Audiences and Institutions: Film Distribution

What is meant by the term film distribution?

Film distribution is the process of making a movie available for viewing by an audience.

What does a film distributor do? 

A film distributor is responsible for the marketing of a film, and usually decides which channels to market it through.

How does reach relate to film distribution? 

Reach means the number of people that the film has reached and
What is meant by the distribution plan?

It's a plan which is organised by the distributor and outlines the way in which the film will be distributed through various outlets.

What is meant by the marketing plan? 

The marketing plan is the plan that works to create visibility, raise awareness and create interest among the general public for the film.

What is the difference between advertising, publicity and promotion?

Advertising is the communication towards the target audience, usually through paid means such as TV, radio or magazines. Publicity is the way it is viewed by the audience; if a film has bad publicity, it is seen in a negative light by the wider public.Promotion is the way in which it spreads the word of their film. This can involve advertising and publicity. The latest way to promote a film is through the use of social media, where word can travel fast. 

Find a teaser poster, teaser 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?

This is the teaser poster for The Woman in Black. The Genre of the film is indicated by the image of the ghost in the background, and the tagline "Do You Believe in Ghosts?". The greyed colour scheme and the blurred text is also an indicator. The protagonist is shown to take up most of the screen, and is quite clearly Daniel Radcliffe, a revered and recognised star. It tells us the release date as well as displaying the logos of the companies which aided in the production of the film.

 This is the main poster. From this, we can deduct that the protagonist is Daniel Radcliffe because he has featured so prominently on both posters, and the light shines mostly on him. The antagonist can be implied because of the name of the movie along with the woman dressed in black in the background. It also gives more of a setting, so the viewer does not have to make their own assumptions of the location, even including the house in the background. This poster is trying to create a feeling of discontent more through scenery than the image of a ghost as seen on the previous poster. The tagline has also changed to "Fear Her Curse", which gives us a definite antagonist. The poster also has a billing block at the bottom to display those who were involved in the production of the film, and below this there is a website URL which shows that it is accessible through various forms of media.

In the UK, the Woman in Black was shown across 457 screens and grossed over £14m. It was distributed by Momentum pictures in the UK and by Sony Entertainment in the US.