Licensing and Distribution

licensing is the process by which a distributor acquires the legal right to exploit a film. In distribution, licensing itself can take place on two levels.

International distribution ensures that films find their way to the 90+ market 'territories' around the world. The major US studios generally have their own distribution offices in all the major territories. By contrast, independent producers have to sell their films to different distributors in each territory. Independent production companies are usually small concerns, sometimes set up for one film and often lacking the necessary knowledge or contacts of each of the territories around the world. Instead of doing this themselves, they might choose to hire a specialist sales agent, whose function is to understand the value of a film in many different markets. The sales agent will then set up stall at the film markets that take place throughout the year.

Then there is 'local' distribution, which involves the distributor acquiring the licence to release and exploit the film in a particular country. The distributor will usually pay the producer a minimum guarantee for the licence. This fee will vary depending on the status and perceived commercial potential of the film, and on the range of rights that the distributor chooses to exploit. A distributor will usually be offered theatrical rights, for showing the film in cinemas; video rights, for video and DVD exploitation; and TV rights, if the distributor is able to sell the film to a broadcaster.

 In addition to paying a fee to secure the film, the licence will stipulate that the distributor will also pay royalties to the producer, taken from the profits that the film generates. A local distributor will conventionally share profits equally with the producer for the theatrical leg, pay back higher royalties for broadcast rights, and lower for video/DVD. Once the licence has been agreed, it is then the distributor's job to launch the film. In the UK, feature films are released initially theatrically (in cinemas). A theatrical opening is seen as the most effective way to create interest in a new film. The big screen is still the optimum setting for a film for both audiences and the filmmakers.

Some months following the theatrical release, a film will be packaged and released on DVD and VHS video, then on various forms of pay television and eventually, two years after opening in cinemas, on free-to-air television. The value of the film built up by its theatrical release reaps dividends throughout its release cycle, influencing the audiences and commercial value it subsequently commands.At every stage, the successful distributor must have an in-depth knowledge of the marketplace - which cinemas, video outlets and broadcasters can best draw an audience for its films - and of the variable marketing costs involved in releasing a film in that territory. The trick is to weigh up the two factors, to invest as much as is needed in promoting the film to draw out the maximum returns.

Distribution

The history of film is usually related through the achievements of producers, directors, writers and performers. Making films, production, has always been perceived as a glamorous pursuit. Alternatively, our personal understanding and appreciation of film is shaped by our experiences at the cinema. The exhibition of film is a commonplace, shared cultural activity highly visible in every city and town in Britain, constantly feeding the popular memory. By contrast, distribution, the third part of the film supply chain, is often referred to as 'the invisible art', a process known only to those within the industry, barely written about and almost imperceptible to everyone else. Yet arguably, distribution is the most important part of the film industry, where completed films are brought to life and connected with an audience.

So what is involved in this invisible process? Distribution is about releasing and sustaining films in the market place. In the practice of Hollywood and other forms of industrial cinema, the phases of production, distribution and exhibition operate most effectively when 'vertically integrated', where the three stages are seen as part of the same larger process, under the control of one company. In the UK, distribution is very much focused on marketing and sustaining a global product in local markets. In the independent film sector, vertical integration does not operate so commonly. Producers tend not to have long-term economic links with distributors, who likewise have no formal connections with exhibitors. Here, as the pig-in-the-middle, distribution is necessarily a collaborative process, requiring the materials and rights of the producer and the cooperation of the exhibitor to promote and show the film in the best way possible. In this sector, distribution can be divided into three stages - licensing, marketing and logistics.

 Logistics of Distribution

The distributor will enter into an agreement with the cinema to screen the film on certain 'play-dates'. It is the responsibility of the distributor to arrange the transportation of the film to the cinema, as part of its wider coordination of print use across the UK. Logistics represents the phase of distribution at its most basic - supplying and circulating copies of the film to theatres, of tapes and DVDs to shops and video rental stores, and managing the effectiveness of the supply. The showing of films in cinemas is a time-pressured activity. Cinemas spend their money publicising film play-dates and times in local papers or through published programmes. There's an imperative for the distributor to deliver the film on time.

