Film Distribution and Marketing

1. What is meant by the term film distribution?

The term film distribution means how many people know about an up and coming film, what it is and when it is realised.

2. What does a film distributor do?

A film distributor advertises the film and makes sure people know about it and when it’s realised. Film disturbers do this in a number of different ways like trailers, film posters and advertisement on social media sites.

3. How does reach relate to film distribution?

Reach relates to film distribution because it is the amount of people that the advertising has reached, the more people to go and see a film the more profit the movie will make. A good example of a film with a huge reach was the women in black, this was because there was so much advertisement for it. There was posters on the side of buildings, the trailer was played on television and at the cinema and the main star did as many interviews about it as possible. People are bound to stumble across one of these things.

4. What is meant by the distribution plan?

The distribution plan is the plan that is made up so that the film has as much success as possible. This plan is either made it right at the end of making a film or before anything has even started. This plan is where the film is going to be released and when, also it is where the film will be advertised.

5. What is meant by the marketing plan?

The marketing plan is a big reason for a film’s success as it is the advertising and marketing of a film and without that the film won’t attract any attention and will make no money. The way people start to acknowledge the film is thought the posters and trailers. These are good ways for advertising as the poster will show the main starts of a film attracting fans of these actors to the film. The trailer of a film gives the audience a taste of what the film will be like without giving anything away, this then will creates a buzz and make the audience want to see the film in full. Reviews are also very helpful when trying to get people to go and see a film as the more positive reviews a film gets the more people will want to see it as they know it won’t be a bad film.

6. What is the difference between advertising, publicity and promotion?

Although all are very similar they are slightly different and can also link together. Advertising is when a distributor will invest in different types of advertising to get people to know about the upcoming product or film in this case. There are many ways to advertise a film posters, trailers and even getting the stars to do interviews on various talk shows, this then gets the public talking about the film and how good or bad the film looks, this leads to publicity. Publicity is basically how many people are talking about the film, the more publicity the film has the more people are talking about it and the more the press want to know about the film, this can then lead to even more advertising like the film being shown in the newspaper and competitions being held to win a book version of the film or normally the films exclusive merchandise.

Advertising is showing the product to an audience in different ways to get their attention and want to go and see a film, this can be done through trailers, interviews with the cast and posters. Publicity is the amount of people talking about the film, this gets the film attention because if people want to know about it the press will provide the information this giving the film more advertisement. Promotions is where there could be things such as competitions relating to the film getting people involved this also makes them interested in the film again making them maybe want to see it. All these three things are similar and link together yet are slightly different.

7. Find a teaser poster, teaser trailer, main poster and main trailer for a horror film and put them on your Blog – who was the distributor and in how many countries was it released? Can you find how many screens it was shown in on the opening weekend?

This is the teaser poster for The Woman In Black, it shows who the main star is and it also shows that the movie will have something to do with ghosts as you can see a scary faded picture of a person over the main starts shoulder. this poster doesn't give anything else about the film away.

This is the main poster for The Woman In Black, again it shows the main star, this is the main focus of the poster. however in the background there is a shadowed figure, a gravestone and a house. this could give the audience hints as to what may be in the film, but the audience are still left in the dark about what the film will actually be about.

This is the taster trailer for The Woman, this shows the audience clips from the film but it has a young child's voice talking over it, the audience will have no idea if its child is involved in the film or not, this creates a mystery for the audience again making them want to go and see it.



The official trailer shows more in depth scenes from the film,giving a little more away however still leaving the audience wondering and in the dark about the film. there is dialogue from the actually movie showing more of what the film is about.

The Woman In Black was distributed by CBS films and Alliance films and was realised in 39 different country's. The release date is between the 3rd of February 2012 and the 1st of December 2012.