G321: Evaluation – Q3

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

Our first question was whether our film would appeal to a mass audience or niche audience.
To aid our decision, we investigated well-known and successful films, released within the
past 15 years or so, and concluded whether they were mainstream or individual by looking
at the distributor and gross revenue.

Superbad (2007) is an excellent example to use as it is classified in the same comedy genre
and has a similar storyline to our film. It was distributed by Columbia Pictures and made a
gross revenue of over £103 million. The film won several awards between 2007 and 2008
including MTV Movie Awards, Canadian Comedy Awards, Broadcast Film Critics Association
Awards and Empire Awards. The film was largely successful across the USA and UK.

Columbia Pictures have distributed several successful

films within the comedy genre such as Stepbrothers
(2008), Pineapple Express (2008), Funny People (2009)
and The Other Guys (2010). This shows that Columbia
Pictures is experienced and successful in distributing
mainstream, comedy films.

Role Models (2008) is another great example as it is also

associated with the nerdy characters and storyline and is
based within the comedy genre. The film was distributed
by Universal Studios and made a gross revenue of £108
million. The film was a summer hit, and opened at No. 1
at the box office, grossing £13,237,908 on its opening
weekend, and stayed at No. 1 the following weekend.

Universal Studios have distributed a range of comedy

films including American Pie (1999), Hot Fuzz (2007), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Meet
the Fockers (2004). Universal is also a successful, leading distribution company based in
America.

Two examples of reputable and mainstream institutions that would not be ideal for the
distribution of our film would be Dreamworks Pictures and Disney Pictures as they are
generally associated with certificate U, PG and 12A films. Dreamworks specializes in
animated films and have distributed successful films such as Shrek (2001), Antz (1998) and
The Cat in the Hat (2003) which only has small uses of digital animation. Noticeably, all of
these mentioned films target kids under the age of 15 and would not reach our target
audience, meaning that Dreamworks would
not be the right distributor for our film.

Disney Pictures would not be ideal either for

the same reason as Dreamworks. Although
Disney is a very successful and very reputable
company that was founded by Walt Disney in
1923, it has created a reputation for being a
family friendly business that entertains both
children and adults alike through their
divisions and subsidiaries (such as Pixar Animations, Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Parks
and Resorts). This again would not be ideal as neither Disney or our film would be reaching
the target audience.

Generally, we would like our film to target a mass audience, meaning we would distribute
through an American based institution such as Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios. The
reason we chose not to distribute through an independent distributor is because they tend
to target niche audiences and produce low budget films.

Warp Films is an example of an independent, UK based distribution company, which has

funded films such as Donkey Punch (2008), This is England ’86 (2010) and Four Lions (2009).
Although some of these films are well known in the
UK, they do not reach a global scale like we would
intend our film to.

Our film would be released mainly for the purposes

of entertainment and merchandising. Our film would
be a fantastic opportunity for franchises as our film
is within the comedy genre and would provide
plenty of phrases, jokes and memorable lines that
could be printed onto T-shirts/clothing, posters and
bags.

The Hangover (2009) have produced slogan T-shirts,

hats, mugs and miscellaneous film-related items and
continue to sell them in music and film stores, such as HMV, and through online retailers,
such as Amazon. The Hangover broke an American record of being the highest grossing R-
rated comedy of all time with a profit of over $270 million, proving to be a successful and
epic film.

As our film consists of a similar comedy style, we could be equally successful in

merchandising. Products would include:

• DVD/Blu-Ray
• T-Shirts and clothing
• Movie Soundtrack
• Film Posters
• Messenger bags

These products were chosen as they are safe merchandise items that have a low selling risk.
DVDs and Blu-Ray are a large percentage of post-production profit, as well as film-
representative items and memorabilia that can be used frequently or kept for a long period
of time (such as clothing).

As our film is a comedy, our soundtrack would consist of up-beat and rocky music. This
would appeal to not only our target audience, but with the right combination of
contemporary rock classics and softer, relaxed tracks, the soundtrack could appeal beyond
the youthful generation to mature adults.

A great example of a successful soundtrack that used a variety of music styles is the Twilight
Soundtrack (2008), consisting of rocky artists such as Muse, Paramore and Linkin Park, as
well as soft, acoustic tracks from Robert Pattinson and Iron & Wine. The album debuted at
#1 on the Billboard 200, having sold about 165,000 copies in its first week of release. This
soundtrack is evident that our soundtrack could be equally as successful when keeping to a
variety of music style and tracks.

Chain stores and retailers that

would sell our merchandise would
be high street music and film
stores, such as HMV and Zavvi, and
leading online retailers, such as
Amazon and Play. As technology
advances, music and products are
being bought online more
frequently due to the consumer
convenience. Although store sales
are also an important contribution
to profits, the attention would be
focused on internet sales. This is because internet retailers are becoming more and more
successful and is becoming a growing source of consumer goods. It also means that products
are always accessible on a global scale.

Overall, the choice of distributing our film as a mainstream production would correlate with
the success of the film, as well as merchandise sales and gross revenue. Another great
reason we chose to target a mass audience is because our storyline is fairly safe and is not to
extreme or unusual, meaning that large mainstream institutions would definitely consider
investing in our film for profit reasons.