Evaluation Q3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media and why?

This question is dependent on our genre and style of film, and it also concerns who the target audience would be.  Our film (we thought as a collective) was a psychological thriller, but we imagined it would be relatively independent, as if we were making it properly, we would have lots of time constraints and a small budget, so it would make sense to use an "indie distributor" to make sure our film got noticed. This is also partly because a much larger corporation such as Warner Bros. would probably not be interested in a much smaller film, due to the cast, crew, etc.

In most of the deconstructions of the same genre we did, we found out that some of the films we studied had the same type of distributor, i.e quite a small, basic and independent media institution. Some examples of this type of distributor we found included Newmarket Films (Donnie Darko), and October Films (US Distributor, now defunct, not to be confused with the unrelated British distributor of the same name) (Lost Highway).
However, other films that we deconstructed had much larger distributors/institutions operating with them, such as Warner Brothers (eg Inception) and Lionsgate (American Psycho). Even though the latter distributor still classifies itself as an independent institute, they are still part of a massive corporation, Lionsgate International.


We researched slightly more recent films in our group that were related to our film, such as Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) and The Machinist (Brad Anderson, 2004) using Wikipedia, IMDb and more, and they are both psychological (if slightly different in subcategories) that have certain institutions distributing them to cinemas and to the public, and they are both examples of more recent films. They are also examples of how different films get attention from various different institutions, such as Inception being distributed by an absolutely colossal business, such as Warner Bros, because of the actors, the budget, the revenue etc, and this does not relate the the way our film would be distributed as we did not have those advantages. In addition, British psychological horrors are not as prevalent as other genres, making it somewhat difficult to research them. This finding lead us to consider the point of using a smaller, more independent distribution institute may be more suitable.

A good example of indie distribution is Warp Films/Warp X. Warp is one of the foremost and most respected creative independent companies, now composed of Warp Records, Warp Films and Warp Music Videos & Commercials. It is based in London, England and Sheffield, with a further office now in Melbourne. They are the most revered independent distributors, we would probably use an institution similar to them, or them themselves, to get our film noticed by the public. They have won many awards for their work, in many different genres (which is helpful to us), such as Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2010) and This Is England (Shane Meadows, 2006) to name a few.

It would make more sense to work with a distributor such as Warp due to our film choice of genre being more suitable for a smaller company to work with, due to the fact that they are rather more focused on getting the product out for the world to see, rather than gaining a massive profit. That type of institution would probably be one like Lionsgate or Warner Brothers, and they wouldn't be as interested or as personal when it came to the question of what distributor would help us get our film out there.