Evaluation Task 3 - What kind of media instituion might distribute your media product and why?

What kind of media instituion might distribute your media product and why?

We did some research into production companies to see which would suit our film best. Our title sequence is a developing spy film, which means that it has a fairly wide variety. There are films such as James Bond and Bourne. Our film obviously isn’t as big as that! We found a production company called 'Studiocanal'. This company has a variety of films that include either spy scenes or the whole thing is a spy film.  StudioCanal is a French based production and distribution that owns the third-largest film library in the world. The company is owned by the Canal+ Image, which is owned by Vivendi and Universal Studios, which is part of NBCUniversal.  

  

We looked at The Tourist, which StudioCanal produced, but Columbia Pictures distributed it. The tourist is a thriller,  which is like our title sequence which is the reason we looked at it. Also the fact that it was a remake of the action film Anthony Zimmer and in our sequence we have Passovers and poison which helps it all tie in. It has two very big actors such as Angeline Jolie and Johnny Depp. The actors would have cost a lot and that it why they have to have a high budget.  It had a $100 million budget and went on to grose $278 million worldwide box office. If we budgeted our film the same as that we could make ours similar. We didn’t have that type of money though so our film could go either way, either a small or large budget. Another film that was along the lines of the action/spy genre was the film 'Wanted'. This film also stars Angeline Jolie  but it has a smaller budget than 'The Tourist'. It also had James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Thomas Kretschmann. ‘Wanted’ is an action film and it about discovering which fits in perfectly with ours.  

Columbia pictures is both an American distribution and production company. Columbia pictures distributed the film 'The Tourist' and this film relates to ours in many ways. Columbia pictures is now part of Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures which is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. It is one of the leading companies in the world, making it in the so-called 'Big Six'. The main reason we chose this as one of the distribution companies was because of The Tourist. We could see our film being distributed with Columbia Pictures. 

Universal Studios is another American motion picture studio. It is owned by Comcast and one the major 'big six' movie studios. They distributed the film 'Wanted' which also contains big stars but also relates to our film. This is another production/distribution company that we could see our film being distributed by. 

Both of these companies are very large and both American. Even though we see our film as an English film we could still see it being distributed by one of these companies. Our title sequence/film could work on both a low or high budget and if we did have more of a budget then we would be expecting it to be distributed by one of these. 


Coffee Films is a small British independent film prouduction company. Coffee Films incorporated in 2003 and within a year was recognised as one of Europe’s leading young production companies. They started of by doing documentaries on music and wildlife and gained critical acclaim for the film Last of the Scottish Wildcats. They then started opening up the genre of their films and began producing thrillers such as 'Lucid'. The film is about a group of Psychiatric patients taken on a therapy weekend to assess a new pharmaceutical drug. 

This almost links to ours by using 'drugs' as we used poison in our thriller. The budgets for Coffee Films are also very low cost because they are only small. They average to be around £500,000. 

I think that overall our film could have been distributed or produced by either a very big, well known production/distributor because our title sequence it suggests that our film can either have a big budget or a very little one. We are lucky as we have the option. I think that a small film company such as Coffee films would produce and distribute our film as it has a small budget and they have started producing thrillers recently. Studio Canal is another smallish company although it has done very well known films such as 'The Tourist’, which was a very successful film. That film has a budget of $100 million where as Lucid's budget was about $500,000. There is a big different between the price. We didn't have very much money at all when we produced/distributed ours but if we had $100 million then we could have done loads to ours to improve and make it very big and successful. I also think that if we had had $500,000 we would have been able to do lots with that too. This is where we are very lucky with our thriller. 

The bigger distribution companies such as Universal Pictures and Columbia pictures would also be good for our films as they are well known by audiences and mostly do successful films. This is a well-known label so people will be more likely to watch it and rely on it being a good film.

Overall I think that the best company to distribute our film would be Columbia Pictures. I think this because its well known which almost guarantees it being more successful than a company that no ones has heard of. I also think that as they distributed the film ‘The Tourist’ which is fairly similar to ours in the sense that it’s a thriller. The Tourist also doesn’t reveal everything until the end, which is what we would hope to do with ours. I personally think that Columbia Pictures would be the best for our film.