A production company provides the physical grounds to build on in the form of media entertainment such as films and television programmes. Production companies are usually responsible for sourcing the funds to produce the production, it is also responsible for budgeting, scheduling, the supply with talent and resources, the organisation of staff, the post production side such as editing and distribution and the actual marketing of the production.
The film distributor is the company or individual solely responsible for the marketing of a film. The distributor may set the release date of the film and the way which the film is made available for viewing e.g., directly to the public through either through cinema viewing or directly to DVD. A distributor may do this directly, if the distributor owns the theatres or film distribution networks, or through exhibitors and other sub-distributors. A limited distributor may only deal with particular products such as DVD’s or Blu-Ray, or may act only in a particular country or market.
For a low budget film like ours the funding would most likely come from a government grant from the British Film institute. The BFI have a lottery funding system for film producers in the UK who are emerging or world class and are capable of creating distinctive and entertaining work.
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| British Film Institute |
The BFI would provide us with 'seed' money to help get the planning process underway and involve large production companies such as Film4 to get involved. As Film4 are eager to engage with young, new British film making talent, I think that Film4 would be a good choice as a large production company, and also because they have a target audience similar to ours (16-30) and show programmes which are of an 'alternative' and risky nature, which is a suitable description of our film. Other, smaller production companies would also be involved, such as my own production company 'Broken Coal Productions' and my friend's production company 'Rotted Grape' owned by Tommy O'Connor (Editor and Director at the BBC). Including these small, local production companies would mean that there would be solid relationships between the cast and crew as they have mostly all worked together before, and therefore improve the structure and development of the film in question. The feature film would also aid the development of the production companies as it would help raise their profile and help them obtain more work in the future.
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| Broken Coal Productions - Owned by Emma Taylor |
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| Rotted Grade Productions - Owned by Director Tommy O'Connor |
Many sources of money will have to be found in order to develop the film (BFI Funding, Rotted Grape, Broken Coal and Film4) as this will help spread the immense costs of production - even though this is only a low budget film, the money is hard to gain back in the industry due to the dominance of American production company in Hollywood.
I believe that our film fits suitably into this category and would benefit from this type of funding. I believe our film particularly would be initially distributed through small film festivals across the country such as the commonwealth film festival in Manchester and the East End film festival in London to raise awareness of the production, not to mention travelling to the world famous Cannes Film Festival to try and get noticed as a company, or even as an individual director so funding for the next film after 'Sweet Revenge' can be easier to find, and also to promote it abroad.
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| Commonwealth Film Festival logo |
When the film had received some more interest and possibly further funding it could go on to be shown in smaller, independent cinemas such as the corner house in Manchester.
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| Cornerhouse, Manchester |
Films that would be released in a similar way would be other low budget British films such as 'Monsters' written and directed by Gareth Edwards.
The logo of the real production company we used in our production was 'Spyglass Entertainment', we felt as though this would be a suitable choice as from what we had observed through our research of thriller conventions we noticed that many of the thrillers such as ‘The Sixth Sense' were either produced or co-produced by Spyglass. The name of our own production company is 'Songbird Productions'; the name was a group decision based on what we had observed from our research of current thrillers. We noticed that many production company names included connotations of never ending limits and others with the sky and the name ‘Songbird Productions' seemed to feature both connotations. The actual logo features the name of the company ‘Songbird productions’ along with four animated birds that fly in to position over the title in turn. The animated logo is accompanied by the sounds of song birds tweeting to make the logo feel naturalistic and establish a brand to the company.
The opening credits mention each person involved in the production in the order which it would in an actual thriller production based mainly on importance with the director appearing first, the assistant director appearing second, followed by the editing and other credits such as props and sound. Each credit is divided with a scene in between; the opening is split between two scenes so the credits only appear on one of the scenes.
The software we used to edit the production logo was 'Motion Graphics' for Mac which enabled us to animate the birds flying easily and create motion paths. Whilst my own knowledge of animation is limited, I was able to create this animation from the original design and am pleased with the result.
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| Promotion of 'Motion' for Mac |
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| The 'Motion' logo |
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