Distributors

Film Distributors

Distributors are companies that will publish the film they seem suitable for commercial use. They are responsible for marketing the film and help provide a suitable response and audience to suit the fiml. They are normally thrird party to the production company and are an important peice for getting the film of the ground.
We use film distributors to also provide the ability to exhibit the film in different formats and theatrical viewings. They are also a major part of public relations and making sure the audience and the producers are in contact to help improve aspects of their next film or help give good feed back, through this also includes posters and trailers.

There are two types of film distributor, they are mainstream and independent. Mainstream distributors include the big six which are large clonglomerates that you see at major motion pictures such as 20th Century fox, Sony and even Disney. These play a large part in the film industry due to their large amounts of money and many profitable subsidiaries which allow them to gain large amounts of income.

Third-Party distributors such as the clonglomerates above are responsiable for the full
line of advertising such as material and strong campaign that would not normally be supported by the production compnay. Large distributors have such profitability that they are able to spend large amounts on marketing and distribution, sometimes even up and between $3.5 Billion-$4.0 Billion a year.
Distributors must ensure that film has sufficient sellings at box offices and ensure that the film has been physically delivered, releaving production companies of added stress through a contract system.
The distributors also help with the creation of posters, trailers, tv comercials and online banners to attract the largest audiences and find ways to track and target demographics through different campaigns.
This can then lead to international release which needs to be dubbed or subtitled and censored through each countries film industry and governmental laws. These will then will either go to your distribution companies global offices or a studio partner with native distributation links. This may then give it a foreign liscence an then produce it internationally.

Independant distributors, however have little to no income from any subsidiaries or profitable sister companies, this leads them to distribute through hard earned profits and more unique methods, however this can be done through more unique means such as self distribution or as kickstarting methods or through film festivals in which they will be paid investments to self distribute.

Self distribution is when the production team will also produce their own posters, trailers and print outs, pretty much a whole self made advertising campaign. These rescources are dependent upon cost and the knowledge of advertising. Doing this in the UK also means you must hire a specialised PR company to make sure the National film press will see it and be informes, you must also sign up to the British Board of Film Classification and they must view and review the film in detail, and it must be chosen over the other 10-15 other releases. You must also then convince many cinemas to agree to screen your film, whilst also providing them a universal format to view the film on such as DCP and then also ensure the film physically reaches its destination. This leaves much of the roles of a distributor to the production team which may be small and not have much money to produce many copies thus making travel cost expensive if many wide spread cinemas wish to screen it, this is hard however is significantly cheaper than third-party distribution, but the cost comes out of each persons pocket hitting the individuals hardest.