Reflective Evaluation Question 3- Laurence Williamson

Distribution is the way in which media institutions get their films seen and promotion of the film. This can be done by using posters and trailers etc.  


Research into Media Institutions


Hammer Films
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom which was founded in 1934 and has made a large amount of horror films over the years including classics such as 'The Curse Of Frankenstein' and 'Dracula'. The company seized producing films in 1980 but returned in 2008 and have since released the highest grossing horror film in the UK for the last 20 years- that being 'The Woman In Black'. 

Here is the trailer for 'The Woman In Black'. This looks very well produced and it is the first film that Daniel Radcliffe has acted the main character in since the final instalment of the Harry Potter series. The trailer uses key clips from the film which partially allow the audience to understand what the film is about but also entices them to then go to the cinema and watch the full film. The voiceover used in the trailer is also very good as it is quite scary with it being a little girl telling a short story about the 'woman in black'.

Here is the films official poster taken from the Hammer Films website. This is very well produced with a good use of images to clearly present that it is a horror film by looking at the big 'haunted house' in the background, the cloaked figure and the gravestone. It is also a very dark poster which looks effective. The poster challenges that of bigger production companies due to its professional look. 

Black and Blue Films

Black and Blue films is one of Britain's leading independent production companies and recently opened in 2007. 

Stalker 

Stalker is one of Black and Blue films' best horror film productions according to reviews. Here is the trailer:

The trailer for this film is good as again it tells part of the story and gives a clear outline of what the film is about. There is also a lot of action shots in the trailer which would attract people to go and watch the film. The music used in the trailer builds to a crescendo to create tension. This all helps sell the film as it makes it more professional and gets into peoples heads to make them want to go and watch the film and find out what happens and how it 

happens.

This is the poster for the film. The poster is simple and uses images to introduce the characters, the victim and the threat. By looking at the poster we can tell that the threat is the hooded figure in the background who is dark and shadowed by the light behind him. The victim is the woman on the left with the knife in her hand as she looks scared and is also wearing white which stereotypically, all victims wear to represent innocence and purity. The woman to the right could possibly be either- she looks quite confused and half of her body is light where the other side is dark so it is quite hard to tell what role she plays. The cracks in the poster are effective as they look quite scary. This poster sells the film quite well as it shows all the main characters including the threat and the victim. 

To distribute our film we might look and using small local film festivals to show other people our work. Something like the Bang! film festival in Nottingham would be appropriate as it is held 3 times a year at the independent cinema- the broadway. 

The screen grab below is from a previous students horror film that has been uploaded to youtube. This is a method of distribution as it has 231 views. We can also look at doing this to distribute our horror film.

Below is a screen grab of a youtube search for 'Short Horror Films' and clearly there is also an opportunity of doing it this way as people do search for short horror films and we can tell this by looking at the different amount of large views each video has.

Here is the poster for our film we made. We made it using photoshop and by finding man image on google of a 'light at the end of a path' and by selecting an image of our character in our film and layering him on top of the background image. We also made him slightly transparent to give the ghostly/horror effect. We then selected an image of the characters face when he becomes possessed and put it inside the light so it is only just visible but is very effective and unexpected. For the text, we used our names and templates from an existing film poster to get the other text. We then put the film certificate on as this is what most other film posters have on them. Finally we put the title and created a slogan of 'Don't look into the light' as most horror films seem to have a small slogan like that.