Distribution Planning

This is one of the things we were asked to write about on this blog and I am going to narrow it into small points.

-Film Distributors have to first consider what the film may earn in terms of low/mid/high estimates, once this is taken into consideration then an overall budget can be made including all related costs. The obvious idea is that they want to make more money then what they have thrown in, sometimes this isn't achieved.

-The Audience is the next big thing to take into mind, they need to know the age/gender/group even lifestyle etc to find if they would appeal to the movie. But normally they look of films that relate to the film their distributing to get a vague idea on the audience.

-Most popular audience age group is 15-24 year olds, they visit the cinema at least once a month and possibly more.

-Normally test screenings are shown to small groups of audiences, these tend not to be the full film but they give them questionnaires as well to fill in. This can give the distributors what to expect on the broader box office audience. 'Sleeper' Hits tend to be more common now, they are on for a more longer time and earn more then expected.

-The competition can become very different you have many different types of films that they have to take into consideration before they know when to release theirs. It may conflict with a film of similar genre or audience age group.
-Is it an event driven film? or a summer Blockbuster? or a specialized movie for a more discrete audience. Is there any star power (Famous Actors), do they appeal to the audience if they were in any previous films? Is the Director or Producer well known, do people like their work?

-Any hopes for the film to get an Oscar or award nomination
-Is it a sequel or a franchise entry, what makes this one any different or better then the previous installments. And will it be a big enough change to attract its old audience due to it be released again.

-Digital Regeneration allows a new way of distributing their movies over to cinemas to show audiences. The most common way is by 35mm celluloid prints, this is still going on but the future is known to be digital or on disc. The statistics behind it say that doing it via a digital medium the costs globally to companies is 10% cheaper which in their eyes is a big margin of money.
The backfire to this, is that most UK cinemas or even America cinemas still haven't fully digitized themselves. Another benefit to being digital is digitally remastering although time consuming, bringing old movies back to life. Whilst being digital they won't deteriorate over time unlike the 35mm.