Film Distribution and Marketing

 The term ‘film distribution’ means how movies are moved about and put onto the screens of the cinema, for example, the Film Distributors Association Ltd is the body for the companies that release UK movies into the cinemas and for large audience viewings. This sort of company calls for people to do this job, ie Film Distributors who are responsible for the marketing of any film that is released and the financing behind it. This also means that these people set release dates of movies into cinemas and different days onto DVD’s, downloads and television.

 Most of these film distributors and the companies that hold them are likely to have a marketing plan in order to sell and advertise their movie to their audiences. This is a document which is quite extensive which contains blueprints for the annum, creating an idea of the budget and ideas for the year. These usually contain market research based on their target audience or who they want to see their products. This will include information about their target audience, such as what they drive, what they wear, what genre of movie they like and even what kind of families they will raise. These can be done through questionnaires and many other types of research such as searching online and physically interviewing people face to face. This plan will then show the actions that will have to take place in order to get to the goal that the company has set, for example, a release date or even a set amount of money raised for the next year.

 A similar distribution plan will also have to be made for the following year, running alongside the marketing plan, but instead for the releases of the actual movie. This naturally helps run any changes in customer locations, customer relationships and the process of the actual distribution, whether it be across the country or across the world. This document is continually updated throughout the process of the film making and the year in able to keep everyone in the process up to date and ready the product to be released.

 Because of all of these processes, a lot of people, especially audiences get confused between the meaning of the words, advertising, publicity and promotion, which all mean different things. Advertising is the selling of an idea of a product, eg, a movie poster, an actual advert or a mascot for a football game. Publicity is how popular something gets and how far it spreads, for example, a movie could get a lot of publicity in japan but rarely any in america. Promotion is like an extra part, a something special to make you buy into the idea, for example, a special promotion is getting something for 99p instead of £3.