This document discusses several key aspects of film distribution, including using word-of-mouth and viral marketing to generate awareness of a film before its release, spending the marketing budget primarily on advertising design and placement, conducting test screenings to gather audience feedback, dealing with the issue of piracy reducing DVD sales, selling the film to exhibitors to secure cinema showings, and managing challenges like negative reviews, piracy, and advertising costs.

1. Aims
• To understand the issues of film
distribution and what it involves.

2. Film Distribution
• Word of mouth is a personal recommendation from a friend, colleague or relative. Set up
free screening programmes before the film is released, hoping that when the people in the
screening leave, they tell friends etc. how good it is and that they must see it when the film
comes out. Positive word of mouth gives high levels awareness of the film, but negative word
of mouth can be very hard to overcome.
• Viral marketing is where a piece of marketing (e.g. a video, quiz) is spread around being sent
from person to person, people share it with their friends.
• The most important part of the marketing budget is the advertising costs (designing
posters, designing, press-ads, making TV spots, making a trailer) deciding where we want to
use these advertising things, and deciding how they are going to spend money to do.
• At test screenings people are held back for a focus group interview, also ask people to fill in
questionnaires after watching the screening.
• Pirating counts for 20% of all dvd sales in the UK.
• Distributors need to first sell the film to the exhibitors.
• Acquisition is the buying and selling of a product between companies.
• The main issues that film distributors have to think about is piracy, what they have to do if
they get negative word of mouth, whether they can afford the advertisement.