Evaluation Activity 3

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

A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio and video. The production company may be directly responsible for fundraising for the production or may accomplish this through a parent company, partner, or private investor. It handles budgeting, scheduling, scripting, the supply with talent and resources, the organisation of staff, the production itself, post-production, distribution and marketing.

A film distributor is a company that’s responsible for releasing films to the public, this is done via DVD, TV, Download, Blueray and more. A distributor includes securing or a written contact, enclosing the amount of the gross ticket sales which leads to transmitting the remainder of the income to the production company. The distributor also ensures that the film advertising material is available on each film to help the exhibitor attract the largest possible audience, such advertising if it isn’t provided by the production company, and arrange for the physical delivery of the advertising items selected by the exhibitor at intervals before the opening day.

By having a distributor it would help the release of a media product, attract a large target audience through advertisements, which would increase the chances of success. I would chose to release by film for home viewing via DVD’s, this would help attract a wider target audience, increase the publicity and encourage more audience members to watch it.

The best distributor for my media product is 20th Century Fox as it is a successful media distributor. In addition, in June 2008 20th Century Fox won ‘Retail Distributor of the Year’, ‘Rental Distributor of the Year’, ‘Overall Distributor of the Year’ and won a Marketing Award for ‘Best Film Marketing. So therefore I think that it would give my film a good chance of success.

For a film like mine, the funding would be very little and basic. Therefore I believe that most of the funds would probably be self-funded. To calculate the total cost of all the funds an estimate would have to be made including potential value of my film and theatrical releases over a 10 year period. If I was able to get someone to fund my film as an investor, the money to repay them would be from the film products made.

There are five main methods of financing the production of films:

• Government grants
• Tax schemes
• Private equity and hedge funds
• Debt finance 
• Equity finance