Production/Distribution Companies

         For programmes on TV and movies to be released both in cinema and on DVD, production companies play a large role in this and if it weren’t for the productions companies a lot of media types wouldn’t be around. Production companies are responsible for the fundraising a specific production, they handle the budgeting, scheduling, scripting, marketing, the organisation of staff, post-production, distribution, the supply of talent and resources and the production itself. The production company is usually run by a producer or a director, but it can also be run by a career executive and in entertainment, a production company will rely highly on talent or a well known entertainment franchise to raise the value of a project therefore drawing it out to larger audiences.

            The marketing and advertising of a product plays a large part in how popular it becomes, for example if a movie has a lot of advertisement, more people are likely to go and watch it compared with a smaller film that has had hardly any advertisement. It also depends on how the product in this case a movie is advertised to how many people go and watch it, and the range in people that go to watch it. The main methods in advertising is billboard with posters, TV and radio adverts, advertisements on social networking sites and much more, by having so many different ways of advertising one product it means that the product can attract a wider audience and therefore become more popular. But it also means that if someone doesn’t go on social networking sites, they are still likely to the see the advert elsewhere and vice versa, as well as gaining an audience globally that are filled with different types of people ranging in age, gender and much more. The only problem with advertising is that production companies have to continue research all the time and this means that trends change quickly and advertising has to move with it, therefore more and more advertising methods have been created.

            Production companies also have a way of publicising products and this is usually through the advertising, however it won’t be regular advertising, instead they’ll advertise a product using a well known face – usually a celebrity of some sort – and this will make audiences want to buy the product as they will want to aspire to be like that certain celebrity. An example of this way of advertising is the Sharpie Company who for many of their adverts used David Beckham and this was so that people would want to go and buy the pens as they would believe that David Beckham uses them same pens too. Something that movies usually do is use actors in the movie that are familiar to the audience because they can then make this/these actors the spotlight for all the advertising, they will place them centrally on the poster and make sure they are seen throughout most of the trailer. This is a good way to gain publicity both for the product and the actor themselves because if the actor is popular already it means more people are likely to go and watch the film, and if it a small but recognisable actor it means that they will gain more fans through the advertising of the movie that they are in. 

            Distribution is also something that Production companies take care of but the film distributor can be a company or individual representative. The distributors control the marketing and circulation of a movie whether it is in the theatre or for home viewing and so they can control how a movie is shown and therefore how it is advertised. As a distributor to make the film successful is very important and so often they will arrange screening for exhibitors as well as other marketing techniques in order to make sure that the film will be as successful as possible. The film distributors can also control where the movie will be shown and how long it will be available to see on screen for and this then determines how much money is made during its run at the theatre. The distributors can then monitor how many people are going to watch the movie and this will then control whether it is shown for as long or if it needs more viewing time and also whether they need to widen the amount of theatres it is being shown in or in some cases, lessen the amount of the theatres it is being shown in.