Question 3: Distributors

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

A distributor is the company that takes a completed film and gives it the exhibitors. They will often be in charge of the marketing and release date. The exhibitors they give it to could be cinemas, TV channels or DVD manufacturers. There will often be a different distributor for each country of release, which is why there are often multiple distributors for worldwide tentpole movies.

Submarine's poster

My movie is a micro/macro-budget film. Therefore it will be distributed solely in britain, and so will not be distributed by someone like Warner Bros. (the top UK distributor for 2013), who distribute more bigger budget, tentpole, movies.

My film is comparable to the recent film Submarine (Ayoade, 2010), Which was produced by Warp Films, a small indie production company, and distributed by optimum releasing in the UK (now Studio Canal), it was also released in the US, under Weinstein Company. This was also a romantic comedy, and so can be greater compared to my own movie.

Top UK box office films 50-60

Larger and more recent movies, by the likes of Working Title (a subsiduary of NBC Universal, one of the big  6), such as I Give It A Year (Mazer, 2013) were also distributed by Studio Canal. The movie was the 56th highest grossing film in the UK. This  shows that Studio Canal distributes large companies, like Working Title's, films and also has success in the distribution of films.

We noted that films by indie companies, such as warp, often were commercial failures in places like the US, A prime example of this is Paddy Considine's Tyrannousaur (2011), which peaked at 5 cinemas in the US, were the distributor to have spent a bit more money on marketing it could have achieved the potential it looked to have at the toronto film festival.

Studio Canal's Logo

Based upon this I think that using Studio Canal as a distributor for my film would be a wise idea, as they have had successes, support indie companies and have also released films in the same genre as mine.