EVALUATION

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Blue Moon Productions

What is a Media Institution?

A media institution is an established, often-profit based organization, that deals in the creation and distribution of advertising, entertainment and information services. When it comes to films, a media institution may disperse the film in cinemas either nationally or internationally, depending on the budget and also the size of the distributor. They also decide when the film will be released. The largest distributors are Warner Bros., Walt Disney Pictures and 20th Century Fox.

Because our film is a family comedy film which is set in a school, we decided to look at how other films of the same genre, such as Easy A, Napoleon Dynamite and The Inbetweeners Movie were distributed. The reasons why we chose to research on how these films were distributed is due to the fact that they were made with such little money which is useful for us considering we used hardly any money at all. For example Napoleon Dynamite was made on a budget of $400,000 and the Inbetweeners movie was made on a budget of 3.5 million pounds.

However unlike those films, our film is not going to be distributed by a big American distributor. We decided that our film should be distributed by an independent British distributor such as :

•BBC films, •Film 4

This is because our film is not a massive blockbuster film but it is a small independent film. However if our film were to be distributed by a much larger company then the choice would be the Entertainment Film Distributors. To decide which distributor would be perfect to disperse our film we done more research on each distributor.

BBC Films

BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. It is firmly established at the forefront of British independent film-making and co-produces approximately eight films a year. Working in partnership with major international and UK distributors, BBC Films aims to make strong British films with range and ambition. They are committed to finding and developing new talent, as well as collaborating with some of the foremost writers and directors in the industry. For those reasons BBC films could be good to distribute our film.

Film 4Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The company has been responsible for backing a large number of films made in the United Kingdom. Film 4 also produce and co-produce a large number of British films such as The Inbetweeners Movie and This Is England. Due to such successful films, Film 4 could be an ideal distributor of our film as it could also garner a huge audience.

Entertainment Film Distributors

Entertainment Film Distributors is a British distributor of independent films in the UK. Between 1990 and 2010, Entertainment distributed films made by New Line Cinema along with films from other independent production companies. One of the most notable series of films distributed to date is The Lord of the Rings trilogy. They have also released many BAFTA and Oscar winning films such as The Departed an Million Dollar Baby. Even though our film is very small compared to these films, if we were to be distributed by such a company it would make our film more famous and recognized and thus make our film more successful financially. However the likelihood of such a huge group distributing us is quite small.

So which media institution would distribute our film?We have decided that although each of the institutions would be an ideal distributor for our film as they have their advantages, the institution that would distribute our film is Film4. This is because they have experience in distributing small independent films and they have had a lot of success doing so. Furthermore we feel that Film4 is a more realistic choice to distribute our film and they have the marketing ability to make our film successful and widely recognized, not just nationally but internationally as well.