Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Universal Pictures UK is a subsidiary company creates and distributes theatrical material, particularly British productions. Although most of the films distributed by this company are successful feature films, our production fits the genre that would appeal to Universal Pictures UK.

According to this website, the highest grossing genre at UK cinemas is comedy, which would encourage companies such as Universal to distribute our film. However, they also distribute a wide range of films of different genres (some of them internationally distributed or co-productions). The UK-based provider of films, LoveFilm, streams several Universal Pictures films on its website and may buy the rights to comedies as they are particularly popular in the UK market at the moment.

Examples of Universal Pictures releases:

Another distributor could be Working Title Films which usually attracts more British independent films. Some examples of films distributed by this company include "Johnny English", "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz".

Our Production company, EGA Productions specialises in comedy films (mostly independently-produced or co-productions).

Our release plan:

Examples of media companies that may stream our film:

In terms of marketing, our film would rely on online advertising (for example, BBC iPlayer or Channel 4OD adverts) and social networking as this would be cheaper than traditional advertising platforms such as billboards or posters. Due to its gritty themes and 15 Certification, the film would not appeal to enough consumers to be advertised on buses, trains, or busy public places. 

Our inspiration for a marketing strategy would be "21 Jump Street" and "22 Jump Street" which have Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages to reach younger audiences that would use social networking. We would use Facebook in particular to market the film as it is easily accessible to both our target audience and our secondary tertiary audiences (aged 25+).

"21 Jump Street" (and its sequel) have been marketed on Twitter to more than 60,000 followers, raising awareness of the films, including photographs, information on award nominations, and the hashtags #21JumpStreet and #22JumpStreet.

Marketing budget - A similar film in terms of production and distribution costs would be "Superbad" which costed $20 million (which had a relatively small budget considering it was the highest grossing high school comedy at the time of its release).

Conclusion on methods of distribution/exhibition -

We would expect our film to be streamed primarily in independent cinemas or national chains (such as Cineworld), and eventually on TV channels (such as Channel 4, Film4). Our target audience would be proficient in using online technology to access the film, therefore it may be streamed online as well. However, depending on its success at the box office, "New Guy" may be pirated online (on sites such as Putlocker). As our film's sub-genre is indie, it is possible that there will be a DVD release as this tends to be popular amongst the older audience (aged 30+). For our film to be exhibited on such a wide range of platforms, it would be necessary for Universal Pictures UK to distribute it.