For UK theatrical exhibition, the distributor typically handles 35mm film prints. Each print can cost around £1,000 - or twice that if subtitled - so a degree of care is required of everyone involved in handling the print. In the UK, prints are generally broken down for ease of handling into smaller reels, each lasting around 18-20 mins when run through a projector at 24 frames per second. So a feature print, in its physical form, will usually be 5 or 6 reels, stored and supplied in a single hard case, weighing in at 20-25kgs. Prints are hired by the exhibitor for the duration of their play-dates, and therefore each print is made for repeat use. It's easy to see from this that, during the course of even a short theatrical release period, any single print needs to be moved many times from the main print warehouse, onto a delivery van, to the cinema, onto an assembly bench, through the projector and then back through the process and onto the next cinema. 35mm theatrical prints invariably suffer cumulative damage as they pass through different projectors, and the hands of various projectionists. There are also overheads incurred by the distributor for the storage of prints at the UK's central print warehouse in West London. For these reasons, each theatrical print has a finite lifespan.

Distributor will invest in sufficient prints to provide optimum coverage through the first period of theatrical release, usually lasting up to 6 months. From this point on, many of the now used release prints will be destroyed, leaving only a small number to be used for second-run and repertory theatrical bookings through the remainder of the film's licenced period.

Towards the end of 2005, the UK distribution and exhibition sectors were starting to move towards digital distribution and exhibition. For exhibitors, digital projection, especially when married to the increasing use digital formats in production, can now replicate - if not surpass - the image quality of conventional 35mm cinema presentation. And, of course, digital sound systems have been used in cinemas for some time. In distribution terms, the advantages of digital technology are even clearer, though perhaps longer term. Digital technology is seen to offer a more cost effective and logistics-light alternative to the tried and trusted, but unwieldy model of 35mm print distribution described above. It will, eventually, be cheaper and much less stressful to send films as computer files to cinemas across the UK, than to transport 20-25kg tins of film in the back of a van. Digital distribution and exhibition on a large scale has started to appear in certain parts of the world, notably China and Brazil, where conventional logistics cannot, for one reason or another, efficiently bring together supply and demand.

In the UK, digital technology has been embraced by the non-theatrical sector, in film societies and schools, where the use of DVD and mid-range digital projection has replaced 16mm. The force of this change, coupled with the new capacity of technology to replicate 35mm imaging, has led the UK Film Council to establish a digital distribution and exhibition programme for the theatrical sector at the end of 2005. Entitled the Digital Screen Network (DSN), it will eventually support new facilities in 211 screens across the country (out of a total of just over 3,300 screens in the UK), and is seen as a small but important step change towards full digital cinema. The DSN will initially work with files transferred from a high definition digital master (either HDD5, or HD Cam). The compressed and encrypted files will be sent directly to cinemas to be downloaded, de-encrypted (unlocked) and opened as files for screening with digital projection equipment.

In principle, digital distribution will, in time, change the paradigm of 35mm print logistics. It will be possible for the distributor to send feature film files electronically, via broadband networks, thus eliminating dependence on transportation. There is little doubt that the advent of digital distribution has the potential radically to alter the modus operandi of distributors around the world. The comparatively low cost of film copies and additional logistical effectiveness of digital distribution provide the distributor with greater flexibility. It will be less expensive in the coming years to offer a wide theatrical opening with many copies, and also conversely, to screen a film for just one performance at any cinema.

 In theory at least, it will be possible for both distributors and exhibitors to respond more precisely to audience demand. All this suggests that in the future, more titles, both mainstream and specialised, will receive wide theatrical openings, and that this broadening of access at the point of release will dramatically reduce the overall theatrical period from 3-6 months to perhaps 1-3 months. Thereafter, films will enter into a second-run and repertory programming market aided by lower costs.

 The shortened first-run period will in turn bring forward the distributor's release of the DVD. And there's the rub. The adoption of digital technologies offers greater opportunities for distributors to create joined-up campaigns for theatrical and DVD releases, in which, increasingly, the theatrical opening is used as a way of providing a loss-leading marketing platform for the highly lucrative DVD leg.
 http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/distribution/distribution2.html

