EVALUATION QUESTION 3: WHAT KIND OF INSTITUTION MIGHT HAVE DISTRIBUTED

YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

PRODUCTION COMPANY: WARP FILMS• Warp Films are renowned for their prolific and well acclaimed directors in the social realism genre, such

as Shane Meadows, the director of ‘This Is England’ and Paddy Considine who wrote the award winning short film ‘Dog Altogether.’ Shane Meadows also worked with Film 4 in ‘This Is England’, which proved a great success. This success will hopefully be mirrored throughout our production, as Film 4 will be the co-producers of our production.

• Practicality-wise they would also be a suitable company to use, due to the fact that they are based in England. Furthermore, the fact that they are independent suggests production of our product may be fairly cheap and as 4 independent producers, we do not have a high budget in terms of production. This low budget is also a convention of the genre in terms of producing a social realism film.

• Warp Films are also horizontally integrated. Therefore, they will be able to provide a verity of content for the production, such as the soundtrack through the sister record label. Again, this will benefit our production financially as a completely different company will not have to be paid for to produce the soundtrack.

• Warp Films also pride themselves on the fact that, when making a film, “its about not worrying about commercial influences.” This would attract our audience to a great extent due to the fact that they are a niche market and do not necessarily get attracted by mass market, Hollywood production. It also allows us to add our own auteur-like approach to the production, without the constraints of mainstream and commercial influences.

CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY: FILM 4 PRODUCTIONS• To maintain the British independence of our production, we thought Film 4 would be an

appropriate and high quality company to work in conjunction with Warp Films. Like Warp Films, they have impressive experience in the social realism/drama genre and have proved successful at it in the past.

• Another feature of Film 4 Productions that encouraged us to use them is the fact that they have in fact previously worked alongside Warp Films. This synergy has proved successful in multiple films such as ‘Berbian Sound Studio’, ‘Bunny and the Bull’, ‘Donkey Punch’, ‘Four Lions’ and many more, all films proving a success, particularly ‘Four Lions’, on its opening weekend generating the highest site average of all the new releases, £5,292, making a total of £609,000.

• Having tow co-production companies working in conjunction with each other also provides extra finance regarding the economic-side of our production. This will assist us to a great extent due to the low-budget of our production. Another feature that could assist our production regarding finance is the help of regional funding

• This reinforced our assurance that the two companies would work well co-producing the production together.

DISTRIBUTORS: PATHE

• We chose Pathe to be the distributors for our production. As a distributing company, they are well known throughout the genre, renowned for distributing successful social realism films such as ‘Adulthood.’

• Furthermore, Pathe and Film 4 Productions have previously worked successfully together on a number of successful films, such as ‘127 Hours’, ‘Touching the Void’, ‘Suffragette’ and ‘The Scouting Book for Boys.’ This reinforces the confidence I have in the two companies working in conjunction with each other. Also, in all these films, Pathe were the distributor and Film 4 Productions were the co-producers, emphasizing their strengths in both areas of producing and distributing films.

“CANDY STRIPPED” RELEASE PATTERN• Similarly to many independently made social realism films, as a result of our low budget, we will rely

heavily on the impact of the below-the-line marketing technique of social media to help market our production. The Facebook page for our production will hopefully attract a number of members of our audience. On this Facebook page, we will blog information regarding the time and location of screenings around the UK. However, the production will not be shown in the majority of the cinemas throughout the UK, thus we are dependant, again, on word of mouth. This is due to the fact that the more people who hear about it will go and see it, meaning sales from the cinema will increase, therefore more cinemas will want to screen the production due to its increasing popularity.

• Another way in which our audience will be targeted through the use of social media is through the use of Web2.0. Due to the A-B income bracket of the target audience, they will have a fairly large amount of disposable income. Therefore, they will be able to afford any new technical products on the market, making it easier for them to be attracted to the production through digital distribution. This would work alongside Gauntlett’s theory of audiences of a higher income bracket being more active and therefore participating in the marketing/promotion of our product. This could lead to our niche product having as much success as some of the mass media productions, as seen in ‘Adulthood’, distributed by Pathe. Furthermore, this would highlight the way in which the distributor, Pathe, adapt power over the audience. This idea was emphasised by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in their award winning book Wikinomics, which focuses on the idea that “businesses can collaborate creatively with their customers to succeed in the age of Wikipedia.”

