Question 3

(What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?)

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Our task was to create a 3 minute opening sequence, in a genre of our choice with a creative narrative and a clear understanding of genre conventions, as well as the film industry.

Our opening sequence was a Drama/Crime-Drama based around a teenage girl, who struggles to juggle between two worlds together - her dangerous involvements with a local gang and her timid, innocent reputation she contains while at her dance school. She fights through her struggles by herself, while keeping it all a secret from her best friend.

Part of our coursework was to research distribution companies and find one suitable for our film. As our film is a drama, it made sense to look for companies that have already produced and distributed dramas.

My first choice was Columbia Pictures. They are known for their successful dramas, as well as distributing some of the most famous dramas like 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' and 'The Shawshack Redemption'.

Another distribution company I looked into was Universal Studios, which had distributed 'Honey 2' - a dance film with a similar themes, but narrative and atmosphere. Even though that was a chance for our company to reach the niche audience that enjoyed 'Honey 2', I thought it wouldn't be a good idea to have the same company distribute my film, as 'Honey 2' was more upbeat, light hearted, with a family rating, which is not what our film was. Since I didn't want to attract the wrong audience and have our film being judged poorly, I continued my search.

After further research, I found that Warner Brothers has had successful drama films that had not only distributed all kinds of dramas, even Romance ('Casablanca'; 'The Lucky One'), but also the famous Crime-Drama directed by Martin Scorsese - 'The Departed.' This fit perfectly with our style - the gritty type of drama. Unfortunately, all of those companies were owned by the big 6 conglomerates, which meant that none of them would have picked our small budget, indie film, so I had to look into some independent distribution companies.

The first one I looked at was Vertigo Films. They had distributed some great dramas like 'Point Blank' and also more gritty, indie dramas like 'Spring Breakers. However, their later work has been focusing mostly on horror, which meant they weren't the right company.

The last company I looked at was Film4. They have been known to distribute successful dramas, such as Street Kings, Trainspotting, High-Rise, Macbeth and Starred Up. After watching those films, I decided that Film4 is the right company to distribute our film, since their previous productions are similar enough to be associated with our film, but also different enough to allow us to introduce a new aspect to the genre.

After some target audience research, I concluded that people are less likely to watch an independent drama film in the cinema, if there is an action or a comedy on. With this in mind, I decided that putting our film in cinemas would waste money, since people would probably not be interested enough to watch it. This means that our film would be released to DVD straight away, before people forget about it.

In order to reach international and more modern audience, we would realease the film on Netflix and Hulu, as they are two of the biggest on-demand streaming services.

As part of the promotion of the film, we would post the trailer, the opening sequence and behind the scenes clips on YouTube, so people can watch them for free and share with friends. we would also post YouTube tutorials to some of the dances before the release of the film, in order to get the attention of the dancers who would enjoy the film.