By Alex Harris

EVALUATION TASK 3 – WHO

WOULD DISTRIBUTE MY

THRILLER

WHAT IS AN INSTITUTION/CONGLOMERATE AND

HOW DOES FILM DISTRIBUTION WORK?

An institution is an organisation or company, public or privately owned that produces and/or distributes media products. In media, a conglomerate is a massive multinational media company who own: Film studies, TV stations, record labels, magazines, newspapers, books. A conglomerate are examples of vertical and horizontal integration. Vertical integration is when the production company has the ownership of the means of production, distribution and exhibition by the same company. Horizontal integration is where a production company expands into other areas of one industry. This means that the company can develop in a particular area of production.

Film distribution is the process of making a movie available for viewing by an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the marketing strategy for the film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing, and how may set the release date. To distribute our thriller we will be using digital distribution. Digital distribution is the delivery of media content such as a films over an online delivery medium, thus bypassing physical distribution methods such as DVDs.

PLOT SYNOPSIS The killer washes his hands, with blood, in the sink.

He then walks slowly to the lunch hall, when he gets there are around 30 people in the room. He kills them all using his pump action shotgun. Then the killer walks back to the toilet to wash his hands, this is a non-linear narrative trajectory. The killer escapes and as he is wearing a mask the audience doesn't see his face. After the introduction it cuts to a police department in Virginia as they are working tirelessly to work out who the killer. The killer turns out to be one of the officers at the station, Mike Warner but it takes the police enough time to find out which officer it is. Will the police work out it's Mike and stop him from running away before it's too late. The plot is based on the shootings at Virginia Tech and is going to be called Blacksburg 32.

An example of a movie similar is Elephant and it was produced by HBO. It had a budget of $3 million and made over $10 million in the box office.

Another example of a similar movie is called We Need To Talk About Kevin released by Fox searchlight for $7 million. It made $7.5 million in the box office

WHY A CONGLOMERATE WOULD NOT MAKE OUR THRILLER A big Hollywood conglomerate such as Time Warner would not

make our film or a number of reasons. Firstly, We are first time filmmakers. This means that we have never made a film before and are rather new to the technology and techniques used in films today. Furthermore, we are making our film on no budget and in a school so we can only use the facilities that the school can provide us with. As we are teenagers and in school we have no pre-sold elements which help to market the film. We cannot get merchandise made nor can we make soundtracks etc.

As we have no budget we cannot employ big name actors. We are confined to teachers, school friends, relatives and friends therefore a big time conglomerate will not be interested in creating our film because part of what attracts people to see films is the cast. A good thing about having a big budget for a film is that you can create a set to look exactly how you want it. As we are students we cannot create a set, we have to use settings that are already open. The school has a green screen but due to how new we are to the technology we don’t know how to use it to give a maximum effect.

HOW WE WOULD DISTRIBUTE OUR THRILLER

For our thriller, we aren’t trying to make lots of money. We merely want to distribute our thriller so that a wide variety of people see it. At film festivals you get a number of people coming to see smaller films from a number of different genres. Another way we can distribute our thriller is on YouTube. This would be a great way to get people to see our thriller as they have one-million active users each month. We could put our thriller on our own website however, this would not be very viable because it would then be an added task to get people to go on our website. If we posted our thriller to social networking sites such as Twitter, we could could get friends and relatives to also tweet about it to bring in a wider audience so more people can see our thriller.

RESEARCH OF BRITISH FILM COMPANIES The film company Vertigo Films produce films from

a wide array of genres. One film they produced that has similar genres to

ours is Pusher. The film was rated an 18 which is above the age range that we were looking at. For our target audience we were looking at 15+ so that it is open to a wider aged audience. Based on this though, I think Vertigo would be a good fit for our film because they have lots of experience in making crime thrillers which means they would have lots of ideas on how to better our film.

A different type of thriller that Vertigo Films produced is Shotgun Stories. It was rated a PG. This just shows even further that Vertigo would be a good choice to promote our films. Not only does this further emphasise their experience in making thrillers but it also shows they have an understanding in making thrillers for a slightly younger audience.

This means that they would be great in helping us produce our thriller because they have experience in crime thrillers but also they have a familiarity in all different ranges of audiences.

WERE THE TWO PREVIOUSLY COMPARED FILMS SUCCESSFUL

Pusher (2012) Genre – Crime Thriller Rating – 18 Budget - £2,300,000 Box Office - £186,500

From these details you can see the two films made a loss. I think Pusher did so badly is because of the rating. A lot of teenagers go to see films and enjoy the thriller crime genre. If Vertigo produced the film to suit a slightly younger audience I believe they would have at done better. Furthermore, the budget suggest they put a lot of money into it perhaps with CGI. From previous experiences, some films have too much CGI and it can ruin it. I think this may be the case in Pusher.

In contrast, Shotgun Stories had a much smaller budget. I think Vertigo made a mistake making a drama thriller a PG. This is because children of a PG age aren’t interested by dramas. I think they should’ve made the film slightly more mature by making it for 15 and over. As well as this, I think that when adults see a drama thriller they are interested however, when they see that the rating is only a PG they automatically assume it’s going to be boring. These details have somewhat encouraged our idea even more to make our film for a target audience of 15 and above.

Shotgun Stories (2007)

Genre – Drama Thriller

Rating – PG Budget - £250,000 Box Office - £168,240

HOW WILL OUR THRILLER BE RELEASED AND WHO IF NEED BE WOULD DISTRIBUTE OUR FILM IN THE USA Based on all notes and findings previous to this, I have

decided our film will be released through the traditional release pattern. Based on Pusher and Shotgun Stories, you can see neither did very well in the box office. Our film isn’t too far but too similar to either of them which I believe is a big bonus and I think that our idea is one which will do very well.

If our film was to be distributed in the USA, I would let HBO Films distribute it for a number of reasons. Firstly, they have made a number of films for a variety of audiences and budgets. This means they will most likely have experience in crime thrillers. Also, I know in 2003 they released a high school massacre film called ‘Elephant’ which wasn’t overly successful. I believe that if our film did really well in the UK they may believe that our high school massacre has a chance of doing much better than Elephant. Furthermore, a lot of HBO’s films have been very successful and award winning. An example of one is ‘12 Years A Slave’, which won 3 Oscars in 2014.

BRITISH FILMS RELEASED BY HBO HBO is owned by Time Warner and

therefore prioritizes releases by the conglomerate, however they also have HBO On Demand and for TV and HBO Go for devices. I believe our film would be more likely to be picked up for a limited cinematic release and make most of its money through PPV sales and DVD sales. HBO will be able to make their money back through subscription fees and advertising rights in the breaks during the film . However being a TV company they will be unable to show it at the cinemas.