Institution Research – Film Distribution

TV Advertising

TV advertising can be a very expensive option, especially if you want to advertise your film to a wide audience, which would mean aiming at advertising on channels with a wider audience, i.e. the terrestrial channels.

However, if you intend to aim a film at a more niche target audience, this may help on costs, going to more specialised channels which cost less to advertise your film.

However, if it is affordable, then it could be very beneficial to marketing the film and making people aware of the film. It could also attract a lot of people that could earn the money used for advertising.

Social Media

Social media, e.g. Twitter/Facebook.

This could be useful to advertise a film because you can advertise on these websites. This would be a lot cheaper than TV advertising, and could draw the attention of people more suited to the target audience.

This sort of advertising could be done fore free also, buy creating an account or page for the film for people to follow, allowing to promote the film in that way. However, this would require a following to advertise the film, which can be hard to gain, and can take years.

Despite this, if you are on a budget, free advertising can keep costs down even though a build up of a following is required to get the film noticed.

Print media advertising

Using magazines and posters to advertise could be very useful to a target audience, as advertising to a specific audience is easier with magazines, as you could target specific magazines with a specific audience, for example, for a magazine like Top Gear Magazine, the main adverts that can be seen are of cars, with car makers targeting potential customers.

The drawbacks with this though are that it can also be a very expensive option, again, this applies especially when trying to target a larger amount of people.

Online Distribution

Online distribution can often cost money to make people aware of your film, but there are options that can allow you to control the costing and so that you can target specific audiences for your film.

If you made a website for your film, or uploaded it to YouTube, you could make people aware of it using paid advertising with things like Google AdWords. This internet based software allows you to place ads on Google searches specified to people that the film might appeal to. You have the ability to control how much money you wish to spend, which can be chosen to be very low, so it may be a good option for people with a lower budget, but it will cost more if you want to secure a higher publicity.

Although it does cost some money, it could be a better alternative to Social Media advertising, because it is constantly being advertised and you don’t need an already large following to get your film noticed. So it is a less time consuming option too.

However, unlike Social Media advertising, a form of online distribution like this doesn’t allow the advertiser to connect with people of their target audience directly.

Conclusion

Of the four options I have looked at, they all have their benefits and their downsides.

TV advertising reaches a lot of people and can sometimes be specifically targeted, however, it can be hugely expensive. So for a new producer, who will most likely have a limited budget, this is not a viable option, especially for prime time television.

Print media is a cheaper alternative, and looks almost more desirable, since the targeting of specific audiences can be even more specific, especially with the many specialised types of magazines available. However, this is also an expensive option, so this would most likely be unavailable for a new producer.

Online Distribution and Social Media are two very similar ways of distributing a film and making people aware, since they use the same platform. However, it comes down to where money can take you again. With Social Media, you have the chance to connect with the people that may want to view your film and it is free, but to make a lot of people aware about the film, you would require a decent following, which can often take years to build up.

Online distribution does not allow you to connect with people directly, but it does allow you to constantly advertise and you can have control over who will most likely see it and how many will see it, depending on your budget. However, the price tag may still not be desirable to new producers.

If they were on a very limited budget, then Social Media advertising would be best, but if they were willing to put just a little bit more money into the project, then Online Distribution could really help the success of the film.