Question 3

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

Our production company name is ‘AMOA Productions’ and each letter stands for the first letter of the last name of each person in our team. This represents the way that the four people in our team contributed equally to the final product we created. Our ident is a still image which appears on screen before the main sequence of titles. It is a leafless tree stood on its own and the skeleton of the tree looks quite sinister and evil which represents the genre of thriller film opening title we were hoping to create. The bare tree in our ident not only looks sinister and represents our thriller genre but it also represents the way our company ‘AMOA Productions’ is new and fresh and will keep creating new ideas similar to the way a tree keeps growing and changing it’s appearance each season. Our company ident is similar to that of Jerry Bruckheimer’s as their main point of interest is also a bare tree. Their company ident also looks sinister which is added by the shot of lightning and the pathetic fallacy of the stormy sky.

A production company provides the physical basis for works in film, television or radio. Production companies provide the funding for the film and sets the budget which is the amount of money which can be spent on the film. It also assists in the scheduling, scripting, casting and more aspects of a film.

The production company is also responsible for finding a director and most of the acting talent required. They are also responsible for anything which goes wrong while filming such as an actor getting injured or equipment getting damaged.

The distributor which I think would best suit our Thriller would be 'Lionsgate Entertainment'. Lionsgate UK is a diversified UK based film entertainment arm of Lionsgate, the leading independent filmed entertainment studio. It is located in London and the company (formerly Redbus film distribution) was acquired by Lionsgate in 2005 and has since established a reputation in the UK as a leading producer, distributor and acquirer of commercially successful and critically acclaimed product. From research I know that they have created a lot of Thriller films such as 'Abduction', 'American Psycho', 'The Lincoln Lawyer' and 'The Day After Tomorrow'. Since we are making a psychological thriller and 'American Psycho' is one of the most famous psychological thrillers we thought Lionsgate would be a good production company to be associated with. The idea of inherited audiences was kept in mind while deciding on which distributor would suit our thriller and since 'Lionsgate' thriller films such as 'American Psycho' had a very large audience and people know that Lionsgate are renowned for making critically acclaimed thrillers then we may inherit an audience from their previous thriller films to watch our film 'Alter-Ego'.

The money to fund our film could have come from crowd funding in which a group of people all contribute money to make a production and those contributors then receive a portion of their money back if the production makes a good profit. Product placement in films is also common, for example the production company agree to show and advertise a companies products in their film and the production company receives money for doing this. Film investors will also contribute money if they are contacted and decide that you film is a profitable production; the BFI film fund are an example of a company who use lottery funds to support film development, production and distribution in the UK. Advertisement is also a way to obtain funds for a film, our film’s target audience is 15-18 year olds and so we would advertise in shopping centers, on social networking sites and public transport.

                                             BFI Film Fund                  Advertisement in shopping centers 

                                         Crowd Funding                               Product placement

In our opening titles, the first name to appear is our production company name ‘AMOA Productions’ because the production company is very important and provides funds, casting, scripting and other aspects of film making. The second title is the name of the actress starring in the film as she is the first actor to appear on screen. Then come the technical aspects that go with making the film: ‘Filmed by‘, ‘Music by‘, ‘Make-up by‘, ‘Costume by’. The editor is a very important role and this is shown at the end with other roles which are very important; without an editor the shots filmed will not make sense and the editing creates the story line and atmosphere of the film. We then have the two roles in film making which are arguably the most important as without the ‘Director’ you have no vision or direction which the actors and film will be taken in and without the ‘Producer’ you have no organisation as the producer brings together the whole production team and creates an environment which the team can work efficiently and effectively. The last title shown is the main film title and this is so that the audience remembers the title and it hints towards what the films story may be. The look of the title and the typography also set up an atmosphere for the audience before the film begins The thriller film 'Se7en' which is a crime and psychological thriller, does this very effectively.

Below is a 'Glogster' expressing the main points of Question 3: