Evaluation Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

What is a production company?


Overly the production company are the people that oversee the creation of a film, from the start right until the final product. They help with budgeting, scripting, scheduling, casting and other tasks within the process. A major responsibility which they have is choosing not only directors, but also some appropriate actors for the roles. The production company are also those responsible to overcome any problems which arise throughout any point of production.




Where would money come from to produce a film alike ours?


Our film would be classed as an independent production, it contains no famous actors and has not been produced, or distributed by a major Hollywood company. For films like this, money is difficult to find, one of the problems being due to the lack of rich, or famous people involved in the production. A lot of the time directors and producers of these films have to raise and use their own money to produce their films, in the hope the profit will be larger than the investment. Hedge funds are another option to creating money to produce films, however especially with the current economy, these are much less common.




Who gets named in film titles, and why?


Generally, the names in film opening sequences are the important ones within creation. Not everyone can be named. A normal order is the distributing company, then production company, closely followed by the 'star' or main actor. We followed this as we felt that these were the most important things to mention from the beginning. The next to appear were two 'co-stars', obviously within a film there would be more than the three actors, however we felt that for opening credits, only the key ones were necessary. A lot of films follow this and mention the rest of the actors in the ending credits. After these key names, we mention particular people that have had a large part to play in the production of the film these are: casting, costume and makeup, music, director of photography, editor, screenplay, producer and finally, director. Higher budget films would mention a great deal more however as we are an independent small production, only the key things needed to be mentioned as our team was very small and everyone covered more than one role.




What films is 'Revive' similar to institutionally?


Institutionally, all of the social realism films that have been distributed by Film4 are similar institutionally to our film. These include: 'This Is England', 'Trainspotting' and 'East is East'. Film4 support first time film makers and directors and fund about 20 films a year. They can be released very easily by Film4, as it has its own freeview channel, films can simply be released through this. In addition, advertising is key with Film4, they create postcards, posters and any other means to encourage people to watch their films. Although not a large Hollywood company, Film4 have managed to get some of their films in cinemas, either before or after being released on television, or as was the case with 'A Field in England', both at the same time. By working with Film4 we would have guaranteed freeview release, which would hopefully get others attention to want to display our film elsewhere.




What other companies are there that we could have used?


When deciding on a company that we desired to distribute our company we needed to consider both the style of our film, and the style of those companies. We instantly came to the conclusion that Hollywood companies such as 'Dreamworks' were out of reach as they did not compliment any aspect of our film. We began looking a television based companies as through research we discovered that these focused a lot more on independent small films. The two we were most interested in were BBC Films and Film4, both of which are partnered to major television companies. To narrow it down we looked at the genres of films which they distribute and which one ours was therefore most similar to. BBC do not distribute many social realism films, we chose Film4 as we discovered that the films which we did original research on, were mainly distributed by them, therefore our film would fit perfectly into their style.