Film distribution is the process of making a movie available for audiences to view. A film distributor is responsible for marketing the film and distribution deals are important for financing films. Distribution methods include theatrical releases, film festivals, trailers, posters, TV advertisements, social media, DVDs, and streaming sites. For a micro-budget independent film like Abridged without stars, it would be difficult to get distribution from major companies. Smaller distributors focused on independent films may be more appropriate. The filmmakers plan to promote Abridged using social media sites like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr with a trailer and hashtag campaign.

1. Evaluation Question 3
By Milo Davis
(Wong Productions)

2. What is film distribution?
• Film distribution is the process of making a movie available for viewing by
an audience. (Wiki)
• A film distributor is responsible for the marketing of a film. The
distribution company is usually different from the production company.
Distribution deals are an important part of financing a film.(Wiki)
• In terms of shorts, a distributor is an individual or organisation who will
represent your film at festivals and markets around the world and who will
attempt to sell it to television (including terrestrial, cable and satellite),
airlines and other companies that show short films. In terms of features, a
distributor is generally an organisation who handles the theatrical release
of a film in a particular country as well as the marketing and circulation of
films for home viewing (DVD, Video-On-Demand, Download, Television
etc). Often feature films have different distributors representing them in
different territories and different distributors handling the home-viewing
circulation. (BBC)

3. The Big 10
There are 6 main film distributors who are all coincidentally ranked the top 6 I the
image above. These 6 are followed by the following 4: Lionsgate, New Line,
DreamWorks SKG and Miramax. These are also massive film distribution companies
but they don’t quite make the cut. The big 6 are special as most of them also own
their own subsidiaries that concentrate on typically smaller films which are often
independently produced. New Line is an example of this as it is a subsidiary of
Warner Brothers, the biggest film distribution company in the world.

4. Budget
• Abridged is an example of a micro-budgeted indie film without any established
stars, this means that our film would find it difficult to be distributed by any
big distribution companies such as Universal. Also as our film of the social realist
genre which are also generally indie films so they are on a lower budget than a big
working title film.
• Working title however, is a high budget production company that is allowed to
spend $35 million without having to consult universal (their distribution company).
An example of this would be Les Miserables who had a budget of $61 million.
However films such as ‘The boat that rocked’ did not do as well despite its budget
of $50 million due to its effectiveness of distribution.
• This can be contrasted to that of Warp films, a small indie lower budget production
company who’s budgets are often south of £100,000. These movies do not often
make big box office hits and do not make as much money, but this is simply down
to financial reasons because they don’t have the distributional qualities such as big
stars or massive investments into the set and the filming.

5. Methods of distribution
• There are various methods and techniques in which companies
from the top to the bottom use in order to retain an audience
which will enable the companies involved to retain a profit. These
techniques and methods include:
• Trailers
• Posters
• Securing a theatrical release
• Film Festivals
• Premiers
• T.V advertisements
• Social Media (Trending with the use of hashtags)
• DVD’S
• Movie streaming sites e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime
• Newspaper and Magazine reviews

6. Abridged
• With regards to our film and specifically the distribution involved
with our film, I believe that as our film is a micro budget film we
would not invest a lot of money into the distribution as it would
create an unbalanced investment between production and
distribution which would lead to unhappy customers. I believe that
institutions who might want to distribute our film would consist of
charities or organisations such as the UK film council who are not as
worried about profit retention whereas private companies such as
film4 or sky would be more concerned about the potential money
made and would therefore reject distributing our film as it is not
likely to make much money due to it being an indie production. You
can compare this film to that of submarine who also did not invest
that much money into distribution but on the whole became pretty
successful as they £1.4 million profit despite the limited distribution
investment.

7. Abridged (continued)
• Whilst not spending any money as there was no budget. I am yet to create
any accounts on any social media sites for the film and its advertising,
however, I have decided to use the following sites to upload my marketing
and distribution campaign in order to attract an audience: Instagram,
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and maybe Tumblr.
• On these sites you would see what you expect to see. We should follow
the generic style of simply promoting our film as much as possible using
many different methods. We would create a trailer for the film which is
common used method to attract potential viewers to watch your film. This
trailer would be uploaded to each of the sites where it can be potentially
viewed by millions of people. I have also decided to utilise the hashtag
feature in which all of these social media sites have also. The hashtag
would simply be #Abridged which would allow the potentiality of a trend
with regards to my film.