Power and distribution in film

POWER AND DISTRIBUTION IN FILM

The film industry is massive which raises the question of who controls and holds the power in this institution? It can be argued that the top companies hold the power such as   20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and Light storm Entertainment who are  the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Gone with the Wind (1939), Star Wars (1977), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). These industry's make control the content of the film and therefor what the audience see.  

Distribution:  

Distribution is the third part of the film supply chain. It is about releasing and sustaining films in the market place, however there is a huge amount of money and time put into distributing a movie.  This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the marketing strategy for the film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing, When a distrubuter is interested in a film the two parties involved agree on a finical model ether leasing of profit sharing. When this is decided the distributor and the theater must make agreements and terms on things such as the percentage split for the gross box office and the length of engagement. The distributor will get the vast majority of the money made by the movie. The agreement gives the distributor the agreed-upon percentage of the net box office or gross box office, whichever is greater. 

promotion:

Above The Line is a form advertising in which the mass media is used to promote brands and reach out to the target consumers. These include conventional media such as television and radio advertising, posters as well as internet.  This is communication that is targeted to a wider spread of audience, and is not specific to individual consumers. above the line advertising tries to reach out to the mass as consumer audience.

Below the line promotion is advertising that  is more one to one, and involves the distribution of pamphlets, stickers, promotions, brochures placed at point of sale, on the roads through banners and placards. It could also involve product demos and samplings at busy places like shopping centers. 

Small UK based film companies will face many problems in trying to get there film shown. First small companies do not have the same massive budget that massive blockbusters have which might affect the all round quality of the film as they cannot afford the same expensive sets and props. They will also not be able to promote the film as heavily and won't have the money to pay an established actor which would attract many audiences and even distributors. lower budget films - such as those made for less than £2m - were less likely to make a profit (4%). However that said budget doesn't affect the quality of the narrative.  A consumer would be more likely to watch a film in which they have quality assurance with then a independent company they know nothing about. Films in the UK  are very popular however America still dominates over them as Hollywood is one of the main sources of film. 

In the past films were distributed on large format tape, and these were what were distributed to theaters for showing. A given feature film would have several reels. The theater would have two projectors and a projectionist would need to queue up the next reel and start it at the correct time. However today films are shown digitally to project motion pictures, they now use a digital projector