Evaluation Question Three

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

A distribution company will disperse the film and spend money trying to make a name for the film, get people hyped about the movie through word of mouth. They do this for a percentage of the film’s profit, and sometimes they will buy the rights to a movie straight from the producers and rent the film to cinemas etc themselves. Ideally, 20^th Century Fox would be the perfect company to distribute our movie as they are such a well known, globally established corporation. According to IMDB, the company have distributed 159 movies in the UK since 1962. Although many are not British, they have distributed quite a few UK movies. For example, ‘Shallow Grave’ (1994), ‘Full Monty’ (1997) and ‘28 Days Later’ (2002). All three of these movies are of very different genres, showing how 20^th Century Fox are a company who distribute movies of all different sorts, but also because they distribute very independent movies. ‘28 Days Later’ was a very cheap movie to make, with a mere budget of 8 million – it made more than ten times this amount in gross profit. Our movie would be a lot cheaper to produce and film, and has some of the same codes and conventions as ’28 Days Later’, so could do quite well gross-wise as well.

There have not been very many movies like ours, but if I had to compare it to a film, I would compare it to ‘The Faculty’ (1998) which was distributed by Dimension Films mostly. Dimension Films have distributed many horror and thriller movies including ‘The Crow’ (1994) ‘Scream’ (1996) and ‘Grindhouse’ (2007). This makes me feel that, although a far lesser known company, Dimension Films would probably be perfect for distributing our movie as they seem to thrive off movies based around the horror and thriller genre. The main reason I compare ‘The Teacher’ to ‘The Faculty’ is because both movies deal with teachers losing control of themselves and murdering their students. However, the teacher in our movie is merely suffering a mental breakdown and commits the murders as she gets fed up of the harsh treatment she receives and dwindles into madness. The teachers in ‘The Faculty’ have been possessed by aliens, which makes them go on a murderous spree. Our movie is more of a realistic thriller, which the audience will probably find quite believable, whereas ‘The Faculty’ is a science fiction horror and so the audience will be more sceptical of the storyline.

However, my point still stands that I believe our movie would be a perfect film for Dimension Films as it seems to be the type of genre they generally represent. This being the case, they probably know a lot about the genre and how to distribute the film in a way that people will be attracted to it. Although, I still also believe that 20^th Century Fox would also be a perfect candidate to represent our movie, just because it is such a famous, household name.