EVALUATION QUESTION 2 audiences and distribution

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?


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What I cover in this post:

• Different ways films can engage with audiences
• Uses and Gratifications theory (applied to 2 case studies, Tyrannosaur and Jurassic Park)
• Stuart Hall's theory of readings
• Intertextuality
• how different films achieve distribution
• Our target audience (and how we target them)
• different types of distribution (conglomerates vs. indies)
• digitisation, disruption and convergence
• Web 2.0
• How we would distribute our film

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Creative use of technologies:

This is my creative input, the points covered are:

• how different films achieve distribution
• conglomerates vs. indies
• different types of distribution (wide release, self-distribution, film festivals, digital, theatrical)
• how budget/funding affects distribution (government agency finding/subsidy vs conglomerates, cultural value)

For creative use of technologies I recreated an episode of the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", where I appear on a celebrity edition as the director of an upcoming indie film The Journey.

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2A How does it engage with audiences?

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Eval Q2 - audience from harriet Barlow

Web 2.0
Web 2.0 describes how the internet has become driven by users, converging the line between producer and consumer. An example of this is user-generated content, like the fan-art that was made for the Cornetto Trilogy, or the poster for Hinterland which was also fan-made. This web 2.0 theoretically allow indies more of a chance at achieving successful distribution online, by setting up twitters, instagrams and being able to engage with audiences directly.
We did this through our Instagram page, and the different software/online resources which we used throughout, shown in this vodcast (also used in the evaluation question 4):



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OUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Gender/Age
Primary target audience: males, 18-25
Secondary target audience: females, 18-25

Initially we wanted our film to be a 12+, but we did some research on the BBFC
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BBFC Indie Social Realist Ratings from harriet Barlow

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Because nearly every indie social realist film we looked at received an 18 or 15 rating, we would hope for a 15+, but it is likely that our production would also be pushed to an 18.

To put this into some context, these are some of the rating Big Six/Subsidiaries received:

Conglomerate/Subsidiary BBFC from harriet Barlow

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As the main character is male, uses and gratification theory would suggests that a primarily male target audience would be interested in this film as they would either identify with the protagonist, or aspire to be like him.

The other central character is his partner, Cathy, and she is a significant enough character to draw in a secondary female target audience.

Ethnicity
We have an ethnically diverse cast (Caucasian, Chinese, Indian), and as caucasian is the hegemonic demographic targeted, we wanted to both represent and target multiple ethnicities. This is something we found to be conventional of the social realist genre (My Beautiful Laundrette, Slumdog Millionaire), and helps to widen our target audience.

Sexuality

Initially we wanted to have non-heteronormative representation (taking influence form My Beautiful Laundrette), with the protagonist, Tanay, being with another man, but due to casting issues and a need to film we had to scrap this idea and include heteronormative representation.

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2B How might it achieve distribution?

"Film distribution is the process of making a film available for viewing by an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the marketing strategy for a film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing, and who may set the release date."

(Wikipedia)

Some of the different types of distribution:

• Theatrical
• Television
• Personal home viewing (DVDs, Video on Demand, Download e.g. iTunes)
• Self-Distribution

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Eval q2 - distribution from harriet Barlow

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The Big Six/Big Five:
Although this is debated (Disney recently sealed the deal with 20th Century Fox now owning it, but Lionsgate is sometimes included) the Big Six are all present in the top 10 distributors of 2018 list. They are the largest conglomerates of the film industry in both production and distribution.

• Buena Vista (Walt Disney)
• Warner Bros.
• Universal
• Sony/Columbia
• 20th Century Fox
• Paramount

top 10 distributors of 2018

Their films typically use the tentpole model (costing more then $100m), and the majority of their films are extremely commercially successful - you can see that collectively they own about 80% of the market in shares.

