Question 3:What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

A film distributor is a company that organises the release of the film, i.e. when and where it will be in

cinemas, on DVD/Blu-ray’s, iTunes etc.

For our media product, we would need a more independent film distributor. This is because, when

noir films were first being produced, they were much more popular than now and so often were

distributed by more major companies. However, over time, noir films have become less popular and

so would now be attracted by a more niche audience.

For our media product to be released in real life, we

would need a real distributor. After looking at different

major and independent studios that have released

films both of the same or different genres, we decided

to use the company RKO Pictures. This is a rather old

company, founded in 1928, that has become known

for distributing noir films, e.g. Citizen Kane, King Kong

etc. Despite not being well known and may not have

had many releases since being sold to new owners, it is

still operating as an independent company.

There are many examples of budget films that have become unsuspected successes, such as Killer’s

kiss. Killer’s kiss is a gritty noir film released in 1955

that follows a couple trying to escape from a

murderous ex-boyfriend. With a budget of just $40,000

($316,000 today), this film became a surprising

success, despite only being filmed, wrote, directed and

photographed by Stanley Kubrick.

There were many major film companies that specialised in distributing noir films, such as Warner

Bros, Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Many independent distributors also specialised in the

same genre, for example, RKO radio pictures. However, as noir films started to become less popular,

these companies moved onto other genres and noir was only being distributed by independent films

studios.