Question 3

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

The first stage of distribution would commonly be by a film studio screening the product to an audience in cinemas it would then be pushed through the distribution system going to DVDs sold in supermarkets, rental companies, internet purchasing sites such as Amazon or Play.com, then making its way to downloadable software such as iTunes, quite a lot of movies now go to TV with companies like Sky and Virgin Media giving people a chance to watch it (a bit like renting)  and then there is torrent or streaming sites that people can just play off the internet for free.

Starting at the top of the system with the film studios I think our film is quite mainstream to age-groups and sticks to structure that most Romantic Comedies have making me think that a company like Universal or 20^th Century Fox could potentially be a main distributor of our film as they both show a wide variety of films in many different genres, I chose these in particular because from our research of different films quite a lot of them were produced by these film studios, examples of these films would be 27 Dresses, 500 days of summer and Wild Child. However if you take into context that this is a extremely “low budget film” then I would maybe say that Paramount could be a distributor as they take on a lot of lesser know writers producers and films and help fund and develop them to become better, for example Twilight and Paranormal Activity both filmed, written and directed by non-famous people.

After films are released in the cinema they progress forwards to DVDs which are sold and rented in a variety of places, supermarkets are a big seller of DVDs as they can sell them at “new-in” exclusive prices which overall creates a larger profit, a lot of music and video stores also do this such as HMV and Zavvi which are sometimes overpriced but also sell exclusive offers and special editions that the supermarkets do not have. The DVDs are also largely distributed over rental stores that pay to watch and then have to give back giving audiences a larger choice in the film they watch.

Other new ways of buying cheap films and keeping them is websites such as Play.com and Amazon where they come out on pre-order and then lower in price once it has been released for a while this would play a big part in the distribution of DVDs however new technology has created ways to buy products as files and download then straight to your computer making them portable and easier to watch, software like iTunes is the largest distributor of legal downloading.

After a while illegal copies of the film would start to come out looping back round to the film studios which would initially stop making profits from that film as people can get hold of it for free this is why film studios create multiple movies at a time.

Overall I think that a bigger company like Universal would be the best distributor as they are well known, trusted and create movies that attract a large audience, and even if the movie is unsuccessful they continue with films to DVD and lower the prices to bring in more interest.