Wired episode with Ryan Reynolds

Marketing campaigns are often extremely expensive, and the star names which usually feature in their films are a large part of this (star billing): trailers are made for national and international audiences, cast and directors appear on chat shows, but cheaper more inventive methods are also used by conglomerates similar to indies. Youtube videos, with cast members are often a popular way of raising awareness of a star featuring in a upcoming film: for example Ryan Reynolds appeared in an episode of Wired a little before Deadpool 2 started being talked about .In the game celebrities see the web's most searched questions about them - these videos are cheap to make and don't take much time to produce/consume.
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Indies:
Indie companies like Warp don't even make it near the top 10 lists when it comes to distribution, but there are ways they achieve distribution:

• Arthouse cinemas
• Direct to Itunes
• Direct to stream
• Straight to DVD
• Self-distribution (e.g. through social media)

The main reason indie films often don't even get a wide release or even a theatrical release is due to budgets being too small. Even though the BFI offers out grants to many indie films for production and distribution, it is difficult to generate interest in small budget films when films like Black Panther, with extensive SFX and large action sequences, are also showing in the cinema.

Some other reasons though may be more to do with the actual content of the films: controversial topics that may include darker themes are not as commercially viable as films do not have political or controversial themes, making it difficult to generate interest in a film, drawing in only niche audiences.

This is England - an example

This is England takes the point of view of a young boy who joins the skinheads in the 80s. There is cussing throughout (C-word and F-bombs), and the climax involves a violent race-based assault. Although the message of this film is condemning this kind of violence, the brutality of it would be too difficult for a 4 quadrant audience to digest.

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Digitisation, Disruption and Convergence:

• As technology is constantly advancing, production, distribution and exhibition are becoming increasingly cheaper and more accessible to more people - expensive reels no longer have to be bought to make films, and even our production has been made digitally.

This allows films with micro-budgets to have a greater chance at distribution - Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee is an example of this, with a micro budget it still managed to have a theatrical trailer and then a straight to DVD release. Professional equipment used was extremely limited.

An example which took it even further is Hinterland, which had a budget of only £10k, filmed using a 15 year old camera and then released in indie cinemas with director Q+A sessions. The film was never released on DVD, but given a simultaneous release on iTunes. The film definitely achieved some successful distribution, as it made it onto a top indie films of the year list.  

As it is so easy now for anyone to make their own films relatively inexpensively and self-distribute them, the term convergence is used to reference this: the line between producer and consumer is blurring as cheaper technology becomes available.

The importance of Netflix and Amazon Prime in this disruption cannot be overlooked, as they offer films directly to audiences, without theatrical releases, and are still massively successful. This threatens theatres, as if people are able to watch Oscar winning films such as Roma at home on Netflix, there will become increasingly less need/want for people to go to cinemas.

Although this disrupts conglomerates, it can be beneficial for indies, who are able to market and sell their films completely online, like the example of Hinterland, which did have a mall theatre run, but the majority of its marketing was one online through twitter.

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How we would distribute our film:

Self-distribution would be a good method for the distribution of our film for some of the following reasons:

• Do not have the budget for a theatrical release
• No star billing
• Digitisation has made it easier for creators to use innovative methods to cheaply promote their films
• Darker themes as possibility for a high age rating significantly lower audience interest, making it more of a niche audience film

As we have a micro-budget for our production, it is unlikely that a large distribution company would be willing to help distribute our film. Due to the accessibility of social media however, getting in touch with a film festival has been shown to be possible, which would get the film viewed by critics and journalists who could generate discussion of the film in the press. We created twitter and instagram pages to promote our film, similar to Hinterland or the Cornetto trilogy, and the example of Coz Greenhop showed how successful a method this can be in generating interest in a film.

Making deals with arthouse cinemas to do director Q+A sessions which would be mutually beneficial, accompanied by a simultaneous Video on Demand/iTunes/digital release of the film has shown to be a successful method in promoting a film and achieving distribution (Wandering Rose, and Hinterland).

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(SAM'S WORK)
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This is Sam's online job interview covering the same topic
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