What is distribution?Film distribution is the process of making a film or movie available for view by an audience.

A distributor can be an individual or organisation who will represent your film at such events like festivals and markets, they will also try to sell the film to a television company, airline company's and anyone else who will show films.The distributor will generally handle the theatrical release of the film as well. (potentially the marketing and the circulation of the film for home viewing will be done by the distributor.The new films can be part of a catalogue at film festivals so people can view highlights of the film to be shown to a greater market, the distributor will also deal with this as well.

This distribution company has worked on the film Shifty that we have analysed. They have expertise in maximising revenues for producers of film and TV content across all distribution platforms in the UK. The reason I have chosen to used Metrodome Distribution as my distribution company is because our film is a lower budget film and Metrodome has dealt with company's with a lower film budget before, like shifty, and their market expertise could be very useful to maximise revenue for our film. I feel they would be very interested in our film because the genre of our film seems to fit with the genre of the other films that they have helped to distribute. They have done work on films like “After dusk they come” and “assault on wall street” these films are action and horror films and our “somnum” film is a horror thriller film so it would fit right in with what the film company has already produced. If our film is roughly similar in genre to others it will make it easier to distribute for them because they have seen these types of film styles and films plenty of times before so can distribute our film effectively and efficiently. Our style of film is typical of a horror film but because we like to keep a mysterious edge to our film they will like it. They did this with the film shifty, throughout the film the characters were mysterious and there was always an underlined tone of uneasiness and Metrodome distributed this film so we would like to think with are common features to shifty and their like for thriller and horror films that they would also distribute our film as well.

According to Metrodomes head of marketing, a film can be much more than a big studio blockbuster. This is very representative of our film and shows that a film like ours and shifty would do well in the market. Metrodome films has done a lot of work with action and war films but this shouldn’t be to much of a problem because our film will have some action and thriller moments in it as well as the horror element of it.

UK audiences?The marketing of the film will be important on whether or not the film will be appealing to more than just UK audiences. Our film is based on a rather famous story of the “Russian Sleep experiment” that has been made famous by sites such as youtube. It is also a known story across different country's so it doesn’t have to just appeal to UK audiences and because our video does feature a Russian character it isn't just characters from the UK in a typical housing estate British film but rather a secluded location.In answer to the question, no I don’t feel it will only appeal to UK audiences but audiences all over the world. This is because we use a range of different nationality characters in a setting that wouldn’t be recognisable to a particular country. It is also based upon a storyline that is very relatable around the world “ sleep Insomnia” so it could be seen by a range of different audiences. Maybe people would have heard of the story on the internet before and would want to see the film anyway.

Marketing strategies I feel that we would use the internet to publicize and market our video more because the original story started on the internet and the film could be found by people who have originally seen or heard of the “Russian sleep experiment” before our film. We would make a twitter account YouTube channel and Facebook page to spark interest in the film. Also being realistic as much as we would like to have our film available for other audiences other than UK based audiences because our film is independent we could show the film in local cinemas, or only make the film straight to DVD with then the option to publicise the film on DVD in other country's that would like to view the film.Marketing our film we would set a release date that is realistic to when we will finish and as we get closer to the date we would release a trailer of the film and try to get coverage in newspapers TV shows and magazines.We could also participate in a publicity stunt as part of our marketing campaign that maybe contains something amazing dangerous or spectacular to try and get coverage or the image of our film out for people to view. These are all options on what we could use as a marketing strategy.

Self distribution Self distribution is another possible solution for getting the film to the audience. I personally feel that it is a harder way of publicising our film because we don’t know the marketing industry like the people that work at Metrodome distribution. However if we were to self distribute it would save us more money not having to pay for a company to help us. However it could end up costing us more money on the other hand.An advantage of doing self distribution is I can full control and rights over my film, giving me also the choice over where my film is shown.A disadvantage is that It may limit options for sales as distributors have relationships with buyers and a lot of buyers may only be interested in packages of films. Also I would need to be very legally aware to make sure im not signing away rights to my film that will end up preventing it being shown elsewhere.JAMES KINNEAR