The Distribution Channels Of Movies Media Essay

The distribution of a movie is the process through which a movie is made available to watch for an audience by a film distributor. The current entertainment market is plagued by the abundance of product, platform and technology. In order to gain a footing in the new world of cinema, it is necessary to have an understanding of each of these elements. World trends indicate that younger generations are consuming digital content at an unprecedented rate. New technology is changing the way people consume media. With on demand technologies offering an unprecedented level of consumer control over content and viewing platform, traditional media advertising and marketing campaigns can no longer reach the masses. Movies have to be distributed through a “scattershot approach” to reach the consumers through different medium.

The motive behind doing this project was to understand the end to end distribution system of movies. There are a lot of channel partners as well as stakeholders involved in the distribution of movies from the producers to the end viewers. We have discussed the different distribution methods which include On Demand, Internet Distribution, Home Entertainment and Theatres.

Secondary Research has been done on how there has been a rise in overseas distribution as well as internet distribution of movies. We have discussed the pros and cons of different kinds of distribution methods and also how physical distribution is losing out to the others due to certain factors. Piracy in movies has been a major deterrent in recent years and a lot of preventive steps have been taken by the theatre owners as well as the government to prevent them as it cuts down the overall revenue that a movie generates.

With the advent of digital distribution, a lot of new channels have come across such as home video, internet and mobile thereby opening new sources of revenue for the film industry. We have discussed how these new channels can be leveraged upon by the movies industry.

INTRODUCTION

The distribution of a movie is the process through which a movie is made available to watch for an audience by a film distributor. Although distribution is one of the end points in the value chain of the film business, it is of utmost importance because “goofing” up at this stage means that the film, however well made, will be a flop at the “Box Office”.

A number of different distribution methods have come up which include the following:

On Demand: Here in the consumer is able to access the particular media they are interested in and purchase it or rent it at the time and device of their own choice. On demand platforms include Television and Set up Boxes.

Internet Distribution of Feature Films: The main types of distribution are downloading, downloading rental and streaming. In Downloading and Downloading Rentals, consumers can store the movie in their hard drive permanently or temporarily respectively. Streaming involves viewing of the movie as long as the device is switched on.

Home Entertainment: DVDs and Blu – ray disk are major source of revenues for film producers to recoup production, publicity and advertising cost for their feature films. Consumers can enjoy the experience of watching the movie in their home theatres.

Theatres: This is the traditional method of making the movie available for the masses. Typically a distributor buys the right for a particular territory and recovers his cost through the exhibition of the movie in theatres. A new development is happening in this space with the invention of digital copies of the movies replacing the traditional reels. It brings in a lot of flexibility and convenience for transporting and reproducing movies and also maintaining the same movie quality throughout various territories. In addition, it even brings about considerable monetary and time savings.

LITERATURE REVIEW

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OBJECTIVES

Gaining distribution is believed to be a problem for marketers of products sold in retail stores. But this issue impacts many businesses including companies selling goods in the business-to-business market and those selling services. Marketers also face problems when seeking distribution channels for their products. Yes, the products here are movies, which in some ways are really classified as services (i.e., entertainment) when shown in movie theatres and then become goods when made available for purchase (e.g., DVDs, digital download), but the problems experienced here are common to many types of marketers.

Our main objective in the project is

• To understand the various stake holders in the process of distributing movies

• To understand the various channels in the end to end process of distribution

• To understand the role of digital medium in movie distribution

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research methodology requires gathering relevant data from the various documents, websites, film journals from whichever sources possible and compiling them in order to analyse the material and arrive at a more complete understanding of movie distribution and answer following Isssues:

How Digital medium changing movie distribution.

How TV is impacting movie distribution

How online streaming eg. Youtube etc. are changing face of movie distribution

How above points can be leveraged by movie distributors to improve their distribution

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SECONDARY DATA COLLECTION

India has about 15,000 theatres enjoying a weekly admission of about 100 million people or 5000+ million per year. Distributors are the last link in the movie chain which takes films to the people. With post production accounting for 20% of the film budget and taking 20% of the total time, any savings in this would go directly to the bottom line. Digitalization has the potential to bring in the desired savings and drive up profits substantially.

Current Movie Distribution Model

Piracy in Movie Industry

A new report `Economic Contribution of Indian Film and Television Industry’ by PricewaterhouseCoopers said the film industry was in fact significantly impacted by online piracy. In 2008, piracy cost the Indian film industry $959 million and about 571,000 jobs. KPMG has also placed the film piracy rate at 60%.

Report 1

Analyses the digital distribution of films & movies

Digitization is helping film makers reach out to a wider audience; distribution of content across many platforms like home video, internet and mobile apart from conventional theatrical platforms leading to higher revenue generation

Digitization across the distribution value chain has enabled content repurposing across platforms, making distribution of niche content feasible

Distribution of revenues across the value chain has become more transparent

Availability of digital prints has significantly reduced the release window for each delivery platform; Helped in reduction of the time taken to reach tier 2 and tier 3 cities through theatrical release

Report 2

Report talks about Collaboration with International Studios. For e.g. In 2011, Viacom18 entered into a deal with global movie company Paramount Pictures to market and distribute Paramount’s movies in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

International Collaboration helps local film production by expanding their international reach and incorporates enhanced project planning and cost controls

For e.g. My Name is Khan was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures in unexplored markets like USA, with innovations such as taking the lead actors to ring the opening bell of NASDAQ stock exchange

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

Digital distribution is enabling distribution across various platforms such as home video, internet and mobile along with the traditional theatrical platform. It helps up in opening new revenue models for the film industry. In addition to the economic benefits brought about by the digitization of films, there are logistics issues which are being simplified with the advent of this technology.

CONCLUSION

Through this project study, not only the various channels for distribution of movies in India have been studied but the impact of technology on the distribution methods adopted has also been gauged. It can be very well inferred that the cost of distribution has gone down and the penetration of the product (movies) has increased; the distribution has become economical and convenient without any damage to the quality. With the advent of technology, movies are now available even on the TV through channels like Video on Demand. However, piracy still looms large and the current distribution channel is yet not robust enough to curb the evil practice completely.

Future scope of the project can include a quantitative analysis of the costs & revenues that existed in the distribution channel before digitization and comparing the same with the costs & revenues after digitization came into existence. Also, the channel of film festivals, where the potential blockbusters are released, has remained unexplored in this study.