What is the role of a distrubution company?

The role of the distributor is to come up with the target audience to the films that they are working with, this audience has to be large to secure large numbers of sales. They have to make sure they keep with the current times and make sure they understand the ways in which media is being shared across the world and to different audiences. The main challenge in this job is to find the target audience and figure out the best way to distribute the films to them, and satisfy all of their needs. At the end of the day, if there are happy audiences, there is more money coming in.

The most important thing for distribution companies to take into account is audiences, which are the most important factor. Not only do distributors have find the target age of their audience but they also need to know a whole list of other things such as gender, lifestyle, working state, destination. All of these things effect a person and therefore effect the choice of target audience. There are many different ways that a target audience can be acquired, the main one being questionnaires and surveys, this way thousands of people who attend a certain genre of film can fill in a survey and then instantly the distributor can calculate his target audience from the data and information received. An example of this would be that it is known that the predominant genre which goes to view romantic comedy films are females and then for action it is male. It is also well known that 15-30 year olds are the predominant users of social networking sites along with other forms of digital media such as web browsing and 3D cinemas. To take all of this in to mind the distributor needs to have a plan, and this is to:

1. Develop a strategy in which the film would be released and then determine a suitable date for this.
2. Show this to film exhibitors who would come to an agreement which would result in the film being classified suitable for screening and the rating would be reviewed.
3. Finally come up with different marketing techniques such as trailers, to get the audience engaged and looking forward to seeing the film by the time it is released. 

Distributors look carefully through a film for things they can single out to publicise the film more, and make it bigger than other films which are also being released. This way, they are keeping on top of the competition which can be a big problem for distributors. This all helps to create the best profit possible. 

Distributors need to be able to think on realistic terms and come up with combined decisions while developing a film because their is no room for mistakes in the media industry and film will just become a failure and henceforth become a waste of time and money. Something which distributors need to be familiar with is the ever changing ways of audiences and how people follow trends, if the distributors don't keep with the trends then they will not hit the mark and not for fill the needs of the audience. A way to make sure they are hitting the mark correctly is to have test screenings in which a certain number of the target audience can go and view the film before it is released and feedback on it. This gives the distribution companies a heads up on if they are going the right way and makes their job a lot easier. Trends are also important in other sectors of film such as Actors, because lots of people go to view films purely on the fact that it includes an actor they are fond of and this is why distribution companies need to keep in check with which actors are in high demand and which are slowly becoming less popular in the public eye.

Overall i think that film distributors have a very  hard job because they are constantly needing to keep updated with trends in the media and need to always keep in time with their target audiences. The main aim of the game in the media industry is to make money which is why distribution companies have such a weight on their shoulders because they are the most important thing about a films success. If a film has a bad distribution company and the film is not made a success, there is not going to be any money intake. Which is why film directors usually go with the larger distributors because of the trust barrier that has been made and film successes which have passed through the same companies.