“CANDY STRIPPED” RELEASE PATTERN• Our target market of A-B income bracket would not be attracted by marketing techniques

such as the creation of a hyper-diegetic world, due to their age and high level of sophistication. This bodes well for us as a production team, as it allows us to focus on marketing and promotion such as promotion posters and creating trailers, highlighting the ideologies and conventions (both met and not met), which will attract our audience to a much greater effect.

• As a group, we are aware that the release pattern for our production will be limited due to the releasing of our products in arthouse cinemas, as a result of pour low budget. Therefore, we will rely heavily on critical success, as well as audience responses. Both these are key features in any British and independently produced film.

• On both our Twitter and Facebook page, Q and A’s will be conducted, communicating with the target audience and answering questions regarding the production. This will hopefully act as a great marketing tool, as it will stimulate the intellect of our target audience, as well as giving then social interaction and information. This should gain great publicity for the film.

COMPARISON TO THE PRODUCTION OF SHANE MEADOWS’ “THIS IS ENGLAND”• One of the key aspects Shane Meadows features in all of his productions is the fact that he uses

nonprofessional and local actors to feature in him films. A great example of this was Thomas Turgoose. He also employs close family and friends to help create the film, for example, his partner, Louise Meadows, was the Casting Director and Co-Producer of the film. We mirrored this aspect in the sense that we chose a close friend and non-professional actor to star in our production. This not only added to the realism and stripped-back nature of our production, as Charles Pickering is not famous, thus our audience are able to relate to the character without having any pre-conceived ideas/opinions of the actor. Another one of the reasons of the great success of Warp Films, including ‘This Is England’, is the strong relationship Shane meadows has with Mark Herbert, another producer of Warp Films. This is similar to the relationship our production group has, as we are all close friends, making the production process a lot easier. The same applies to those who were involved in the soundtrack, with Joey Higham, Jake Bird and Omar Kahn all being good friends.

• ‘This Is England’ also bases the narrative of the films around the great social issue of gang/skinhead culture, something that dominated a large majority of Midlands during the 1980’s. In our production, we base the narrative on social issues such as alcoholism, depression and fatherless children. Although these issues are different, we portray them in a way that our sophisticated A-B income bracket audience would appreciate.

FITTING THE “AIDA” SCALE

• Awareness:

• As a group, we believe that through both below and above the line marketing, we would have made our target audience well aware of the production. Facebook and Twitter have over 1284000000 users between them worldwide, with 15 million Twitter users in the UK alone. Due to the fact that our target audience have an income bracket of A-B, their disposable income will allow them o purchase devices such as computers, iPads and Tablets, allowing them to become aware of “Candy Stripped.” Furthermore, due to the fact that we also advertised our product in local newspapers around the midlands areas, they would also have been made aware by this.

• Interest:

• Interest amongst our target audience would have been generated through the Q and A’s with us, the creators, directors and producers of the production. Our active audience are able to communicate with people involved in the creation of the film, giving them information (Uses and Gratification Theory) about the production. This would have caused a great amount of interest amongst the target audience. Furthermore, they would have also conversed about the information with their friends (social interaction), thus promotion the production via word of mouth, another below-the-line marketing technique.

• Desire:

• Our target audience will begin to desire the product when/if the product has reviews published in broadsheet newspapers. This would encourage them to desire the product due to the fact that the production has been written about in a broadsheet article, which will reinforce the fact that the production is in fact generating interest amongst journalists and in a broadsheet newspaper, which is targeted at a sophisticated and active target audience. They will also be attracted by the fact that it is an independently made production. However, the target audience will not be heavily influenced by the fact that the journalist is an opinion leader. The fact that they are an active audience will allow them to make the judgement on whether they negatively or positively. For example, the review may imply that the production promotes particular ideologies, and our active audience will therefore desire viewing the film, to assess whether it is in fact promoting these ideologies, or whether it challenges them in such a way only an active audience would recognise. This is an example of negative reading by the target audience. On the other hand, in a positive reading, the article would highlight how the production challenges certain stereotypes, and from the previous internet conversations with the creators, they will agree that the production seems to challenge these stereotypes, thus desire to see the film.

• Action:

• Our audience will take action in going and viewing the product due to the influence of techniques such as YouTube videos, with clips such as different aspects of the production process, such as behind the scenes footage and discussions between the producers and directors. From this they will gain not only entertainment, but information behind the creation of the film. Due to the fact that they are active they will be well attracted by these features and therefore desire the product. Videos such as our group discussion regarding the production will be posted both on Facebook and YouTube, both below the line marketing techniques.