Convergence

Technological Convergence The move towards new technological devices being able to do multiple tasks. "the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences." Jenkins Media Convergence Convergence, simply put, is how individual consumers interact with others on a social level and use various media platforms to create new experiences, new forms of media and content that connect us socially, and not just to other consumers, but to the corporate producers of media in ways that have not been as readily accessible in the past. New technologies and the consumer • An improved overall experience as a result of better sound and images reproduction • A heightened emotional experience as a result of a stronger sense of empathy with characters who in some way seem more real • Enhanced spectacle • Improved ease of access • New, easier and intensified ways of using film to pleasure themselves e.g. IMAX • Enhanced intellectual experience • The chance for new, ever cheaper and more compact devices to make films for themselves New technologies and the film industry • The chance to repackage and resell old products, esp cult films, thereby establishing a new audience base for an old product • An opportunity to place products for sale in a new ‘window’ thereby lengthening the commercial life of each film • The chance to encourage multiple purchases of essentially the same product • A means of still managing to make profit on films that initially perform poorly at the box office • New technologies and the cinema experience • New technologies have always added to the cinema experience • The size/quality of the spectacle have been enhanced How important is technological convergence for institutions and audiences within a media area which you have studied? • Production practices which allow texts to be constructed for specific audiences • Distribution and marketing strategies to raise audience awareness of specific products or types of products • The use of new technology to facilitate more accurate targeting of specific audiences • Audience strategies in facilitating or challenging institutional practices. • Convergence • Technological Convergence • One item does many things • Media Convergence • One company makes media product for many things

New technology in production

• To print an 80-minute feature film on 35mm can cost US$1,500 to $2,500 and has limited usage. • In contrast, at the maximum 250 megabit-per-second data rate (as defined by DCI for digital cinema), a feature-length movie can be stored on a 300gb hard drive for a minuscule fraction of the cost. • Hard drives can be returned to distributors for reuse. The industry could save billions of dollars. • The film industry has been dominated by a small number of distributors for many years due to a high barrier of entry for new competition. • This is caused by high costs and a lack of access to well-established production and distribution networks. • By replacing film prints with hard disks the barrier to entry is significantly reduced, opening the market to much stiffer competition. The Good • Greater protection for content • The possibility of greater protection against piracy. – With traditional film prints, distributors typically stagger the film's release in various markets, shipping the film prints around the globe. In the subsequent markets, pirated copies of a film may be available before the movie is released in that market. – A simultaneous worldwide release would mitigate this problem to some degree. Simultaneous worldwide releases on film have been used on The Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, amongst others. – With digital distribution, a simultaneous worldwide release would not cost significantly more than a staggered release. 3D • 3D films cannot be shown on 35mm projectors. • Therefore bigger distribution companies are supporting the move to digital in the fact that they can showcase 3D films which cost more to make/edit – creating a USP. • How can smaller British companies take advantage? Costs • Costs for converting theaters to digital are high: up to $150,000 per screen or more. • Theaters have been reluctant to switch without a cost-sharing arrangement with film distributors. • This means a move to the Virtual Print License Fee New Information • As competition increases, market forces reduce an industry's profit margins and decrease the market share of individual companies. • The desire to retain market share is one reason established distributors are looking to other ways of digital cinema rollout. What is the VPF (Virtual Print Fee) Model? • The big question over digital cinema is who is going to pay for it? One proposed solution is what is known as the Virtual Print Fee model – which involves both exhibitors and distributors contributing towards the cost of the equipment. • The way it works is: – A third party pays up front for the digital equipment. – Distributors and exhibitors pay over time to recoup the cost. – Exhibitors sign up to agreed service & maintenance commitments, as well as paying a ‘usage fee’ to cover cost of lease. – Distributors save money every time a digital (rather than 35mm) print is shipped, therefore; – Every time a digital print is shipped, distributors pay a Virtual Print Fee towards recoupment of equipment. Approximately 80% of costs will be paid for by Hollywood studios. – When cost is recouped, the cinema will own the equipment. Also … • A theater can purchase a film projector for US$50,000 and expect an average life of 30–40 years • A digital cinema playback system including server/media block/and projector can cost 3–4 times as much, and is at higher risk for component failures and technological obsolescence. • Average economic lifetimes of digital systems can be only 5 years with some units lasting until about 10 years before they are replaced. Effects of Digital • As a result the net cost of film production increases and profit margins decrease for all distributors. • This works to the advantage of entrenched distributors by making it more difficult for new distributors to gain investors, raise enough capital to enter the market, and gain market share. Digital Distribution • Prior to the VPF model the digital cinema rollout was stalled (as can be seen by major equipment purchases and future commitments to new equipment during this time). • Exhibitors acknowledged that they would not purchase equipment to replace projectors since the savings would be seen not by themselves but by distribution companies. • Given that digital projectors make low volume distribution at last an economic possibility it is the studios' support of the VPF model that has accelerated the introduction of competition, both in terms of alternative distributors and also alternative content including cinematic series. In the UK • In February 2005, Arts Alliance Media was selected to roll out the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network (DSN), a $20M contract to install and operate Europe’s largest 2K digital cinema network. By March 2007, 230 of the 241 screens had been installed on schedule, with the remaining 11 to be installed later in 2007 when cinemas have completed building works or construction.

