Evaluation question 3

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

As the production stages of our film came to an end we would have then had to consider which company may be interested or best suited to distribute our film. This would then make the final steps of show casing our film complete and eventually ready to broadcast to the public.

One example we can across was PictureHouse which seemed to be a very good distributor in our eyes, being founded in 2010 and already distributing a high number and range of films. Because of its diverse list of films that they have already distributed for comedies, to horrors to even documentary, we decided that ‘Soul’ would have a place among their list of distributed films. Furthermore the fact that the company owns and operates 21 PictureHouse cinemas and they are also the programing agent for 49 venues across the UK, meaning that it would then become extremely easy to get Soul onto the big screen and exhibit to the public. However Picture House does not support many independent film makers and looks more towards the grossing of films rather than the growth of them; making them not a very likely pick to distribute ‘soul’.   

On the other hand, Momentum seemed extremely appealing to us as it is one of the leading independent motion picture distributors in the UK and Ireland. Releasing approximately 20 theatrical films a year which include films such as ‘The Women in Black’ and ‘insidious’, Soul would be able to have a good place among their releases as well as being expected from the audience that Momentum would distribute a film such as this. It also means that they wouldn't have a problem distributing our film considering that they support independent British film makers, such as us, and focus more on the act of promoting less known directors instead of grossing them and only supporting companies that would give them more popularity.

We also had the choice of not looking for an official company to distribute our film however instead post the film on YouTube on an official TimeWarp production YouTube channel. This means that we would have no trouble with budget, considering our film was a low budget film created by an independent film company, as well as appealing to an online audience which nearly everybody uses daily. Furthermore the ratio of people who have YouTube account would also mean we could have easy access to feedback from our viewers. If the channel began to grow and in the future by putting more content out onto YouTube, perhaps a sequel to Soul or another story to go along side it, we could monetise our videos and become partners of YouTube . This way, depending on how popular our channel gets, in comparison to our views and subscriber count we would be able to have an income off of our videos. This would then further help us to make lower budget films in the future if we began to make success, perhaps sparking a new online production company. Despite this being an easy process it would be considered highly risky and could perhaps demolish our chances of making Soul the block buster film it deserves to be. If this went unnoticed on YouTube we would then no longer have the budgeting to continue with our work as well as all the efforts put into Soul would then go to waste. Perhaps if we were to make less official, easier and less time consuming content which we could update on a weekly or monthly bases this would be the option however at this stage it would be considered too risky.   

Furthermore the actors and production group we have aren't well known in the film industry which would be another reason why we would have had a hard time getting PictureHouse to distribute our film. In conclusion it would be better to go with Momentum as they would support an independent film such as ours as well as the genre and uniqueness of Soul being appreciated and well placed amongst their other supernatural and psychological thriller films.