Evaluation 3

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

 A film distributor is a company or individual that holds the responsibility for the marketing for a film. Therefore, it is the distributors role to advertise /market their media product, in this instance - the particular film. They may advertise the product through different techniques such as trailers, posters, billboards, etc. A film distributor may inform the audience to when the film release date is, either in the cinema or on DVD or Blu-ray. Distribution companies also have a dictation on what cinemas the films are screened in (e.g. Odeon, Vue, Empire Cinemas) and how long their film is aired on screen in the cinema for. It may be a participant in deciding whether the film is to be shown on film websites such as: Netflix, Amazon Prime and Lovefilm. It is very important to market your media product so the audience may become as broad as possible and that everyone included in the production, distribution and marketing of the film is able to achieve a decent profit. 

It could be said that smaller, more unsuccessful films benefit more from their distributors, this is because through the companies they are able to gain maximum profit and customers. Some successful examples of distribution/production companies are: Blumhouse Productions and Bounty Films. Smaller production/distribution companies may also benefit from film festival events such as 'London Film Festival' and 'Sundance Film Festival' as they allow all members of the film industry to become more nationally identified. Smaller film companies rely on the distribution methods as they may not have the finances to hire large, well known actors/actress' to star in their films, which would naturally attract and target the audience.

Blumhouse Productions is an American based horror specialised production company; by this I mean, the production company specialises in the horror genre by producing, distributing and marketing horror films. Blumhouse Productions was foundered and is run by Jason Blum. Additionally, Blumhouse Productions is one of the most recognised horror production companies, distributing the likes of Insidious, The Conjuring, Sinister and the Paranormal Activity franchise - all extremely successful and globally known horror films. The films in which Blumhouse produces are all low budget films, this means that the company 

Blumhouse Productions logo

can gain maximum profit from the film afterwards. For example, the first Paranormal Activity was made on the low budget of $15,000 and it managed to gross and eventually make $193 million worldwide. This would be a good production/distribution company to use for our opening sequence MUTE as it would be an under-budgeted film and would need to make as much profit as possible, as students we would not be able to fund very much; our opening sequence cost us only about £10 on props all together so mathematically if MUTE was to gross and make the same rate of money as Paranormal Activity did, it could earn us up to £12,876. We additionally took some inspiration from Bumhouse's Sinister and its Lawnmower scene - as we liked the use of 'home movies', this could allow our media product to be represented by Blumhouse Productions as our distributor, marketer and producer. Also, as our opening sequence is of the Horror/Thriller genre it fits into the specifications for Blumhouse Productions distribution company - therefore, there would be a possibility that Blumhouse could distribute our media product. 

20th Century Fox's logo

Another Production Company which would be appropriate to distribute our film MUTE would be 20th Century Fox. 20th Century Fox are an extremely successful conglomerate film and television production company; it has  distributed the likes of American Horror Story, The Simpsons, Star Wars trilogy and many more diverse films and television series. 20th Century Fox was foundered by Joseph M. Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck on the 31st of May 1935 and is also an American based company. As the company contains more then one genre of media, it could be said that it can broaden their audience as the target audience would be generally more diverse than a one genre based company; this would possibly increase their income and popularity; resulting in more jobs, larger profit and larger awareness of the company. 20th Century Fox's marketing methods may vary from: in cinema trailers, television trailers, previews, red carpet events (as their actors/actresses are more likely to be larger celebrities).


I have used 20th Century Fox as an example of a distribution company as some of our inspiration for our opening sequence MUTE has stemmed from 'American Horror Story' and its uses of fast paced montages and is from the horror genre also. The opening sequence to the first three seasons is of a similar unconventional style to MUTE as it contains various glitches and disturbing ambient/non-diegetic music. Although American Horror Story is a television series there are many similarities between it and MUTE. If 20th Century Fox were to distribute our opening sequence in a film I feel as if it would be very successful due to MUTE's unconventional interdependent features. Our use of a hybrid genre of Horror/Thriller wouldn't necessarily be important to 20th Century Fox because it is a multi-genre company and has products of many diverse genres. However, because of American Horror Story's success in the media industry leads us to believe that, because MUTE is similar in style, it would be made very profitable and internationally known film.

Here are the opening credits to American Horror Story:

Glitch Studios, named after the special editing techniques in its products, is the production company in which our group was able to form for our film opening sequence; as it is an independent company its methods of distribution and marketing would differ from that of 20th Century Fox or Blumhouse Productions. The use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube may play a crucial role of targeting the audience nationally on a low or no budget. It could still get recognition but not as much as the other conglomerates.