing and distributing compared to larger companies.

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Black and Blue Films - Recently opened in 2007, and is one of the best independent production companies in the UK. They mainly focus on Horror, Crime and Comedy genres of films.

Stalker




We can see from this film trailer that it doesn't seem much up-budget, as the general trailer itself is quite boring and doesn't tell a lot about the film itself. You can see the difference between a large company and a smaller one in terms of quality of trailers.

Here we have the promotional poster, which in my opinion looks very professional and would definitely compete with larger companies, and definitely tells an audience the film is a horror genre with the image.

Devils Playground




In this trailer for the film "Devils Playground", we can see it is much more professional looking than the other film in that there's more gruesome scenes and scenes that show a lot of action by using quick shots, which implies to an audience there is a lot in the film. I believe this trailer isn't as good as larger companies due to budgets and such, but is still an effective horror genre trailer.

Here is the promotional poster for the film, which in my opinion is very bland and not as effective as other posters as it is very simple and unprofessional. On the other hand, the trailer does make up for a bad poster. Larger company posters are definitely more effective, but generally they are all using the same marketing techniques.

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Major Film Company



Lionsgate Films - Lions Gate is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in 1997. As of 2011, it is the most commercially successful independent film and television distribution company in North America.




The Haunting in Connecticut






In this trailer for "Haunting In Connecticut", we can obviously see the difference in quality and professionalism, as they would have larger budgets for the whole film and therefore a trailer so it would look a lot better than independent production companies. However they used the same distribution such as trailers, the quality of them is completely different.

Here we have the promotional poster for the film. We can see from this that it is quite professional and eye catching in that, it says "based on a true story" and the overall look of the poster. This can easily be seen as a horror film from the position of actors. Special effects have also been used in order to get the character at the top of the poster, so there is a bigger budget needed for it.

Saw






In this trailer, it is the original Saw. This is a very captivating trailer in that it tells an audience what to expect to happen, which is what you expect from a trailer and its use of effects and camera angles gives a sense of professionalism and interesting to an audience. Considering the age of the trailer, I feel it is very effective at creating the horror genre, and is definitely a good way of distribution.

The poster of this film is very simple, yet effective. The image obviously shows a horror genre as the hand is cut off and there is blood and the style of font is very distorted. I think this isn't the best poster for distribution purposes however the trailer definitely distributes the film to an audience very well.

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As we are only students, we need to find other ways in which we could also distribute our film. We could try to get it put on film festivals, for example Mayhem Film Festival & Bang Film Festival which are based in Nottingham. Also, they take on student films, so it's more realistic for it to get distributed to a wider audience. Furthermore, we could upload it to youtube or vimeo and try to get promotion from that, as it can be viewed by anyone worldwide. From having it online, we could promote using social networking sites such as facebook and twitter.

Here is an example of the Mayhem Film Festival:

We can see from this photo that the location in which it is held is very busy and would definitely be ideal for us to get our film out too.

Here, we can see a past student film which is on youtube. It is a brilliant way of promotion as anyone can see it, so the distribution can be worldwide. Also, with youtube's new features we can watch the film in HD, which is also an added bonus to possible distributors as they look for quality footage.









Finally, in my opinion I believe the difference in quality and distribution can easily be seen between an independent production company and a major one. They do have similar ways of marketing like posters and trailers, but the difference in quality can be seen. As the bigger production companies would have bigger budgets, it means the quality would be higher and they could afford distribution like merchandise, advertising and such, however independent film companies can;t accomplish this because of smaller budgets but they still produce good films, which is what it is about at the end of the day.