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

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 

A production company is a company that produces entertainment such as movies, television shows, plays or radio programs. Production Companies oversee projects whilst working closely with the director and may also provide with marketing and distributions. Within a production company there is a large amount of jobs that are needed in order to get everything done in time and produce a film successfully and in an orderly manner. Jobs that can be found within a production company include: 

• Director: the person who is in charge of the movie. They decide what shot types should be used, what they want within the shot, choosing who to star in the movie and generally controlling the artistic and dramatic areas of the filmmaking.  
• Writers: create the scripts and decided what should be said within the scenes 
• Cast members: people who act within the film 
• Sound designers: are in control of the sound within the film 
• Typography: the person who controls how the text forms and is placed on the screen 

There are a vast amount of other jobs within a production company, but to summarise there is usually a job for every aspect of filmmaking.  

Our production is called Spotlight Productions. This name was chosen so that audiences can easily identify our company’s productions and the choice of ‘spotlight’ links into theatre and stage shows which use lightings such as spotlights and have a clear link to film and movie creations. We wanted something that was simplistic but also effective and memorable. Our ident consists of a black box with a spotlight within it. This is the trademark symbol of our company. Simplistic silhouette idents are more memorable than those that are more complicated and detailed and so we thought that it would be increasingly effective to use a memorable ident style. The simplistic serif fonts also help add to our production company ident because it gave across a sense of professionalism and success. 

Other companies that inspired our ident include those of The Weinstein Company, Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment. 


The idents of these companies are simplistic with the first word usually bolded or are a larger scale than the name of the company. The silhouettes are all related to the title of the company. For example for Spyglass Entertainment, a silhouette of a man is shown holding a spyglass. These idents create some form of link between the movie industry and their title whilst also representing the sort of genre of films that these companies distribute. They also have a professional look to them and makes them appear to be distributors of films aimed at a more older audience rather than a young audience under the age of 12.  

A possible company that could alternatively distribute our movie would be Lionsgate. Lionsgate has produced several successful thrillers in the past, some examples being The Hunger Games series, Now You See Me and Sicario. We thought that Lionsgate was quite professional and skilled when it came to producing all sorts of genres of films but are especially skilled with thrillers. Lionsgate is located in Santa Monica, California. This is useful to our production because Santa Monica is home to a large amount of celebrities from Hollywood and filmmakers. So it would give us good access to very talented and popular celebrities. This is useful as we found that if someone recognisable was featured within a film, people would be more inclined to see a certain movie just because they are in it. Also found in California are numerous popular backlots and film locations, one example being Universal Studios Hollywood where films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Psycho and Transformers. These are all incredibly popular movies that have a lot of success so by being distributed by Lionsgate we would have access to some of the best movie sets within California. Lionsgate is an independent film company and have distributed independent thrillers in the past. This makes them a good and affordable choice to distribute our thriller.  Lionsgate distributes movies that are shown all over the world and are sold in many countries in many languages so they have a large, global audience. 

Our thriller could be advertised through means of social media by taking advantage of hashtags or vines which are popular uses of media amongst those who are in our target audience. This is a cheap way of advertising our film to people and to get it trending so that it attracts a lot of people to the cinema and makes a lot of money at the box office to be able to pay back all of the expenses spent during creating the film. Another good way is to take advantage of what is popular with our target audience at the time and taking advantage of it. For example, when Disney released its movie Tomorrowland, they created a Minecraft map of the Tomorrowland world and created a game within it then proceeded to invite some of youtube's most popular gamers such as Yogscast Lewis and Simon and CaptainSparklez to play the game and upload the video to YouTube. This meant the film could be advertised in a fun and engaging way to over 16 million viewers. These are all cheap ways that our film can be advertised and encourage people to pay to see it. Also creating such things as Minecraft maps can be free if members of the production company have extensive knowledge in how to use the game.  

To make money to fund our film during the filming stage we could use charities to fund our movie production. One example of a charity of a fundraising charity is a website called Kickstarter. Kickstarter enables someone to set up a page about what they're planning to produce and the amount of funding they need in order to do it. They will also provide information about how the money will be spent specifically and when the final product should be created. A goal is usually set and people donate however much money they wish. When the goal is met, the kickstarter's organiser is expected to begin production of their product. To help encourage people to donate larger amounts of money, the people behind the kickstarter will usually offer donation packs. For example a small donation of £5 could result in a thankyou later and a movie voucher or keyring to be sent to that person. But a larger donation of £50 could meet the standard of a higher donation pack and bring a box load of goodies related to the film, like clothing, lanyards or other such accessories, sent to the donator or a chance to meet the cast or go to the premiere.