Evavuation Task 3: What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why?

The opening title sequence we have made shows essentially the poisoning of a man and the build up to this scene by a series of passovers. One would associate our groups title sequence with spy, crime films. The style in which our title sequence is filmed is quite unlike a high concept hollywood production and more like that of a smaller independent british production company producing low concept films. However initially we began by associating our title sequence with films such as Bourne and James Bond as our sequence could be seen as a high concept film despite being a similar style to a smaller independent film company, due to the complex storyline, however due to the resources and budget we had to construct our title sequence it could be seen as a British Independent, low concept film. In my opinion i think that the film could go either way in terms of being high or low concept  to me as the concept is capable of becoming a high concept film however the low budget we had meant that it was difficult to create a high concept film.

Studio Canal is a French production company that was bought by Vivendi and Universal Studios. Founded in 1988, the original function was to focus on French and European films however the production company has recently done some hugely successful American Productions, some of which are very similar to our product. One of their films was The Tourist which is a high concept film that has a very similar action based plot to our developing spy film featured a-list actors such as Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. The film revolves around Frank (Depp) who travels to Italy to mend a broken heart, he meets Elise (Jolie) who deliberately crosses his path. The budget was estimated at around $100 000 000. On the opening weekend $16 500 000 was made showing over 2,700 screens. Studio Canal has also produced other films similar to ours such as Broken City. Both these films produced by Studio Canal have similar action orientated storylines to our developing spy film, as a result we could assume that Studio Canal would be interested in producing our film.

The Tourist was then distributed by Columbia Pictures Industries Inc a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment. This company has distributed films such as Skyfall, Django Unchained, Vantage point and Quantum of Solace which are similar in terms of their plots. The $100 000 000 budget from The Tourist went on to gross $278 000 000 at the worldwide box office after its release in December 10, 2010.  and so i would think that Columbia Pictures would be a good company to distribute our film if our film was to go down the high concept route. We would intend to distribute our media product to the cinemas first and then distribute it through dvd and Blueray.

However If we were to use a smaller production and distribution company, we could use Shadow Distribution, a company based in Waterville in Maine. The company has released a film called 'The Situation' which is about an American Journalist, a CIA operative, and an iraqi photographer against the backdrop of a bloody war in iraq, which is filmed in a similar style to our media product and is filmed with a relatively low budget, which is once again similar to our product. The situation is a low concept film with a similar style and feel to our media product however they are very different storylines, with our product being more of a high concept one. Because our product could either be classed as a high or low concept, i think that it is important to look into and research on both sides. After having researched both high and low concept production and distribution companies i have come to the conclusion that, due to our action packed storyline i think that our media product would be more suited to be a high concept film and produced by Studio Canal and Ditributed by Columbia pictures. This choice obviously makes the film high budget so one would have to ensure that our product has lucrative investments in order to carry this out.