Film Distribution and Marketing

What is meant by the term film distribution?
The term film distribution is how many people know about a new upcoming film, film distributors will try to advertise the film to make it well known for the release date in a number of ways. 

What does a film distributor do?

The film distributors job is to plainly get the film noticed by the general public, to do this they set up something called a release strategy which comes up with key points for the film, such as the films release date and when the trailer will be released. Also within the plan it will include the advertising plan which is where they will advertise, how they will advertise and how much they will advertise, for example The Woman In Black had a huge marketing campaign and within the distribution plan it would have showed how they were going to make the films advertising as big as it was. (The is image from FDA, Film distributors guide 2012)

How does reach relate to film distribution?
Reach is one the key things to get in film distribution. Reach is basically how many people you can reach within the advertising campaign and how many people know about the up coming film. The Woman In Black had a huge reach, the film was advertised in newspapers, the TV and radio even on the side of buildings, its reach was massive. Daniel Radcliffe also set up competitions on YouTube and done every interview possible, and on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter the film was again hugely advertised, this increased the reach of the film massively and because of this the film was a huge success becoming the most successful British horror film of all time. Blair Witch Project although being a very successful film had a very poor reach. The film was only advertised online, this gave the film very poor reach, however because of good views and word of mouth the film was still a success, this doesn't mean if you have a poor reach your film will still be a success as Blair Witch Project was a one off, normally films that have a poor reach and do not advertise or only use one type of advertising don't make their production budget back and become a 'flop' film.

What is meant by the marketing plan?
The marketing plan is one of the main reasons for a films success, without advertising and marketing the film will not bring in enough customers and might not even make its production budget back. There are many ways to market a film and one of the biggest is word of mouth, however the only way to make people start talking about your film (and in a good way) is through posters and trailers etc. Posters are a great way of advertising the film and also showing the stars that are featuring in the film, The Woman In Black as it only had one main star in the film (Daniel Radcliffe) he was the main part of the poster to show people that he was in this new film and to also draw people in to look at the poster. The main trailer will then show the main plot points of the film and show what the film is about however not giving too much away, this will start to create a 'buzz' for the film and get people starting to talk about the film, this creates the start of word of mouth. After the 'Buzz' starts to die down they will release the complete marketing campaign. Huge posters on the sides of buildings will be put up and in newspapers there will be a complete page dedicated to the film, this then adds to the buzz and gets people talking about the film, by this time the films release date has been told to the public and people are now pre-ordering tickets and waiting for the film to release. The last part is the reviews of the film, after the premiere newspapers and blogging sites around the world will gives the first review on this film, people will then see these reviews and decide whether to watch the film or not. This again makes people talk about the film and tell people about the good or bad reviews the films got. The Woman In Black was such a success because of its massive marketing campaign and within the campaign Daniel Radcliffe was a huge factor getting Harry Potter fans to watch the new film. Without a marketing campaign a film will not be a success.    

What is meant by the distribution plan?

The distribution plan is a plan that is made up to maximize a films success. This plan will be made before anything has even started or when the film is nearly finished. The plan involves when and where the film is going to be released and where they will advertise the film they will also organize interviews with different stars that are in the film so they can promote the stars in the film and bring in fans of the stars to watch the film (a form of advertising the film). 

What is the difference between advertising, publicity and promotion?

Although all are very similar they are slightly different and can also link together. Advertising is when a distributor will invest in different types of advertising to get people to know about the upcoming product or film in this case. There are many ways to advertise a film posters, trailers and even getting the stars to do interviews on various talk shows, this then gets the public talking about the film and how good or bad the film looks, this leads to publicity. Publicity is basically how many people are talking about the film, the more publicity the film has the more people are talking about it and the more the press want to know about the film, this can then lead to even more advertising like the film being shown in the newspaper and competitions being held to win a book version of the film or normally the films exclusive merchandise.

Find a teaser poster, trailer, main poster and main trailer for a horror film and put them on your blog - Who was the distributor and in how many countries was it released? Can you find how many screens it was shown in on the opening weekend?

For this question I decided to choose a film that has been very popular over the years, and its of course the paranormal activity series in particular Paranormal Activity 4. As you can see from the teaser poster for the film it literally gives nothing away about the film, it tells us clearly that its the 4th film in the series and that it will be released on the 19th of October. There is one sentence which says "After a past of paranormal events the activity ensues" which also suggests to us that some sort of paranormal activity is going to be happening within this film. We could also look slightly deeper into the poster and see the that the sentence "it's carried in the blood" is in the colour red and is the only thing in red on the entire poster. This could suggest death to the audience, so from the poster we can tell that some sort of paranormal activity will be taking place in the film and because of this there could be death.

This is Paranormal activity 4's teaser trailer, as you can see from the trailer nothing big that happens in the film is given away, we see clips from the other films and then a few short clips from the up and coming movie. In the trailer however it doesn't actually tell us that its another film within the series it only gives us the Paranormal activity symbol (Left). People who are not fans of the film series or have never watched one of the films before will not know what this symbol means however hardcore fans of the movie series will know what it means, it means another Paranormal Activity film. When the fans of the films work out that there is going to be another film they will then begin to talk about the trailer and how excited they are for the film to be released, this informs everyone else that doesn't know about the film that there is going to be another film in the series. As said before the trailer doesn't give anything away so we don't really see anything scary happening within the trailer only a lot of dark shots to build the suspense, this begins to build the hype for the film.

This is the main poster for Paranormal Activity 4 and as you can see we get a lot more information from this poster than what we did from the teaser. We still have the pitch black background just like the first poster and the image we see doesn't take up the entire poster giving the feel that they still don't want to give anything too big away. The first thing that catches your eye is the shadowy figure that is standing next to the girls bed and from this we establish 2 things, the girl in bed is going to be either the main character or one of the main characters and secondly this film is about ghosts and paranormal things (if the title of the film doesn't give it away). The image is fuzzy and in the bottom left hand corner we see a time and date, like we get on a camcorder. This gives us the information that this film just like the others is going to be shot using or giving the illusion of it being shot with hand held camcorders. We finally see the title of the film however most people would have guessed that it was going to be called Paranormal Activity 4, the word paranormal activity is in red which again connotes blood and death. As said before in the last paragraph the paranormal activity logo flashed for a split second in the teaser trailer so people would know what the film is, they have put this symbol in the release date (October) and again backs up the fact that its a paranormal activity film. From this poster although it shows a lot more than the teaser poster and even trailer it still doesn't show us everything which is good as we are left in suspense and wondering what is going to happen in the film further building on the hype.

Finally we have the main trailer for the film, this is our biggest piece of information on what we are going to see happen in the film yet. We see that it goes from a normal 'happy family' lifestyle to strange paranormal things happening to people, for example the blonde girl being lifted up in her bed whilst she is asleep. We also get the feel that one of we suspect brothers is possessed as they're drawing ancient symbols on the walls and on his other brothers skin. This is the final piece of information the film distributor will give out before the films release. We see what the horror in the film is, who our characters are and a small insight as to what happens in the film however again not everything is given away as if not people wouldn't go and watch the film. Paranormal activity 4 was shown in around 3412 theaters worldwide, and even though it cost 5 million dollars to make (which isn't a lot of money compared to some films) is made around 29 million dollars in the opening weekend and managed to gross 142 million worldwide.