Paragraph - How important is technological convergence for institutions and audiences within a media area you have studied.

Candidate A Another way the experience of the audience has changed by the use of technological convergence is that they can choose to see a wider range of films as it not only professional companies that can use converging technologies to make, distribute and advertise their products. This creates more competition for the film industry and requires them to interact more with their audience such as film4’s ‘The Producers’ which takes on amateur film makers and encourages them to submit their products online. Candidate B The Inbetweeners used facebook and other social networking websites as a huge part of their advertising. Banners on youtube made people talk about the film. Young Bwark who distributed the Inbetweeners movie used word of mouth advertisement heavily for this film. This was easy for them to do because people already knew and loved the characters from the Inbetweeners series on E4. This means there was a hype about people selling the film. Candidate C The Inbetweeners Movie also announced the fact they were making a film on facebook, taking advantage of a popular social media site. All three films in fact made use of facebook by creating official facebook pages containing photos, videos of backstage footage and interviews which can then be accessed from a variety of media platforms such as smartphones and laptops. This allows for very cheap and effective advertising and especially for the Inbetweeners movie as the target market for the film accesses social media the most. Therefore technological convergence has been necessary for both institutions and audiences. Candidate D When ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was released they found that people from youtube started watching the dance at the end of the film, this dance was then made into a music video which therefore meant the institutions were making more money since the music video was made available on the internet and itunes. Making things more available is very important when talking about technological convergence since is moves from one type of media to the other. Slumdog was originally just a film but the clips of the movie transformed into a music video which were then release as mp3 downloads. Candidate E The Media platforms have a big role in the importance of technological convergence because the internet is the best way to advertise new films. Media companies such as Young Bwark advertised the Inbetweeners movie on facebook. Tug use PP which meant that they’d get paid every time someone clicked on their advert, so that ‘banners; would come up of the new movie.

The Basics!

Institutions and Audiences

What a conglomerate is and an example of at least one who was involved in your film
Why conglomerates are bad and why are they good
What convergence is and why is a good thing and bad thing.
Why do people go to the cinema? At least FIVE reasons why.
At least FOUR reasons why AT LEAST ONE of the films was so successful (Production? Marketing? Distribution?)
What do the audience do that the institutions exploit? -
What new technology is around and how did your films DO IT? D-i-g-i-t-a-l

CINEMA ADMISSIONS ARE 200 MILLION AND RISING – IS THIS DUE TO INSTITUTIONS? OR AUDIENCE INTERFERENCE?

I&A Questions

2. "A media company cannot make a successful product alone anymore; the rise of new technology and platforms now makes this an impossibility." How far do you agree with this statement, referring to a media area you have studied?
3. Discuss the impact of the rise in technology on both institutions and audiences.
4. How significant is the role of new technology in the producing, marketing and distributing of a successful media product?
5. To what extent is production, marketing and distribution important for an institution's success in targeting the British marketplace?
6. To what extent have audiences influenced and affected an institution which you have studied?

TV Drama - How to approach

Showing 1 - Look carefully and identify key scenes - you will probably notice mise-en-scene/Camera first. Make mental notes of things to look out for on the next showing - you are FEATURE SPOTTING

Planning Time - Draw up your table and start putting your notes in - don't worry too much if you have got much in the way of sound/editing. Start identifying your weaker areas and identify at least THREE things to go back to.

Showing 2 - Now fill in those gaps - start looking in more depth at your camera and mise-en-scene - sound and editing can start to come in - aimed for a completely filled table.

Showing 3 - Now hit those sound and editing areas that you have looked at the least - only focus on these - try to ignore the more obvious things and go for the subtleties in sound and editing.

Showing 4 - NOTHING NEW - try to develop the presentation side of things WHY have these features been used?