DISTRIBUTION micro-budget films

Distributing a micro-budget film can be a very hard and complicated process for the film to become a success. Either getting a cinema release of having a DVD release are the best ways to make the film a success. There are two main ways of distributing your film, through a distributor or by yourself.

Through Distributors

The best way to find a distributor for your film is to get the film shown at a film festival. This method will be costly but if you take the risk and manage to get a screening then there will be likely success to follow in finding a distributor. Coz Greenop managed to get a screening at Cannes Film Festival, and got the attention of some distributors there. He also tried to contact many distributors on social media. He managed to the his film on DVD in Walmart (USA) and Tescos (UK) which are the largest DVD distributors in USA and UK.

The Top 10 distributors in 2017 (micro-budget films will most likely not be picked up by any of these distributors)

Self Distribution

Some people may chose to have full rights to the film and distribute themselves, which is a trickier process. The way this can be done is creating a website targeting the audience which the film is aimed for. The micro-budget indie can also be distributed through other platforms such as streaming websites (Netflix/Amazon Prime) which are much more open to indie and micro-budget films than VOD's such as iTunes. This method is a lot harder since you have to do all the marketing yourself but you keep a much large percentage of revenues.

Which Distributor?

There are many horror and low budget indie film distributors. You are probably not going to be picked up by any of the big 6, however there are many other good distributors as well.

Some of the distributors are:

• Terror Films
• Brain Damage films
• Hammer Film Productions
• Anthem Pictures
• Breaking Glass Pictures 

Here is the website for Terror Films which also will help distribute your film onto streaming services

(Click on image or here to go to website)

We would use Terror Films to distribute our final cut.

INDUSTRY Big 6 Power

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This shows how the big 6 are the most dominant companies. All the top 23 movies released in 2017 were made by a Big 6 company whereas other companies and subsiduries lie further down.

OS GENERAL CONVENTIONS: movie idents

Company Idents on their own:

General

Idents alone have to be over with within 5 to 10 seconds, maximum 20 seconds otherwise they become drawn out and lose the attention of the audience. As an ident is essentially a miniature ad for the company. Advertisements on TV are usually between 30 - 40 seconds and they have to try and sell a product. Idents don't so there  is no need for more than 10 seconds of exposure, 20 seconds at a max. They have to be very simple as the only thing they are showing is the company names and these names need to be highly recognisable and remembered.

Examples

For example, everyone knows the iconic 20th Century Fox ident, the Pixar ident and the THX ident. They are so well known that there have been memes created around them. (One example below). A reason for their recognition is because of the idents. Yes, a large part of their success is due to the amount of times these companies have been a part of big movies. However, if I told you to describe the Bad Robot (Co-production SW Force Awakens amongst many other) or Dimension Films would you be able to recap it completely? If all these company idents were made differently, with a way longer duration and a lot more complexity I highly doubt that they would be as recognisable at a seconds glance, as these idents.

Audio

Music and ambient sound also plays a big part in a movie ident. Would you be able to identify the ident for each of these companies; 20th Century Fox  THX  Universal, Pixar and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer? The answer is most probably yes as they have again, very simple but highly recognisable music and or ambient sound playing. It is usually a certain sound (the lion in MGM and lamp in Pixar) , or a simple soundtrack which you could recognisein a heartbeat. 

Meme about the THX music:

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Idents in a film opening:

Variants

In a film opening you will usually see about 2, 3 or 4 movie idents, they can either have their original audioor be an audio bridge into the movie. They can also either be their own complete standard one or have a slightly altered colour scheme or way of presenting themselves in a way which relates to the movie. For example in Friday 13th part II(Steve Miner)(1981)  the idents all have a sharp red colour scheme and there is an audio bridge which continues into the main opening scene. This is seen below. These signifiershelp anchor the horror genre due to the blood red and the sound of knives being sharpened during the sequence, where stars are flying in  the Paramount Pictures ident. 

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This also happens for the 20th Century Fox in The Simpsons Movie( David Silverman)(2007) where Ralph sings the music for the ident. This action alone has managed to anchor the unserious, comedy aspect of the movie as it is so unexpected and absurd. 

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Generally

Apart from these quite common variants the idents are usually just slotted into the absolute beginning of the movie and come, one by one. There will be shown idents from both the production companies and distribution companies. For lower budget movies they will also sometimes include the financing companies. For example there is an ident for FILM4 in the movie Four Lions(Chris Morris)(2010). FILM4being the financing company for this very low budget Warp movie.

Possibe Influences 

• Short and simple
• Have audio bridge